Contemporary Fashion Marketing Trends Influential in the Five Years Global Fashion

Introduction

Globally, as Pani and Sharma (2012) explain, fashion is touching every sphere of the modern consumers. Due to this, marketers have appreciated the enormous potential of yielding their businesses in this booming segment. Two of the main contemporary fashion marketing trends that will be influential in the next five years are Luxury Fashion and Omni-channel trends. These recent trends are being used by fashion in analyzing, developing and implementing sales strategies. For successful implementation of these and other trends, fashion marketers should understand the essential elements of building a meaningful and effective marketing campaign by identifying the needs of consumers, product image and studying branding.

 Luxury Fashion to Embrace the Digital Age

For a number of years, luxury clothing branding has failed to enter in to the ecommerce branding due to the belief that online sales would disintegrate their sense of exclusivity (Kahn, 2015). However, majority of the brands are now parting ways with this strategy. The global sales for luxury fashion of women in 2015 stood slowly lowly at 3% of the entire online clothing market (Rogerson, 2016). Nevertheless, this growth is far from relenting, as according to Rogerson (2016), the sales will reach 17% by 2018 which is equal to a global increase of more than £8bn. China will be leading the way with 70% increase between 2015 and 2018 while UK will be in thick with change with 18% increase between the same timeframe.

Luxury designers are shaking off the traditional shows of choreographed walks and rethinking on the ways of reaching out to their customers by adapting to the age of ecommerce and social media. For a long time, fashion shows have been dictating on taste, giving designers a chance of courting powerful designers like Vogue’s Anna Wintour in attempt to win favorable reviews and glossy photo spreads which fashonistas searches for before they shop (Retail Weeks Reports, 2017). Therefore, this fashion trend is important due to the fact that the digital world is ripping instantly through social media where celebrities and bloggers are progressively deciding on what’s hot to wear. This is what customers continue to look for.

In Luxury Fashion marketing, many changes are still coming up. For example, there is a possibility of virtual fashion shows which will assist consumers in five years to digitally try on clothes before buying. They are also slashing the time the customers take in order to obtain clothes they see on the runway. This is in contrary to the traditional fashion shows where clothes are showcased six months before their season of sale (Rogerson, 2016). According to Kirka (2016), luxury fashion marketing is continuing to trend where designers like Diane von Furstenberg have skipped the runway format by giving an immersive experience offering a visual of the shape of shows to come. In her marketing, she showed her latest collection featuring vignettes in a party in her New York office, with models wearing clothes while getting ready for a party, working or travelling.

Importance of Omni-channel will continue

The Omni-channel retailing is being available everywhere at any time, to make it convenient for customers. Customers are gradually using their smartphones to shop for the latest fashion. Nevertheless, this is not a conclusion that these consumers are failing to spend large of their browsing time on their tablets, laptops and desktops. In contrary, according to Rogerson (2016) the consumers are averagely using five devices in the process of purchasing paralleled to 2.8 devices in 2014. This trend is therefore challenging the clothing retailers to provide seamless touch points to their customers so that they will effortlessly sell their devices.

According to GWL (2015), majority of people will shop online which in the USA approximately 96% have made online purchases one time in their life, and around 80% have done so in the previous month. This makes this trend an important trick for retailers where they can make sure their ecommerce is optimized in every device to turn shoppers in to buyers. For example, clothing shops will use PayPal to give the shoppers an easy way to pay as it improves the conversion by 44% (Bain, 2017). Therefore, the marriage of the physical world and the digital one creates wholly new sources of value known as Digical and FashionCo.

This trend is important because if the retailers fail, they will quickly fall behind as a single channel is not enough. According to Wallace (2017) this trend is all about delivering more interactive and personalized brand experience that is beyond siloed performance and by reaching the consumer through all possible channels or touch points. The trend of customers spending more time on social media is increasing, making the traditional marketing like TV commercials and prints to decrease in favor of online marketing. According to Delloite (2015), Search Engine Marketing (SEM) is using the majority of marketing spend today, where in the Western Europe, the SEM expectation in 2018 is 22 billion euro which is an increase of 99.6% from 2011.

