College preperation for fashion merchandising students in Los Angeles

The purposes of this study were to develop an overview of a fashion merchandising career in buying, to evaluate the education background needed, and to identify college courses which complement the career. In order to arrive at a measurable opinion of the courses considered useful in preparing for a fashion merchandising career, a three part study in survey form was implemented. A composite survey was developed, one for each of the three groups in the sample. Merchandising executives, buyers, and assistant buyers of three department stores in the Los Angeles metropolitan area evaluated the list of suggested colleges courses and professional preparation for this career. Clothing and textiles and fashion merchandising educators from five universities in the Los Angeles area also evaluated the list of suggested college courses in the survey. All three groups in the sample identified courses that emphasized the functions of merchandising, basic business concepts, and textiles. Courses perceived as desirable by all of the respondents were those that emphasized specific areas of clothing and textiles, human behavior, cornmunication skills, and computer concepts and uses in merchandising. The biases of each group and the lack of a clear concept of course content may have skewed the evaluations of the college courses toward those areas with which each group was most familiar. A clear identification of homologous courses beyond. those that emphasized the basic functions of merchandising was not possible due to the disparity of value placed on other courses between the groups in the sample. .