Fast Fashion: How brands are telling you what you want before you know you want it
According to a poll by Barnardos, every year 50.3million outfits are bought only to be thrown away after one use. The market for fast fashion is huge and growing bigger every year, with seasonal looks becoming a thing of the past, replaced by multiple ‘micro seasons’ each having their own 15 minutes of fame before being thrown into landfills. With the sheer speed at which trends come in and out of fashion, brands must utilise marketing techniques and algorithms in order to keep up with the times, and maintain a profit.
With the rise of sites like ASOS and Boohoo, a huge range of clothing options became available all in one place. However, users are less and less willing to scroll through 100 pages of dresses to find that perfect one. This in turn led to the rise of ‘you might like…’ sections on clothing sites, where your previous clicks manifest as a curated selection showing you exactly what you want to see. However, with the speed at which trends go out of fashion, sites must also push the latest styles on you in order to capitalise on the popularity of them before it is too late. Thus, the ‘trending now’ section was born. Here, you can browse the most recent ‘must have’ items before they are replaced in two weeks with another.
So, how are brands keeping consumers up to date with current trends? Retailers are cashing in on targeted advertising, which comes as no surprise when 60% of instagram users discover new products on the platform, and a third of users have bought an item that they found there. Furthermore, according to the Network Advertising Initiative, targeted advertisements are twice as likely to turn a social media user into a buyer. But how are brands keeping these buyers once they acquire them?
Fast fashion relies heavily on the idea of ‘quantity over quality’, and is priced at a much lower cost than the competition. In order to keep customers happy with these low quality garments, retailers must have constant ‘sales’ and ‘discounts’ that make you feel as though you are getting a good deal. In reality, these decreases in price are no more than a marketing ploy designed to produce the illusion of a bargain. The act of splashing ‘SALE’ all over a website incites customers to focus on the money they are ‘saving’ rather than the actual money they are spending, and therefore makes them more likely to splash the cash when these constant micro season sales come around.
So, why are consumers so willing to constantly purchase clothing online? Ultimately, it comes down to convenience — 51% of shoppers prefer shopping online than shopping in-store. With many online stores offering free shipping and a range of options far greater than their physical counterparts, it is no surprise that someone would rather shop from the comfort of their own home than in a crowded high street. The Independent even claims that we are currently witnessing the ‘death of the high street’.
A big contributing factor to the success of online fast fashion is the idea that brands can predict the types of items you will be interested in. You can even hire an online personal shopper for a fraction of the price of a physical one, who will curate a basket of items for you without ever meeting you face-to-face. In this way, some retailers are able to tell their customers exactly what to buy, and these consumers are even willing to pay for the service.
Retailers must also utilise other methods of directly contacting their consumers, in order to ensure they are constantly purchasing items. The majority of brands that have an online website also have a mailing list, and according to the Lenskold and Pedowitz Groups, companies who send automated emails are 133% more likely to send messages to consumers that correspond with their purchase cycle. In this way, brands can reach out to their customers, and provide an almost friend-like atmosphere in comparison to brands that do not contact you, or message you about upcoming deals and collections.
Many online retailers have also began to introduce ‘buy now, pay later’ schemes such as Klarna, in order to maximise their profits from fast fashion items. These schemes ensure that customers are able to purchase trends as soon as they become popular, instead of waiting for their end of the month paycheque. The convenience of services like this also allows customers to purchase items of a much higher value than they would originally, with Clearpay claiming its partners see a 20–30% increase in order value when buying with BNPL (buy now pay later).
Another way that brands utilise technology to convince their customers to purchase items is through sponsored posts. Social media is an effective way to sell pretty much anything, and this is clearly shown by Fashion Nova shelling out $20,000 to Cardi B to wear their clothes for a month, resulting in a huge influx of orders. People also tend to trust the recommendations of celebrities and influencers, with 20.4% of social media users purchasing something purely because a celeb posted about it on their own pages.
Although technology has greatly improved the access we have to different brands and the range of items offered to us by online retailers, there is still the issue of manipulation. If we are constantly told what we should want and what we should buy by targeted ads and constant emails, do we ever truly make an independent decision about our purchases? Is it ethical for brands to use our private data in order to decide on the advert that has the highest possible probability of turning us into a buyer? As these algorithms only get more advanced, maybe soon packages will start turning up on our doorsteps after being ordered all by themselves.
