It is about inclusion! Mining online reviews to understand the needs of adaptive clothing customers

The adaptive clothing market, which focuses on the inclusive design of clothing and footwear for people with varying degrees of disability, has grown substantially in recent years. However, few scholars have sought to understand the perspectives of online adaptive clothing consumers. This study employed topic modelling, sentiment analysis and collocation analysis to discover common themes and insights emerging from online customer reviews, scraped from a third-party review platform and three retailing web sites. We utilized customer value and functional, expressive and aesthetic theories to group the results from topic modelling into key themes. Clothing function is the most frequently discussed theme in online customer reviews, followed by customer service and clothing aesthetics. Collocation analysis revealed the cause underlying each theme vis-à-vis customer satisfaction (e.g., fit and material quality) and dissatisfaction (e.g., sewing defects and lost shipment). The findings contribute to understanding the clothing needs and wants of people living with disabilities. It also provides practical guidelines on product offerings and online service optimization for adaptive clothing retailers.