Blog Post #8

This week we are to once again look at our classmates blogs and comment on what they have been writing and their opinions. I look forward to this assignment because I enjoy reading what my peers have been writing about, as their interests often differ from mine, and can give a new perspective on research and Public Relations, among various other topics.

The first blog I looked at was Charlie Niland's, which focuses on healthcare and medical public relations. Last week, Charlie wrote about how qualitative research is becoming more prominent in healthcare. After defining what qualitative research is, Charlie went on to describe how the use of qualitative research is controversial. He wrote, "Clinical experience, based on personal observation, reflection, and judgment, seems to be needed in order to translate scientific results into treatment of individual patients. Personal experience is often characterized as being anecdotal and a poor basis for making scientific decisions". With this statement, Charlie is saying that people often overlook personal experiences and believe them to be based on situational experiences only. However, he notes that observation of people in certain sitatuions can be very helpful when trying to assist someone who is in need in the medical field.

The second blog I read was Roberta Soares' blog, which is titled 'PR For the Fashionable'. Roberta's blog has a similar focus as mine but looks more broadly to all of the fashion industry, as opposed to mine which focuses mainly on research in fashion corporations. In her most recent entry, 'To Observe is to Dress... Or is it?', Roberta wrote about important observation is in correlation with success in the fashion industry. In her blog post, Roberta covered every angle, from how designers observe others, which influences their designs, to how consumers observe celebrities and media, which tells the majority of people how to dress. I never thought of unobtrustive research in this way before, and it really interested me. The fact that Roberta was focusing on unintentional observation was an aspect of unobtrusive research that isn't covered often, but is a huge part of everyone's daily lives. No matter how you want to phrase it, people spend much of their time observing each other and every thing around them. This was something Roberta touched on in her entry, but really made me think further.

To both PRR 332 sections and all of my peers, keep up the great work in your blogs- more than halfway done with the semester!! I look forward to reading more of your entries in the future!!

Qualitative Research

Qualitative research is a type of primary research done through various methods, most commonly focus groups and interviews. Qualitative research is utilized often by major fashion corporations who are looking to hear feedback from their clients and learn what their needs and wants are, what they like about the company and what they'd like to change. Also, corporations use qualitative research to determine how successful their employees are being in relation to their customers. Are they helpful and attentive? Do they listen to the requests of their clients and do their best to fulfill them? These are all questions that could be evaluated with qualitative research.


In the book titled "Doing Research in Fashion and Dress", by Yuni Kawamura, the author looks into how companies use qualitative research to determine how successful they are being with their various endeavours. The author describes their book as "Using case studies, the author outlines the major issues and methodological strategies that researchers employ, and examines the range of approaches in the field. Fashion, the author demonstrates, can be treated as a material object, an abstract idea, a social phenomenon, a system, a cultural value or an attitude among many other approaches". I found this to be very interesting, because I never really thought about how research is used in these situations. I was interested to learn more about qualitative research in fashion, and how companies take their feedback and apply it to their businesses.


Overall, I would like to learn more. It would be interesting to actually sit in on a focus group and see what kind of questions are being asked, and how they are being answered by the consumers. Qualitative research has proven very useful to companies over and over again!!

Blog Post #5

This week, I looked at some of my classmates' blogs to see what they wrote about inobtrusive research, since it has been such a topic in our class discussions lately. First, I looked at Paige Weiners' blog, which is about fashion PR. Her blog post about unobtrusive research focused on how designers use observation to put styles together and create collections based on what people are wearing, without knowing they are being observed. Paige wrote, "Perhaps they would be sure to match it perfectly with their pants, or wear certain under-garments to make it more flattering or even make sure that the item of clothing is ironed so that they look neat.  In reality, the designer most likely wants to see the shirt when they dont really think about it." I thought this was an interesting point to make, and I had never really looked at this from that perspective so far.

