The Complex Process of Selecting a Pair of Shoes

The Complex Process of Selecting a Pair of Shoes

I plan to prove that the majority of people that invest money into footwear do so because of style. People usually don’t choose a pair of shoes because of comfort, color, or any other means at all. They usually base their decision of purchasing a pair of shoes on style. There are three tools that I will use during this experiment that will help me out. These tools will be comprised of surveys, interviews, and observations. Through survey’s I will have a sheet of paper with approximately eight questions on it. These questions range from the subjects personal preference when it comes to purchasing a pair of shoes. Whether they do it for comfort, style, color, work related, price, or even none of the above at all, to how many pairs of shoes that these individuals currently own. This will give me a general idea of what goes through peoples minds when they purchase a pair of shoes. Then I will use my observation skills. I plan to sit in the mall since it’s the best public place for this experiment, and observe what brand, color, and style of footwear the general public wear. I will more than likely sit in front of Finish Line since they are one of the major footwear sales stores in the country. This will show me exactly what people choose to wear, but won’t tell me why. Since I wouldn’t know why they wear them I plan to interview a couple of volunteers to get their opinion. This plus the rest of my research will give me a good idea of what people choose to wear, and why. I’m going to pick a few individuals from the public that seem to keep “shoes” an important part of their lives. I will ask them the same questions that are on my survey plus a few more that will go int...

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... and style go hand in hand. He said people prefer one brand name against another because of the way they look.

On the other hand I interviewed a girl who said that she would buy any pair of shoes as long as it was cheap and looked nice. She said she had no real preference, and owned a lot of shoes. Price was her deciding factor and no matter how it looked, what the brand name was, or even the color, she wouldn’t purchase it unless the price wasn’t very high, or if it was on sale.

I think my observations, surveys, and interviews prove my thesis to be correct. Even though not everybody uses style for their deciding factor, the majority of people that participated in my survey, and my interview with Rob the shoe salesman concludes that style usually is the number one factor in one way or another when a person purchases a pair of shoes.