Comfort Beats Brand: What 401 Filipino Students Reveal About Sportswear Economics

When university students shop for sportswear, the loudest message in the market is usually the brand logo. Yet a new study from the Philippines suggests that the quietest factors—how a garment feels, how well it is made, and what it costs—actually drive the decisions of young consumers far more powerfully than advertising campaigns or peer pressure. The research, published in Frontiers in Behavioral Economics, surveyed 401 students at a public higher education institution and found that comfort, quality, and affordability towered over brand appeal, promotions, and social influence when students rated what matters most in the sportswear they buy for physical education classes.

The study was conducted by Joseph Lobo, Wendy T. Cortez, and Loui Maie C. Rivera of Bulacan State University, with Lobo also affiliated with INTI International University in Malaysia. Their setting was unusual and deliberately chosen: the Physical Activity Towards Health and Fitness (PATH-Fit) courses that Filipino undergraduates must complete. In this environment, sportswear is not a discretionary fashion statement but a practical requirement for movement, participation, and confidence in physically active coursework. The researchers framed the purchase decision through the lens of behavioral economics, treating each sportswear purchase as an everyday negotiation between functional need, budget constraint, and identity-related preference rather than a simple act of taste.

The data came from a cross-sectional survey administered online between October and December 2024 to first- and second-year students enrolled in PATH-Fit courses. Of 445 initial responses, 401 valid responses were retained after data cleansing, a response rate of 82.02 percent. The sample was predominantly young: 72.1 percent of participants were aged 18 to 20, with a mean age of 19.17 years, and 72.6 percent were freshmen. Just over half identified as heterosexual women (50.6 percent), 43.1 percent as heterosexual men, and 6.2 percent as LGBTQIAP+ members. Geographically, the respondents were split almost evenly between rural (36.2 percent), urban (34.2 percent), and suburban (29.7 percent) areas. Financially, the picture was striking: 67.8 percent spent less than 500 Philippine pesos—roughly nine US dollars—per month on casual sportswear, underscoring how tight the budget constraints are for this population.

The methodological rigor behind these numbers deserves attention. The researchers calculated that a minimum of 365 participants was needed based on institutional enrollment of roughly 7,000 PATH-Fit students, using a 95 percent confidence level and a 5 percent margin of error. An a priori power analysis using G*Power 3.1 confirmed that the achieved sample of 401 exceeded the thresholds required for both independent samples t-tests (128 participants for a medium effect size) and one-way analysis of variance with nine groups (260 participants). The survey instrument, adapted without modification from a validated questionnaire, achieved a Cronbach’s alpha of 0.88, indicating high internal consistency. Fifteen sportswear attributes were rated, spanning fitting, comfort, color, design, quality, fabric properties, figure, price, raw material properties, brand, sewing properties, accessory properties, fashion, advertisement and promotion, and peer influence.

The descriptive results tell a clear story. Comfort scored highest at 4.70 on a five-point scale, followed closely by quality at 4.67, fabric properties at 4.43, fitting at 4.38, and price at 4.26—all interpreted as very important. Attributes such as design, color, fashion, figure, raw material properties, sewing properties, and accessory properties fell into the important category, with means between 3.44 and 3.99. At the bottom of the hierarchy sat brand (3.07), advertisement and promotion (3.27), and peer influence (3.23), all rated only moderately important. In behavioral economics terms, students evaluated sportswear primarily through utilitarian and value-sensitive criteria, with symbolic and socially transmitted cues playing a distinctly secondary role.

But the averages conceal meaningful heterogeneity beneath the surface. When the researchers ran independent samples t-tests and one-way ANOVAs across sexual identity, age, year level, geographic area, and monthly expenditure, significant group differences emerged for several attributes. Heterosexual women rated comfort, quality, fabric properties, price, and sewing properties significantly higher than heterosexual men, with post hoc mean differences ranging from 0.200 to 0.353. LGBTQIAP+ respondents assigned greater importance to fashion and advertisement or promotion, rating fashion 0.592 points higher than heterosexual men and 0.556 points higher than heterosexual women. These respondents also rated comfort, quality, and sewing properties more highly than heterosexual men in selected comparisons. The effect sizes, measured as eta-squared, were small—ranging from 0.011 to 0.042—meaning sexual identity accounted for roughly 1 to 4 percent of the variance in how students rated these factors.

