| January 1, 2005 brought the elimination of quantitative restrictions to trade in the apparel industry. Because apparel products are produced in almost every country around the world, the elimination of trade barriers has important implications for apparel sourcing decisions. The research in this dissertation assesses the impact of quota release using two methodologies: interviews of sourcing personnel, which will give a micro-economic view of imports at the company level, and econometrics, which will be used to give a macro-economic view of impacts on the industry. The combination of these two methodologies will give a holistic look at the reduction of trade barriers and their impact on the apparel sourcing decision.; The qualitative data consisted of transcripts from interviews of six sourcing personnel. New themes that emerged from the data included vendor relationships, security of country and natural barriers, such as weather phenomena. External environmental barriers, such as economic, political/legal, and socio-cultural barriers, found in previous research were confirmed by the qualitative data. The quantitative data used for this research was collected from various US and international agencies. OLS regression revealed all variables (difference in GDP, geographical distance, duty, real exchange rate, and quota) to be significant. The regression model does not include the emergent variables, due to the difficulty in quantifying them.; Quota and tariffs were significant factors in the sourcing decision, both in the qualitative and quantitative studies. Quota has an interesting phenomenon occur, in that as quota decreases, US demand for apparel imports increases. This can be seen in the data (import quantity) and can be attributed to confounding variables not included in the model. |
