AN ASSESSMENT OF CONSUMER’S PERCEPTION TOWARDS THE QUALITY OF ETHIOPIAN LEATHER SHOE PRODUCTS

Abstract

The paper is designed to demonstrate the perception of customers towards the quality of Ethiopian leather shoe products. Leather industry, as it is one of the potential economic sectors, it should be given proper attention for sustainable development of the country. Thus, the purpose of this paper is to propose improvement regarding quality issues of Ethiopian leather shoe products to improve their productivity by analyzing the problems associated with it. To accomplish the stated objective the paper assessed previously made researches and also distributed 180 questioners for leather shoe consumers. The researcher selected 6 shoe factories through quota sampling to make contact with consumers. From the six factories the researcher selected 30 consumers from each shoe manufacturing companies on convenience basis. The questions were prepared based on the eight dimensions of quality and customers respond their perception towards the quality of domestic leather shoe products accordingly. And the researcher deployed Statistical package for social science (SPSS) and Microsoft excel software to analyze the collected data. The collected data is analyzed, interpreted and summarized to provide conclusions on the customer’s perception towards leather shoe products quality. Finally the paper gives recommendation on the quality issues of leather shoe products. The paper reveals that customers believed the quality of domestic shoes regarding performance, durability and reliability dimensions are very good but domestic leather shoe products lacks aesthetic value including design, style, and choice. Due to this reason domestic leather products are not competent with imported leather products.