Impulse Buying Within The Fashion Industry

Impulse Buying within the Fashion Industry

For clothing, fashion orientated impulse buying refers to a person’s awareness of perception of fashion ability attributed to an innovative design or style.

Fashion orientated impulse buying occurs when consumers see a new fashion product and buy it because they are motivated by the suggestion to buy new products (Han et al., 1991)

It has been suggested that the most common individual circumstances marketers must focus on when trying to identify their target audience when formulating impulse buying techniques are: -

1. Social Circumstances: Cultural, Sub cultural

2. Social Class: Groups, Family

3. Personal Factors: Age & Life Cycle, Occupation, Economic Circumstances, Lifestyle, Personality & Self Concept. Park E. (2006) p 443

Amongst these personality and self concept has been identified as the most important and relevant.

Academics believe  fashion is an industry, which primarily exists to feed ones self identity. A really simple example of this is a woman would not buy men’s jeans, as she does not want to be seen as a man. This can be supported by different fashion groups, which can be identified in labels such as Goth, Trendy, Sporty, Indie, Urban, etc. Research also shows the need for marketing material to be localised into the language of the shopper which is a branch of Translation Services.

“Many marketers use concept related to personality a persona self concept (Also called self-image). The basic self-concept premise is that people’s possessions contribute to and reflect their identities: that is, ‘We are what we have’. This, in order to understand consumer behaviour, the marketer must understand the relationship between consumer self-concept and possessions” Park E. (2006) p 446

Since fashion can be grouped it has been noted that identifying the shopping groups that purchase particular fashion types is vital to trigger impulse buying. Within that focusing on entertainment, excitement, interest, aesthetic store design and music may be just as important for marketers in triggering buys as well as getting the price exactly right. Weekes T. (2004) p 121

Merchandising within the fashion arena is seen as more important when reflecting sales as any other buying arena there is. First the selection of in season goods is vital but equally as vital is the way in which current merchandise is displayed. Most shoppers go out with a particular style in mind as appose to a particular item. Displaying the items grouped according to style with posters of people who have a particular relevant style to your shoppers with your merchandise on is seen as very successful in improving sales.

“For clothing, fashion-oriented impulse buying refers to a person’s awareness or perception of fissionability attributed to an innovative design or style. That is, fashion-oriented impulse buying occurs when consumers see a new fashion product and buy it because they are motivated by the suggestion to buy new products”, (Han et al., 1991).