Supply Chain Insights: Retail Feels the Fashionista Influence

With retailers competing for every consumer dollar, it is important to understand female consumers, their shopping motivations, and their priorities when it comes to cotton apparel. The Cotton Incorporated Lifestyle Monitor™ survey examined two groups of female shoppers, Fashionistas and Commonistas. Both groups contribute to the retail apparel market but in different ways. Because Fashionistas look for fashion at all price points, all retailers have the opportunity to reach them by providing the trendy, famous, and luxurious apparel fashions they crave. Even in tough economic times, Fashionistas are in the stores buying clothing and influencing their family, friends, and colleagues with the clothing they wear.

SHOPPING PATTERNS

The Lifestyle Monitor� survey reveals that Fashionistas are spreading around their apparel dollars. Most Commonistas (58%) say they prefer to buy an entire outfit at the same store, while most Fashionistas (64%) are likely to piece together outfits from apparel purchased at different times from different stores. The Commonista focuses her shopping on two retail channels (mass and chain stores), but the Fashionista is more diversified in her shopping tactics. Recent economic conditions have prompted consumers to seek fashion at lower prices, but over the past ten years, retailers have also been opening up the fashion environment, making designer brands, premium denim, and trendy styles more available at mass merchants, and Fashionistas have responded. Five years ago, 54% of Fashionistas purchased most of their apparel in traditional channels (department and specialty stores). Today's Fashionista shops department stores, mass merchants, specialty stores, and chain stores in equal measure (on average, 18% in each channel). From 2005 to 2010, the Fashionista group's preference for off-price shopping increased from 5% in 2005 to 13%.

BRANDS AND THE FASHIONISTA

Although most consumers put factors like fit, style, color, and price ahead of brand in the list of factors that influence their clothing purchases, brands are tightly intertwined with those and many other factors that are important to the consumer. Without always realizing it, consumers have already factored brands into their clothing purchase decisions. Tacit knowledge of brands gives Fashionistas a shopping shortcut that leads them to the apparel they want and the stores that carry them.

Respondents to the Lifestyle Monitor™ survey were shown a randomized list of brands representing the spectrum of national brands to designers, and asked to indicate if the clothing brands influence the clothing they wear, and if so, how. Fashionistas are significantly more likely than Commonistas (80% vs 59%) to say their apparel choices are influenced by brands. Both groups are influenced by brands like The Gap and Levi's. Fashionistas are more influenced by specialty store brands such as Forever 21, Abercrombie & Fitch, and H&M, while Commonistas look to established national brands such as Faded Glory, Arizona, and Ralph Lauren.

Respondents were asked why these brands influence them (even if they do not usually wear the brands). The sharpest differences between Fashionistas and Commonistas match their distinct shopper personalities. Fashionistas favor brands that share their fashion-forward and outward-looking perspectives on criteria like trendy, famous, and cutting-edge, factors that were significantly less important to the Commonistas. Both groups, though, indicated that they look for a brand that meets their style and is fashionable, well known, and high quality.

When asked how (or where) they were influenced by their preferred brands, "store or window displays" was the top choice for most respondents. Fashionistas are strongly influenced by their relationships, including families, friends, and aspirational connections with celebrities and fashion models. Fashionistas are significantly more likely to refer to a friend for clothing advice, and they also drive shopping within their peer group. Sixty-four percent of Fashionistas say that they are often asked for advice about clothing styles, compared to just 31% of Commonistas.

COTTON CREATES COMMON GROUND

At the end of the shopping day, one thing that unites Fashionistas and Commonistas is a preference for cotton in their apparel purchases. More than eight out of ten Fashionistas and Commonistas agree that cotton and cotton blends are their fiber of choice for the clothing they wear the most. Their profiles, however, suggest different motivations. Commonistas may look to cotton for the durability and longevity of quality clothing. Fashionistas may find comfort in the fashionable appeal of cotton in their ever changing wardrobe.

ABOUT THE SURVEY
Excerpts from this issue of Cotton Incorporated's Supply Chain Insights were presented at the World Retail Congress in October 2010.