Change fashion
Recently, the Association of Suppliers to the British Clothing Industry (ASBCI) brought together apparel companies from around the world at the “Digital Revolution” conference in which experts and executives shared their perspectives on how brands and retailers can successfully navigate digital tides and arrive to good port.
The WGSN trends portal has selected, within the various interventions of “Digital Revolution”, the three avenues of change for the fashion industry – opened by the disruptive force of digital.
Instant gratification
Considering the boom in social networks and their influencers, the impact of online parade broadcasts online and the strength of the business model see now / buy now, consumers are eager for new products and instant gratification. This immediacy is transforming the retail horizon and has already led Instagram to offer the “buy button” to users. There are also websites where you can consult and know where to buy the looks of the favorite television series. On the side of brands and retailers has emerged a new strategy of stock management.
More than anything else, connected consumers demand convenience, so frequent innovation must be coupled with quick response from retailers and brands. In this context, purchases via smartphones tend to grow 91.3% by 2023, as WGSN anticipated in the Future Consumer 2020 report.
Customer’s Will
Delivery in 24 hours, buy online and collect in store, order online and collect at a collection point, shop in store and receive at home, see in store and buy online and see online and buy in store – these are just some of the possibilities ominicanal that many retailers offer their customers.
Drone deliveries are also being studied by actors such as Amazon (see The Amazon Seal). Zara (see Inditex accelerates towards the future), to solve the lost time in the payment queues of stores, has been betting on a fleet of robots. The robots are already assisting the Spanish retailer to collect items in the warehouse to speed up the in-store collection process. Customers who place orders online can thus pass or enter a code in a reader available at Zara store pick-up points. Then the robots look for the corresponding order and take it to a warehouse where the customer can pick it up.
A new psychology
Instead of a monologue, thanks to social networks, brand communication today unfolds in real time through a network of technology platforms where consumers are willing and active participants, which means that brands can no longer monopolize and should establish symbiotic relationships with customers.
The rise of digital has also contributed to an increase in the number of contact points between consumers and brands, which now come into contact through a much wider range of platforms, from Instagram to e-commerce websites, resulting in more complex purchase paths and nonlinear.
Andrew Nicholson, founder and president of GukU, emphasized the importance of Customer Perceived Value and how it affects the longevity of the relationship between brands and customers. Nicholson suggested that one way of working this is to leverage the power of sharing – for example, the increasingly popular recommendations.
A report conducted by GukU showed that asking customers to write a recommendation on their social networks led to a 37% increase in the Customer Perceived Value Index.
source: Portugal Têxtil ( https://www.portugaltextil.com/moda-em-mudancas/ )