Fast Fashion

Bruce, M. & Daly, L. (2006). Buyer behavior for fast fashion, Journal of Fashion Marketing and Management , Vol. 10 No. 3 , pp. 329-344

II. Over the past few years, fast fashion has been an extremely hot segment and source to help some clothing companies increasing on their economic growth.

Materials such as wool, silk, and cotton had been used to manufacture uniforms for the servicemen and measures were taken to ration clothing for civilians. Women were more creative by showing their sense of style without expense or waste. Contrastingly, the highly competitive fashion industry today constantly drives to encourage and entice consumers to visit stores more frequently by aggressively merchandising fashion, indicating a shorter life cycle and higher profit margins from the sale of fast selling merchandise. Consumers today are more focused and demanding, forcing fashion retailers to instantly deliver the right product at the right time. Money worries, job-related challenges, and pressures about body image are concerns that directly impact fashion choices

Of the hundreds of named brand clothing that form part of the retail and fashion industry I chose to compare, for my analysis, Abercrombie & Fitch, Forever 21, American Eagle, and H&M. These stores are prominent, well-known for selling apparel, shoes, and accessories by the means of offering sales and promotions to their customers. This is a clever strategy for attracting customers, allowing them to believe that they bought goods at affordable, convenient prices – and not to mention the prestigious name prescribed to the clothing brands. Using keyhole.co as my main source, I obtained relevant and valuable information regarding the status of these brands. My intentions were to compare a period of 14 days, however, due to the limited access that I received from my free trial, the program only allowed me to see fewer of the dates than I anticipated. I want to take this opportunity and mention ahead of time that due to the various and distinctive products that are sold from these stores, when looking for the “spending capacity” I decided to focus on shirts/ jeans for men and women and compare the prices among them since each of these retailers carry those items and as a way to make this report easier to contrast and comprehend. Also, when approaching the section of “setting”, I screen-shotted some of the images on Instagram and made them into a collage to separate the type of clothes and trends that each of these brands sell currently. In the following modules

Ann Taylor’s target market primarily comprises of ages between 30 years and 60 years to whom, the company offers a plethora of work related apparel and accessories. LOFT’s target market comprises of 18 to 34 year olds who have a wide variety of casual work related (can be used for other purposes) apparel and accessories. Although the two divisions cater to different target markets, their primary purpose is to provide to the ‘working customer.’ Ann Taylor’s expansion into value based divisions (LOFT and its clearance centers) has captured the value market. The pricing at LOFT is about 30% lower than its sister concept, Ann Taylor. The outlets too, have captured the market that comprises of consumers seeking deeper value over traditional pricing and stores. The corporation added more value to these “clearance centers,” by creating private labels for the outlet centers. All the three divisions have proven to be a success among consumers. A third strength of the company would be its marketing strategies through celebrity associations. Some of the biggest celebrities like Heidi Klum, Milla Jovovich, Rachel Bilson are the faces of the company. The brand equity of the company, i.e. the image of the company in the minds of the consumers is enhanced because of positive perceptions. To further enhance this, the company is specifically targeting different markets by using different celebrities for each type of market. For example: Christina Hendricks, known for her curves is a

The U.S. women’s apparel industry market is mature, given that the average growth rate from 2005 to 2007 was 4.66%. Within the industry, there are 6 categories of clothing in which companies compete: haute couture, designer, bridge, better, moderate, and budget. Each category targets customers with different needs and different price ranges, with haute coutre and designer clothing ranging upwards from $10,000 and moderate

There Is a similar relation among the clothes. Several customers shop there based on the quality and prices as well as the features associated with the products. An advantage of the store is that it has a wide product mix and various offering in different categories and all these can be located at one place. This attracts a wide variety of customers. In line with their positioning of offering quality, trendy products, the brand is consistently updating its product line. The brand does not focus on innovation but rather on always leading trends. In relation to the product life cycle, clothing has a short life span from the first to last stage as tastes change easily. For this reason, it is important to constantly anticipate consumer tastes and preferences prior to launching a product so as to retain and possibly build customers loyalty. It is also necessary to develop a successful marketing strategy to display product offerings.

2. Richard M. Johns (2006). The Apparel Industry. 2nd ed. UK, London: Blackwell Publishing Ltd.. 1-124.

‘Fashion industry is characterised by short product life cycles, volatile and unpredictable demand, tremendous product variety, long and inflexible supply processes and a complex supply chain.’

Social and cultural changes are major determinants of emerging fashions. However, they are themselves affected by the other drivers of change that include globalization of world markets and accessibility of more sophisticated communications technologies. The latter has provided people with faster and wider access to more ideas and influences from other cultures and societies, driving demand for wider choice in fashion products.

(2012) This leads me to question if fashion apparel is competing with industry’s sportswear markets by compromising the performance enhancing qualities for garments that are simply just aesthetically pleasing. (Morganosky, 1984) elaborates on this stating that consumers are willing to pay higher prices for apparel with a high aesthetic value regardless of the low functional value. Ko et al. (2012) agrees consumers’ value fashion and quality however argues they are not willing to pay a high price for something new and innovative. (Dickson & Pollack, 2000) add to this statement in relation to sports garments with female consumers regarding aesthetic aspects such as style and brand characteristics to be more essential than the functional aspects such as comfort and other physical performance-enhancing features. Similarly (Eckma et al., 1990) reports on the evaluation of purchase behaviour in women’s apparel. Style was chosen as more important in determining rejection or adoption of the garments. A visual criterion seems to have the greatest impact on selection of apparel such as fashion-ability or popularity, aesthetic appeal, and self-expression (Eckma et al., 1990). Although it seems there is a divide in opinion when it comes to retail pricing the majority of research studies seems to suggest there is a major emphasis on the aesthetic appearance.

REFERENCESBBC WEB SITEwww.bbc.co.ukCLARKS WEB SITEwww.clarks.co.ukKEY NOTEMARKET REVIEW 2006 CLOTHING AND FOOTWEAR INDUSTRYMINTEL MARKET REPORThttp://academic.mintel.com/sinatra/oxygen_academic/search_results/show&/display/id=220168THE TIMESONLINEhttp://business.timesonline.co.uk/tol/business/economics/article732688.eceVERDICT MARKETING WEB SITEwww.verdict.co.uk/marketing

Hypothesis: In an era of fast fashion, companies that adopt both global sourcing strategy and quick response strategy have better chance to succeed in the fashion clothing market.

and clothes are so general that they can fit more than one costume, which actually

The world has become fascinated towards the fashion. The first thing need to be considered is Fashion; it can be behavior, implementing new ideas on clothing’s, hairstyle, decorations and so on which are automatically linked to our day to day activities. In today’s context, fast fashion has become a trend to a fashion industry patterns yet delivered utilizing less costly materials to guarantee a low cost tag. Many companies have been successful and unsuccessful to earn a trust from their customer. For the matter of success level it depends on how innovativeness they are and also applies the principle of supply chain and logistic management activities for the growth of their