The second blog I looked at was Francesca's blog, which focuses on celebrities and social media. Francesca made me look at social media in context to unobtrusive research much differently, in a way I had never previously thought of. In her blog post 'Keeping Up With Your Favorite Celebs", she wrote, "Essentially, when you take note of what your 'friends' are doing on Twitter, Facebook, and other social media websites, you are researching their preferences for certain things like their favorite restaurant or type of food, their current favorite song or artist, the hotels they prefer to stay at, etc. So... when you are keeping tabs on your friends and favorite celebs via Tweets and Status Updates, you are conducting unobtrusive research". I am an avid user of Twitter, but I had never thought that I was conducting research as I am simply looking at my timeline updates. I thought that was interesting and a great point to make about social media and unobtrusive research.

Unobtrusive research is clearly all around us- especially when we don't know it! Hope you guys are liking my blog, more again next week!

Post #5

For this week's blog, I am focusing on unobtrusive research in the fashion industry, specifically unobtrusive research conducted in a retail environment setting. This past summer, I was lucky enough to have my first retail employment experience working for a very well known clothing company, which had its positives and negatives. One of the first things we were trained on was 'loss prevention', aka, how to catch people stealing from the store, and how to prevent it. My store had a unique policy- even if someone was witnessed to have shoplifted, we were not allowed to confront them on it. Under ANY circumstances. The reasoning behind this was legal- if we had wrongly accused someone of taking from the store, there would definitely be a lawsuit in our future, and additionally, more work for the PR department to handle.

During training, we were given a statistic which I found interesting. There are 27 million shoplifters in the United States- 1 in every 11 people. The United States found $15 BILLION dollars in losses last year from shoplifting. Furthermore, my boss was quick to point out that if people think they aren't being watched, they WILL steal.

I often wondered, how do they know this? We often assume that the majority of people are good with a conscience, however, this knowledge must have been gained through unobtrusive research of some kind. In a study I found online,  the researcher watches a store over a period of time, with various shoplifters. The shoplifters, if not being closely watched by the staff, always walked away without problem. Furthermore, if another shopper witnessed the theft, they almost never said anything to the offender or store personnel. This statistic astounded me.

In recent year, unobtrusive research has done a lot in prohibiting shoplifters. Store employees are trained to looks for suspicious people - not to judge on what they look like or wearing, but on their behavior. If they fail to make eye contact, barely look at any of the items for sale but take huge piles of clothing anyway, neglect to grab the proper sizes or constantly refuse help, they are showing blatant signs of possible shoplifting. The knowledge of all of these behavioral tactics was a direct result of the performance of unobtrusive research in retail stores.

Overall, shoplifting for retail corporations is a problem, but measures are being taken to ensure its prevention. It is definitive that anyone who works in a retail setting has been trained in loss prevention, and knows which behaviors and signs to look for in a customer. It can most definitely be said that this is all attributed to careful and important unobtrusive research!

Blog Post #4

This week, we were asked to read the blogs of other students in the PRR 332 course. Although my blog has been focusing mainly on the Public Relations research strategies of major fashion corporations, I wanted to venture out this week and read a few blogs that look at other facets of Public Relations.


The first blog I looked at was written by Kevin Nestico, a classmate. Titled Sports PR: Fitness and Supplement Industry, Kevin's blog focuses on the PR research and tactics "fitness and supplement companies use to promote their latest, cutting-edge product to put you over the top of the competition for a better body". I thought that this blog would be interesting to read, as I have absolutely zero background knowledge of the subject. The blog entry that I felt was most interesting and controversial was his second post, Research Ethics: Are they Forgotten?. Kevin looks at several different supplements and how their advertising and labels can be misleading- one such product claims to gain the user 14 lbs of muscle in only two weeks, something Kevin points out as being clearly misleading and untrue. Yet these companies still print information such as this and get away with doing so, conning people into buying their products, without giving any solid research to prove their claims are true. I never thought that supplement companies would be able to get away with providing misleading information without being regulated by the FDA, but I was proved wrong, as it happens everyday. Additionally, Kevin points out that the problem has been getting progressively worse. I really enjoyed reading his blog, seeing as I know now the truth behind the seemingly perfect fitness and supplement industry.


