Variation inside a single brand points to process rather than persuasion

The argument

A second argument for the inconsistency explanation looks at where the variation shows up. If erratic sizing were principally a marketing decision, it would be a decision taken at the level of a brand, and shoppers could learn each brand's offset and then shop around it. What shoppers actually report is variation that defeats that strategy: two garments bought in the same shop, in the same labelled size, in the same season, that do not fit alike, and ranges within one retailer that run differently from each other. Proponents of this explanation argue that the pattern points at process rather than persuasion. A retailer's ranges are developed by different teams and cut by different suppliers; patterns are digitised, scaled and sometimes re-cut locally; cloth is ordered by batch and behaves differently from batch to batch; and the garment that reaches the shop has passed through several hands, each of which worked to a tolerance. None of those steps is designed to mislead anyone, and all of them move the finished measurement. The diagnostic value of this is practical. If the cause is deliberate flattery, the remedy is honesty about numbers. If the cause is uncontrolled process, honesty changes nothing, and the remedy is measurement: fixed and published body dimensions for each size, specifications that suppliers are audited against, and dimensions printed on the garment so that a mismatch is visible and returnable. Proponents conclude that the complaint shoppers make about sizing is the ordinary consequence of a product specified loosely and made in many places, and that it will persist until the specification is tightened, whatever the labels say.

Premises

Counter-arguments

Critics of this explanation reply that the two accounts are not rivals in the way it assumes, and that choosing process over persuasion ignores what the process is for. Where a retailer aims a range at a market, the fit model and the grading increments are chosen with the customer's self-image in view, so what looks like an engineering decision carries a commercial intention. They add that variation within a brand is perfectly compatible with deliberate drift, since a company can both flatter its labels and control its suppliers badly. On that view the inconsistency account describes the machinery accurately and then draws the wrong conclusion: tightening tolerances would make sizes consistent with each brand's chosen offset, not consistent with one another.

Rejecting the premises

[Rejecting P1] Shoppers do learn brand offsets and shop around them, so the premise describes a strategy that works rather than one the experience of shopping defeats. [Rejecting P2] Variation within one shop can come from different ranges aimed at different customers, which is a deliberate positioning decision rather than a failure of process. [Rejecting P3] Production tolerances are bounded and audited, and the discrepancies shoppers describe are larger than a tolerance would explain, which points back at the specification itself. [Rejecting C] At most it follows that process variation is one source of erratic sizing, not that the flattering of labels can be set aside.