Year level proved more consequential than chronological age. Freshmen rated price significantly higher than sophomores (4.37 versus 3.97, Cohen’s d of 0.415) and also assigned greater importance to sewing properties (4.03 versus 3.75, d of 0.272). No significant differences emerged across age groups for any of the fifteen attributes, suggesting that institutional position and immediate budget vigilance matter more than age itself within a relatively compact student population. The researchers interpret this pattern as evidence that first-year students, who may have less disposable income and less experience navigating campus life, are especially attentive to affordability and durability because these attributes reduce the risk of poor purchases in an environment where repeated classroom use makes mistakes costly.

Geography and expenditure each told their own partial story. Across geographic areas, only fitting, color, and figure differed significantly, with small effect sizes between 0.018 and 0.024, suggesting that location shapes appearance-related judgments modestly while core evaluations of comfort, quality, and affordability remain stable. Monthly expenditure produced the most striking single finding: brand was the only attribute that differed significantly across spending groups, with an F-statistic of 3.869, a p-value of 0.004, and an eta-squared of 0.038—small to approaching moderate. Higher-spending students assigned greater importance to brand, suggesting that branding becomes behaviorally salient only when consumers have sufficient financial room to treat symbolic and relational value as actionable, whereas students under tighter budget constraints continue to privilege functionality and affordability.

The theoretical architecture underlying these findings draws on two complementary frameworks. The Theory of Planned Behavior, developed by Icek Ajzen, holds that behavior is shaped by attitudes, subjective norms, and perceived behavioral control—precisely the forces that operate when desirability, social expectations, and affordability collide in a purchase decision. Identity economics, articulated by George Akerlof and Rachel Kranton, adds that identity enters the utility function itself, explaining why consumers facing similar material conditions may still make different choices because those choices carry social and self-definitional meaning. Together, these perspectives suggest that sportswear purchasing is a hybrid act in which utility, feasibility, and identity are jointly negotiated rather than sequentially considered. The Philippine data support this view: functional priorities dominate, but identity-linked preferences recalibrate the weighting of specific attributes across groups without overturning the broader hierarchy.

The practical implications extend beyond the campus. For higher education institutions, the findings suggest that supporting access to reasonably priced, functionally appropriate sportswear—perhaps through supplier partnerships or student-oriented initiatives—could reduce avoidable barriers to participation in movement-based coursework. For sportswear brands, the message is that university students should be approached primarily as value-sensitive consumers who prioritize comfort, durability, fit, and affordability over branding or promotional appeal alone, though targeted strategies that acknowledge identity expression and fashion consciousness among specific segments may still find traction. The researchers caution that their sample came from a single institution, relied on self-reported responses, and used purposive sampling, all of which limit generalizability. Future work across multiple institutions, longitudinal designs tracking how preferences shift as students progress, and mixed-methods approaches exploring how students interpret comfort, affordability, and identity in their own words could deepen the picture. For now, the study offers a compelling, data-driven portrait of how young consumers in a physically demanding educational setting weigh what a garment does against what it says— and find that what it does matters far more.

Subject of Research: Consumer attribute prioritization and sociodemographic variation in sportswear purchasing among Filipino university students

Article Title: Sportswear preferences and purchase decisions among Filipino university students: a sociodemographic analysis

Article References: Lobo, J., Cortez, W. T., & Rivera, L. M. C. (2026). Sportswear preferences and purchase decisions among Filipino university students: a sociodemographic analysis. Frontiers in Behavioral Economics, 5, Article 1809068. https://doi.org/10.3389/frbhe.2026.1809068

Image Credits: AI Generated

DOI: 10.3389/frbhe.2026.1809068

Keywords: sportswear, consumer behavior, behavioral economics, university students, Philippines, purchase decisions, physical education, brand preference, budget constraints, identity economics, survey research, consumer preferences