Challenges for Fashion Marketing In The Future

Some of the challenges in the fashion industries are upcoming while others are starting to show their teeth. The first challenge according to Clausette (2015) is social- where the way fashion is produced and consumed today will not go on for ages. This means that, whatever is being produced today will in months or years be old fashioned, making more innovation and competition in the industry. Another challenge is the organization of the fashion industry is its organization. This industry is organized in a way of allowing new entrants in at any given time, which makes it to be competitive and maintaining the industry and brands is thus expensive.

Clausette (2015) explains that many designers are renewing fashion without innovations. For example, luxury brands are cultivating their crafting savoir-faire by setting their places in the Couture tradition of purchasing workshops to get specific craftsmanship skills. Technology is essential in manufacturing but it is somehow considered inadequate or as a threat while allotting luxury and fashion goods in the internet. This is leading to risks of counterfeits, the internet media powerty of showing and pin falling fabrics properly. The clothe designers are facing a challenge of coming up with a design only for counterfeits to copy. This affects both consumers and the designers due to inadequate legal regulatory systems in the globe.

References

Bain, (2017). Omnichannel strategy boosts fashion company. Bain and Company. [online] Available at: http://www.bain.com/about/client-results/omnichannel-strategy-boosts-fashion-company.aspx#4 [Accessed 21 Feb. 2017].

Clausette, (2015). Fashion & Technology | The challenges of future Fashion. Clausette. [online] Available at: http://www.clausette.cc/future-of-fashion/# [Accessed 21 Feb. 2017].

Delloite, (2015). Omni-channel retail A Deloitte Point of View. Delloitte. [online] Available at: https://www2.deloitte.com/content/dam/Deloitte/se/Documents/technology/Omni-channel-2015.pdf [Accessed 21 Feb. 2017].

GWL, (2015). OMNI-CHANNEL RETAILING AND THE RISE OF THE DIGITAL CONSUMER: EVALUATING THE OPPORTUNITIES AND TRENDS FOR CANADIAN RETAIL PROPERT. GWL- Reality Advisors. [online] Available at: https://www.gwlrealtyadvisors.com/Portals/0/Research%20Reports/GWLRA-Omni-Channel%20Report%202015_ENG_web.pdf [Accessed 21 Feb. 2017].

Kahn, B. (2015). EXECUTIVE SUMMARY Online Luxury Retailing: Leveraging Digital Opportunities Research, Industry Practice, and Open Questions. Wharton UNiversity of Pennslyvannia. [online] Available at: http://bakerretail.wharton.upenn.edu/wp-content/uploads/2016/06/Online_Luxury_Retail.pdf [Accessed 21 Feb. 2017].

Kirka, D. (2016). Luxury fashion world upending tradition to join digital age. Salon. [online] Available at: http://www.salon.com/2016/02/22/luxury_fashion_world_upending_tradition_to_join_digital_age/ [Accessed 21 Feb. 2017].

Pani, A. and Sharma, M. (2012). Emerging Trends in Fashion Marketing: A Case Study of Apparel Retailing in India. International Journal of Business and Management Tomorrow, [online] 2(10), pp.1-2. Available at: http://rasci.in/downloads/2012/Emerging_Trends_Fashion_Marketing_2012.pdf [Accessed 20 Feb. 2017].

Retail Weeks Reports, (2017). Fashion retail 2014: The future of fashion retailing in a digital age. Land Securities. [online] Available at: http://www.landsecuritiesretail.com/media/18900/fashion-insight-report-final.pdf [Accessed 21 Feb. 2017].

Rogerson, K. (2016). 5 Upcoming Trends for the Digital Fashion Industry. Ve Interactive. [online] Available at: https://www.veinteractive.com/blog/5-upcoming-trends-for-the-digital-fashion-industry/ [Accessed 21 Feb. 2017].

Wallace, T. (2017). Omni-Channel Retail in 2017: What Brands Need to Know and Modern Consumer Shopping Habits. Big Commerce. [online] Available at: https://www.bigcommerce.com/blog/omni-channel-retail/ [Accessed 21 Feb. 2017].