Reinventing Fashion Retailing

Fashion is one of retailing’s most actively reshaping, transforming and reinventing itself sectors. This introductory chapter offers a theoretical foundation towards online retail trends, challenges and innovations in the fashion industry in a post-pandemic world. It also provides contextual background towards the ‘reinvention’ of fashion retailing, by illustrating how customers and brand relationships and strategies have changed. Considering this, the chapter has analyzed relevant literature, provides recent market examples from the pandemic and post-pandemic era. Main themes that emerged from the literature review include (1) digitalization of fashion retailing; (2) gamification and playfulness; (3) entrepreneurship and blogging; (4) customer-driven and tech-savvy business models.

The massive size of fashion items catalogues, jointly with the explosive number of product combinations and specific customer preferences and traits—in what is known as the information overload problem—tend to degrade customers’ online experience. To mitigate the effects of this problem and to improve customers’ online experience, Recommender Systems (RSs) have been proposed. This chapter provides an overview of Artificial Intelligence techniques for personalised RSs in online fashion retail stores. An introductory description of RSs is provided, including their components, potential applications, current commercial availability and limitations, and possible evolutionary avenues. Customer Models (CMs) are described and highlighted as a key component that allows RSs to provide personalised recommendations. The chapter also briefly explores how CM/RS combinations may assist stakeholders in fashion industry domains other than sales. Contents are intended as a primer for the seasoned or apprentice fashion professional in academia or industry to realise Fashion CM/RSs’ potential to facilitate fashion online sales or to transition the fashion industry from product-centric to customer-centric operations. Real-world examples illustrate the main concepts; complementary reading sources are provided.

Since Facebook’s rebrand to “Meta” in 2021, and the rise on collaborations between brands and consumers via User-Generated Content (UGC) platforms, brands are willing to win their own space in the “metaverse”. This brings new challenges for fashion brands as social media marketers need to up their game and learn new skills such as world-building, collaboration and how to design playful experiences. This chapter provides an overview of the current debates about challenges in social media marketing in different UGC and social media platforms, through the lens of brand storytelling and media convergence. We start this chapter by reviewing the literature about brand storytelling and online communities, in order to identify storytelling elements that can be used by fashion brands across different types of social media. As a result, we have developed a conceptual framework to understand how fashion brands can sustain a coherent story across different channels (including the metaverse). We have utilised this framework to undertake an analysis of The Ralph Lauren Winter Escape, which was hosted in the UGC platform Roblox, from 8th December 2021 to 3rd January 2022. Our findings show that the overarching story is sustained by the festive thematic and it is brand-centred; however, there was little connection with other social media platforms. Other insights show that rewarding mechanisms (e.g., gamification) and avatar customisation were used frequently to keep consumers engaged in the experience. Implications for both practice and theory are discussed, including the need for a more effective alignment of gamification strategies with emergent consumer narratives and the rules of the online community.

The pandemic has forced fashion brands to find alternatives to provide more engaging online consumer experiences, particularly through emerging technologies such as Augmented Reality (AR). The Virtual Fitting Room (VFR) is an example of that. Consumers can try fashion products and interact with them without having to visit a store. This chapter addresses the use of AR try-on services by fashion brands with the aim to enhance the consumer experience. This chapter aims at providing a set of recommendations for fashion brands to employ AR within their brand strategy through a multi-case study approach. Two cases were analysed: Kohl’s Snapchat Virtual Closet (KSVC), released in 2020, and Sephora Virtual Artist (SVA), released in 2017. First, we start by analysing the consumer journey in each of the cases, including the characteristics of the brand and the technological features; this is followed by a comparison between the cases. Five themes emerged from our analysis: social media integration and brand congruency, consumer agency and flow experience, narrative experiences and omnichannel orchestration and inclusive design and sustainable fashion. Implications for both practice and theory are discussed. We finish the chapter with recommendations and insights about the use of AR for fashion brands, including emergent themes such as adaptive fashion.

The intersection between fashion branding and contemporary video games is a dynamic, rapidly evolving space. From luxury brands hosting runway shows in virtual environments to digital fashion collections designed exclusively for popular video game characters, these experimental crossovers are establishing new practices and setting new industry standards. In this chapter, we summarise some of the recent developments at this juncture and discuss the future implications both for the fashion industry and for the games industry. Using Animal Crossing: New Horizons (Nintendo, 2020) as case study, we explain how to use a commercial-off-the-shelf (COTS) video game to explore the nexus of gaming and fashion branding. We argue that in-game photography, customisable environments, simulated economies, interactive events, and virtual design studios provide emerging creators with an entry point into design industries, as well as giving established brands a means to connect to new audiences. We suggest ways in which video games can be used in conjunction with social media platforms to foster creative self-expression and build networks. Specifically, we cover: (1) creating a cohesive aesthetic across a game’s semiotic planes, (2) curating player experiences and ensuring access, (3) managing cross-channel promotion, and (4) encouraging playful engagement and the creation of user-generated content. We conclude by considering some of the ethical issues that arise from the commodification of play and the production of digital garments, including the markets that scaffold Non-Fungible Tokens (NFTs), the exploitation of fan labour, and legal questions of copyright.

The increasing presence of social media and digital technology in consumers’ lives has changed the way fashion brands work and communicate with their customers. In a consumer-driven market, a new genre of marketing has been created, where influencers and fashion bloggers act as mediators in the relationship between the customer and the brand. Bloggers gain more power as intermediaries than fashion brands have directly to influence consumers. Therefore, fashion companies seek to collaborate with bloggers to co-create and promote their products and set trends for the future. From a fashion consumer’s perspective, blogging is increasingly seen as an opportunity to join the fashion industry and build a personal brand. This chapter focuses on Chiara Ferragni, a successful fashion blogger and entrepreneur who started her career as a fashion amateur and is now a fashion empress. Indeed, 13 years since it was launched, Ferragni’s blog has more than 27,2 million followers today through Instagram and has evolved into a successful lifestyle magazine. The brand Chiara Ferragni, which launched in 2013 as a fashion shoe brand, has now successfully extended to several other product categories including clothes, accessories and jewellery, leading a new fast-growing sector of fashion blogger entrepreneur brands. This chapter explores how Ferragni was able to disrupt the traditional model of the fashion industry and become an integral part of it. The chapter examines the essential skills, strategies and capital that enabled Ferragni to transform from a fashion amateur to a fashion icon and a successful fashion entrepreneur.

With increasingly fierce competition and the sheer volume of competing calls on the viewers’ attention in crowdfunding, there is an inherent need for fashion brands that wish to remain significant in their market to be heard through an array of media and social channels simultaneously. This problem is not new. Fashion brands have been at the forefront of the fight to be relevant and add value to their customer segments for some time, implementing various degrees of co-creation has been one way to do this.

Building trust and remaining relevant under these market conditions is a form of competitive capital that must be both earned and considered when strategic choices over positioning and perceptions are being taken in the planning process. Co-creation and customer participation can manifest in many forms that can enhance the relationship of a fashion brand with their target audience. These various forms are the focus of this chapter where best practice and empirical observations of a particularly unique segment of fashion are used to demonstrate how brand interaction in a crowdfunding campaign can add value. Including the shift from co-creation of authentic experiences with the weaponised consumer as participant and co-creator in the authentication of the brand, to one where the entire supply chain is involved in the authentication process and used to position a brand as one that resonates with their consumers by focusing on human well-being, environmental and/or economic sustainability.