The opportunities and challenges that digital technologies bring fashion retailers with.
As according to Statista, highly up to 43.3 million of UK consumers use apparel e-commerce, digital technologies boost sales in fashion industry by providing people with more convenient shopping experience. At the same time, they pose environmental challenges and gradually change consumers’ mode of purchase.
Efficiency
Availability of looking for products by entering the key words or using search engines, being able to shop from home or work place and no need for spending time traveling stimulate consumers shop more. Multi-brand online websites like NET-A-PORTER and Farfetch connect customers to a variety of different brands, allowing fashion brands to attract customers much more efficiently.
Personalized shopping experiences
Ariana has mentioned in her post that, through digital technologies, “fashion brands can predict the types of items consumers might be interested in and send automated emails”, so as to keep close contact with their customers. This is also referred to by Chris as “people’s viewing habits are being ‘tracked’ by companies”. Personalization, recommendations, targeted promotions are made to enhance consumers’ shopping experience so as to boost sales in fashion industry.
Generate job opportunities
With the rise of online fashion retailers, employment opportunities are created. Fast fashion retailer Boohoo is said to create up to 180 jobs while investing millions of pounds in the new site, which is really scarce when almost all industries were adversely impacted by covid-19. This was also brought up by Lauren that “online retail requires a wide range of expertise”. So job opportunities are then created.
Proposals for fashion retailers
Under this new digital era, fashion retailers can combine currently popular online shopping(apps and websites) with offline(traditional high street). For instance, frequent online customer(two billion digital buyers worldwide) can enjoy some discount when they shop in physical stores.This may wake up the economy in high street fashion and differentiate brands from its competitors.
Sustainability issues caused by digital fast fashion
According to United Nations,“Some 93 billion cubic metres of water, enough to meet the needs of five million people, is used by the industry annually, and the amount of microfibre equivalent of 3 million barrels of oil is being dumped into the ocean every year.” It was also indicated in an article from The New York Times that, “Normally I just wear a dress once.Because I’ll normally be in photos when I’m wearing it that are then posted on social media. I wouldn’t really want someone seeing me in a dress more than once.” claimed by 16-year-old British high school student Mia Grantha. This is a reflection of how current digital fast fashion and social media have misguided young people’s consuming perspectives.
This was also covered in Ariana’s blog that how prevalent the throwaway culture is nowadays because of the ‘micro seasons’ that fast fashion retailers create out of profit purposes.
How digital technologies help address sustainability problems?
Depop is a social e-commerce platform where users can buy and resell their items. Over 30 million people have signed-up to Depop and four million buyers and two million sellers are active on this platform. Numbers of emerging second-hand fashion digital platforms are continue to grow because of the increasing awareness of sustainability among consumers.
As Sashi mentioned in her blog, advanced intelligence can analyze consumers’ preferences and right sizes, allowing them to make the right decisions before purchase so as to avoid unnecessary returns which leads to substantial waste and also huge stress on fashion firms. This is also covered in Digital Society admin’s publication, chatbots contribute to consumers’ relatively more careful purchase decisions.
Proposals for fashion retailers in terms of solving sustainability issues
Firstly, Fashion retailers(especially fast fashion retailers) can open links of second-hand transaction platforms in their own website, allowing consumers to make appropriate disposal of their spare apparel from the brand. Showing a brand’s concern about environmental problems to their customers is also a potential way to increase sales. Secondly, they can reward customers who are active in second-hand trades, which is an approach to improve customer loyalty as well.
From consumers’s vision:
Is everything too digital?
Too convenient, too fast and too impulsive
As Sophie has mentioned, we are impulsive online buyers. Digital online shoppings are so convenient(only a click from browsing to purchase) that we barely spend any time considering whether we actually want or need this product. I personally suffer from this a lot and from a consumer’s perspective, it is really a waste of money because I only wear the clothing that are bought impulsively online a handful times.
We are ‘tracked’ too much
Chris has mentioned in ‘Digital Engagement’ that how we are ‘tracked’ by firms. Algorithms are too good at uncovering our habits that they may understand us better than ourselves. It seems that the purchases we are doing are under the lead by the advertisements which are deliberately and exquisitely designed instead of determined by ourselves. It is hard to say whether some day in the future we would be overpowered by the digital algorithms. This is similar to what Digital Society admin has brought up as how AI chatbots sometimes deviate away from our original intentions.
Proposals for digital consumers
It feels blessed to live in such a convenient and highly advanced world, but as consumers we should insist on thinking independently. Sometimes the fussy advertisements don't create better shopping experience to us, but lead to unnecessary purchases which cause waste not only to our money but more importantly to the environment. Living in this generation where everything evolves so fast, maybe we just need to stop for a second and think by ourselves.
Summary
Digital technology certainly create opportunities for fashion industry nowadays — improving economy under the adverse impact of covid-19. However, it also confronts companies with severe environmental issues while somehow at the same time, it helps the industry address these problems to some extent. Analyzing from customers’ visions, living in a digital world is convenient while also dizzy. Learning not to lose ourselves in such a digitalized society is what we need to put effort on.