The second blog I looked at was classmate Blaine Dulkerian's blog, E. PR, which looks at Public Relations in the entertainment industry. In her first posting, Blaine asked her readers to think about one question, which was 'what would entertainment even be without PR?'. This question really got me thinking, seeing as so much of the entertainment industry is focused on Public Relations. If a celebrity doesn't have a driven and successful PR team standing behind them, there's almost a 100% chance that they will either fall out of the limelight, or when faced with scandal, never be able to recover their reputation. Celebrities like Britney Spears and Lindsay Lohan are great examples of this, for obvious reasons. In her second post, Blaine looks at Lady Gaga's controversial Video Music Awards dress- which was entirely made of meat. Blaine points out that "celebrities care more about getting noticed in the media to gain more fame" (as Gaga faced extreme scrutiny from some media outlets and PETA), rather than maintain professional relationships with Public Relations practitioners. I fully agree with this statement, as it seems like the entertainment industry is an 'every man for himself' type of world. I thought Blaine's blog was very interesting and different, and it made me take on the entertainment industry from a different perspective, and not just at face value.

Reading the blogs of other students has really helped me think of new ideas to talk about in my own blog. Looking at Public Relations from someone else's perspective is helpful, and can be a great source of knowledge if you are ever faced with a Public Relations crisis in the future.

Blog Post #3

For fashion corporations and retailers that wish to remain relevant to their clients, evaluating and using their research results is key. Research can be conducted for these companies through various outlets, such as customer satisfaction surveys and most recently, researching feedback provided by consumers via social media. Presently, most corporations have established profiles on social media outlets such as Twitter and Facebook, where consumers can leave their thoughts, critiques and opinions.

It is up to the company however to take this feedback and use it to aid their research- what their clients like, dislike, want and need in accordance to their products. One company who actively and effectively researched their customers wants and used the research to benefit their company was clothing retailer Anne Taylor LOFT. This past June, the clothier published catologue photos to their Facebook profile of a new item for purchase- silk cargo pants, as featured on a tall, blonde, and impossibly skinny model. Clients reacted on Facebook automatically, posting comments declaring that- although the pants were nice, they would look ridiculous on anyone other than a size 2.

LOFT's model in 'controversial' silk cargo pants

The Public Relations department at Anne Taylor researched these claims and in less than 24 hours responded to the concerned public via Facebook. They photographed three women from within their very own offices in the cargo pants to prove that women of any size could wear them in a flattering way. Because the company replied so quickly and in such a creative way, the apprehensive clients were very impressed, and Anne Taylor gained even more publicity for using research and social media effectively, as they received positive coverage from various media outlets.

LOFT employees

I think that this is a great example of how fashion corporations can show that they are listening to their clients and their needs and requests. Social media is an advanced and effective way to use research and figure out how it can benefit their organization in the long run. Examples such as the Anne Taylor LOFT situation prove how imperative it is for companies to use their research from Public Relations and apply it to their business practices in order to be successful.

Fashion Ethics- Treatment of Garment Workers

Did you know that almost three quarters of the world’s clothing exports are made in developing countries? In Bangladesh, 80% of the economy is dependent on the fashion industry- however, the majority of the country’s garment workers still receive less than half of our minimum wage, even though the price of basic necessities, such as food, continues to rise in their country. Garment workers in all countries work strenuous hours, usually going for whole days without breaks. They suffer verbal and physical abuse at the hands of their supervisors, and even so are never quite sure about the security of their job.

Many of today’s most popular fashion brands and designers claim to be humanitarians, donating millions of dollars a year to various charities and constantly holding fundraisers, among other acts of giving. That being said, how do they ethically stand for the poor treatment of the individuals actually making the products that bear their brand name?

While there has been a recent rise in globally aware companies such as fashion label Edun, who just showed a collection at Mercedes Benz New York Fashion Week, the demand for companies who support proper work ethics and payment for their overseas workers needs to increase dramatically.