Visualizing the Customer Principles of Fashion 1301/ADM1301 Wk6... · Givenchy) Brannon Chapter 7 ©2011 Fairchild Books, A Division of Condé Nast 10 Designer Elie Saab’s Couture,

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Chapter 7

Visualizing the Customer

Principles of Fashion *

Learning Objectives

Brannon Chapter 7 ©2011 Fairchild Books, A Division of Condé Nast 2

Consumer segmentation in observation and research

Relationship between fashion and style

Designing for one customer (couture and custom dressmaking) and designing for target markets with shared characteristics

Characteristics in consumer clusters

Creating consume profiles to guide product development

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The Language of Fashion

•“Fashion” means consumer acceptance of the specific style at any given time (Jarnow & Dickerson, 2002).

The Power of “Fashion”

•Fashion does not create consumer purchasing power. But, wherever there is such purchasing power, there is interest in fashion.

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Self-Image People decide which garments match their self-image, their own view of their unique personality and appearance


Fashion versus Style

Fashion is a group activity; personal style reflects individuality

Fashion is the prevailing look of the times = trumpeted by magazines, Internet sites, and celebrities

Style is a personal construction of visual identity = involves originality, insight, and, for some, theatricality


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Style versus Design Style•Distinctive !

•A style is a type of product that has one or more specific features or characteristics that distinguish it and make it different from other products of the same type.

•Style number to each design in the company’s line.

Design•Variations of a style

• Within a specific style, individual variations (different versions) of the same style are called designs.

•All details (e.g. trimmings, texture, decoration, embroideries, necklines, etc.)

Classics vs. Fads Classics:•Styles that continue to be accepted, to a greater or lesser degree, over an extended period of time.•Examples: Blazer jackets, crewneck Shetland sweaters, men’s oxford cloth button-down collared shirts.

Fads:•Styles that sweep suddenly into popularity, are adopted, and then just as quickly disappear (short-lived fashions).

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High Fashion vs. Mass Fashions:

High fashion

•Limited.•High fashion is a very new style, whose acceptance is limited to hose who want to be first to adopt the very newest fashions and can afford their often high prices.•Very small quantities at high prices. It’s generally introduced (proposed).

Mass fashions

•Volume fashions.•Mass Fashions are styles that are accepted by a large number of people. •Large quantities at moderate prices.

Designing for One

The couture designer caters to a small, wealthy clientele for whom clothes are made to order.

Runway shows introduce new looks, changing silhouettes, and identify shifting cultural moods.

Highest level of custom design (e.g. Audrey Hepburn- Couturier Hubert Givenchy)Brannon Chapter 7 ©2011 Fairchild Books, A Division of Condé Nast 10

Designer Elie Saab’s Couture, Geometric cut

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Individual Characteristics and Consumer Clusters

A first impression gets enhanced by considering the person’s clothing

•What items make the look?

•What is the condition of the garments?

•How are the items put together?

•Are the garments flattering to the body?

Goal is to identify a target market —consumers who share some key characteristics and preferences that make them likely purchasers (e.g. Niche market- a more narrowly defined consumer group)


Identifying Characteristics

Demographics are basic statistics that describe a population, include age, gender, marital status, family size, income, occupation, education, religion, and ethnicity

When sorted by zip code or other such locator, the result is Geodemographics

Psychographics looks at lifestyles (life style cluster) — attitudes and opinions, interests and preferences, activities and possessions


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Expanding the Concept of Age

When age is placed against a cultural background, its meaning becomes magnified.

Generational cohorts are peers experiencing the same life stages.

As consumers age, shifting priorities, attitudes, behavior, and purchasing .


Defining Consumers with Fashion Variables

Today’s consumer is concerned with getting value for the price, whether shopping at a big-box store or a boutique

The emerging consumer is more discriminating and contradictory

Consider using fashion-anchored variables to visualize consumers


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Fashion Trends (Directions)

Fashion Trends

•Fashion Trends are the directions in which fashions are moving.

•Fashions are not static. There is Always Movement that has a direction (e.g. Skirt lengths, Jacket length, men’s lapels or ties)

•The ability to recognize that direction (trend) is vital to fashion practitioners.

Fashion-forward is used to describe styles that are gaining in acceptance.

Avant-garde fashions are those that are unorthodox, experimental, unusual, or shocking.

Changes in Fashion “Fashion is a social phenomenon which reflects that same continuing change that rides through any given age” (Jarnow & Dickerson, 2002).

The industry as initiators of change:•Force change on the consumer by dictating new trends.

Consumers as the initiators of change (4 theories):

•Some trends may begin with the upper socioeconomic consumers•Others may occur simultaneously within all socioeconomic groups•Sometimes fashions rise from subculture groups such as youth, blue collar workers, and ethnic minorities. •Nearly any create individual can launch fashion trends.

