Abstract:
Small and medium enterprises are increasingly considered as playing
an important role in the economy of many countries, including South
Africa. Unfortunately, home-based businesses in particular, such as most
of the custom-made clothing businesses, are exhibiting high failure rates.
The purpose of this study was to explore female customers’ satisfaction/
dissatisfaction with the quality of custom-made clothes, the accompanying
emotions resulting from the dissatisfaction and their coping strategies in
the form of complaint behaviour. A survey-based research design was
followed. The sample consisted of 209 females older than 18 years,
residing in Tshwane, South Africa, who had had custom-made clothes
made by small urban-based custom-made clothing businesses during the
previous 12 months. Customers in this study had high expectations for
most performance features of the custom-made garments, especially
the sensory and emotional performance features, with which they
were ultimately not as satisfi ed as they had expected to be. Most of
them blamed the business for the dissatisfaction. They did, however,
not contact the business to complain but rather told others about the experience and decided no longer to support the business. They also
experienced high levels of negative emotions such as disappointment,
frustration and sadness. The results have implications for small custommade
clothing businesses.
