Analyzing the Cause and Predicting Future of Sportswear as Fashion Trend

The market scale of sportswear keeps increasing globally. As it increases, not only the variety of the products is broadened, but also the definition of sportswear is broadened. Sportswear now refers to functional clothes for fierce activities as well as clothes for daily life. In this report, by going over theories explaining factors of fashion trend changes, drastic increase of sportswear sales in China is explained. Fashion trend is a tendency of fashion which is influenced by tremendous factors like significant or meaningful incidents. The incidents can be political events, economic depression, and social conflicts. In this report, economic factor will be mainly discussed. For economic factors, macroeconomic index such as GDP per capita and PPP per capita show positive relationship with sales of clothes. Moreover, economic situation also has some relationship with the use of color and design patterns. Applying regression analysis to China case study, this research was not able to figure out meaningful relationship due to extremely rapid growth of Chinese sportswear market. However, experts state that economic growth has significantly contributed to the increase of market scale considering governmental policies and situational evidences. For these reasons, the estimated growth rate of sportswear market is optimistic.