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Changes in Fashion Psychological reasons•Boredom•Human curiosity•Innate desire for new sensations

Rational reasons•Environmental factors that create new needs.•Example: In the early decades of the 20th Century, women’s new political and economic freedom: shorter skirts, relaxed waistlines, and bobbed hair.•Example: The decade following World War II: Casual clothes for backyard barbecues. Longer skirts. •Example: In the 1970s and 1980s needs of exercise clothing. Jogging, aerobic dancing.•Example: In the 1990s and 2000s “Casual Fridays”.

Changes in Fashion Changes in Fashions are Gradual “Evolutionary” (NOT Revolutionary) in Nature !!!

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The Fashion Cycle (Life span)

The fashion cycle has 3 stages:

•Beginning (rise): • Start of a fashion

•Peak (very popular stage): • Evolution into a staple, Knock-off

•Declining stage: • Adoptions by chain stores

• Closeout and demise

The Fashion Cycle (Life span)

Roger’s bell shaped curve (Rogers, 1962) with 5 categories:

• The innovators

• The early adopters

• The early majority

• The late majority

• The laggards

Understanding of the fashion cycle is basic to successful merchandising of fashion products!

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Stages of the fashion cycle and how merchandising may vary for each stage. (Figure 2-2 in Jarnow & Dickerson, Ch.2)

Fashion Variables: Women

Fashion Risk.

1) Innovators embrace change, quickly bore with what’s “in,” actively seek the newest looks.

2)The fashion leadershows the same interest in fashion but within the confines of being stylish rather than original.


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Fashion Variables: Women

Consumer Types:

Innovator or Traditionalist

• The individualist

• The mimic

• The pacesetter

• The classic


Fashion Variables: Men

• The trendsetter

• The seeker

• The conservative

• The conformist


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The Consumer Profile

Creating a consumer profile helps a designer visualize the target market.

When the target consumer shares some of the designer’s own characteristics, it is a simpler matter.

Identifying with the customer becomes difficult when the customer’s tastes are very different from the designer’s.


Theories of Fashion Leaders

Related to socio-psychology:

•Social scientists explain the follow the leader element in fashion cycles in terms of an individual’s desire to achieve status by choosing apparel similar to that chosen by an admired individual or group.

The fashion leadership flows (3 Theories):

•Trickle down theory

•Trickle-across theory (Charles King, 1963)

•Bottom-up theory (Greenberg & Glynn, 1966)

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Trickle down theory •New styles make their first appearance among people at the top of a social pyramid and then gradually move down to progressively lower social levels. (Vertically, top to bottom)

Trickle-Across Theory

•Fashions spread horizontally within and across homogeneous groups (that have own leaders whom it emulates) (Charles King, 1963).

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Bottom-up theory •Young people are quicker than any other social group to initiate new and different fashions and that fashions filter up, not from youth to older age groups, but also from lower to upper economic classes. (Greenberg & Glynn, 1966)

How fashions develop

Fashion reflects their times. (It’s History)

Events an Personalities make fashions•Example: 1970s and 1980s: the Indian inspired fashions influenced by the TV production of Jewel. •Example: First lady look-Jackie Kennedy(1960s), Nancy Reagan (1980s), the faux pearls of Barbara Bush.

Social movements create fashions•Example: Hippie look

Social values and attitudes create fashion•Example: The success of Victoria’s Secret specializing in sensual attire reflects society’s increasingly open attitude toward sexuality.

Technological developments create fashion (New tech New design).

•Example: wash & were, wrinkle free, light weight polar-Tec.

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The Prediction of Fashion

It means “Fashion Forecasting”.

•Fashion business is to develop almost a sixth sense.

•Observation, senses, sources of information, aware of various factors, and more.

Classic Fashion Images

Some looks become classics that reappear in fashion again and again


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The Research Angle

Collecting available statistical and research data on the target market

Researchers conduct surveys, focus groups, observational studies, and other kinds of research to deliver the needed information


Let One Stand for Many

Translate research findings into one emblematic customer who represents the target market

• Demographics and lifestyle

• Fashion variables such as fashion risk, leadership, and involvement

• Shopping favorites — favorite brands, stores, times to shop, shopping companions

• Aspirations personally and professionally

• Special possessions — watch, cell phone, pet, car

• Activities and avocations


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Chapter Summary Shared fashion preferences allow designers and marketers to think of groups with similar tastes as a target market

Consumer segmentation uses these shared characteristics of taste, lifestyle, and preferences to group consumers


Chapter Summary Create a detailed profile of a single consumer that reflects the important characteristics of the whole group, considering

•Demographics

•Geodemographics

•Psychographics

•Generational cohort

•Fashion variables


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Exam • Exam Date: October 16, 2013

• Text book (Ch1~Ch8) AND Lecture

• 25 questions, Multiple choice

• Exam 30 % of the final grade


Documents

Visualizing the Customer Principles of Fashion 1301/ADM1301 Wk6... · Givenchy) Brannon Chapter 7 ©2011 Fairchild Books, A Division of Condé Nast 10 Designer Elie Saab’s Couture,