Understanding Markets & Consumers

Introduction

Fashion industry is that industry where there is energy, spirit and creativity are the elements which ignites the imagination and insights of the industry. The UK fashion industry has redefines and recreated the craftsmanship of the originality and professionalism of the designers of the fashion industry. This report presents here the growth trends and developments of the fashion industry UK. The important elements involving the decision making influencing factors, the buying patterns, emerging trends and competition levels of the industry are defined in this assessment. The PESTLE analysis will be highlighting the micro and macro environment factors of the UK fashion industry. This trend report will be going to show the statistical data, analytical reports and customer dynamics & segmentations involved in the fashion industry sector. If you are seeking business dissertation help, understanding all the intricacies of the UK fashion industry can provide the most valuable insights.

Fashion Industry: An industry of creativity, designing and imagination

As per the recent studies, the UK fashion industry has been stated to be estimated around worth £26 billion and the fashion industry itself has created nearly around 800,000 jobs contributing towards the UK economy and this makes it as one of the largest and widest spread creative industry from all others. As it is said that, fashion has always been a powerful and trivial vector in sharing significant contributions and ideas towards UK’s national and international influences. UK’s fashion & Textile sector alone have estimated to contribute around £6.5 billion worth through export to other countries. As said by Rashid and Barnes (2017), fashion is not just clothing but an important part in people’s life as it defines creativity and imagination with the help of powerful tools that influences the taste and preferences of the population of UK.

As an example the London Fashion Week is itself an influential and widely recognised event which showcases the vital young, new and multicultural talents of the UK’s fashion industry. The latest new heads says that London Fashion Week has been recently included in the fifth International Fashion Showcase. According to studies, it has been revealed that around 22 per cent of the young people in UK have been strategically found to take interest in the UK’s cultural and artistic assets (Yang et al. 2017). Fashion is such a thing that attracts most of the people as it creates values and style statements as researched by the British Council.

Ahmadi Lari and Foroudi (2020) stated that fashion and its soft powers are inextricably linked with each other and effects in attracting the headlines of the fashion statements among people in UK. The UK fashion world has always seemed to be continued to be a powerful political, social and cultural commentator. Although fashion may change its face and style day by day in various ways but it will remain influencing both unconsciously and consciously people to be enduring & intrinsic about their fashion senses to be befitting in the modern world and economy.

PESTLE Analysis: Macro and Micro Environment trends of fashion industry

The micro and macro environment analysis of the fashion trend can describe by the PESTLE analysis which aims to explore all the political, social, economic, technological, environmental and legal factors of the UK fashion industry.

The conclusion of this environmental analysis says that the fashion industry plays a major role in building the cultural trends, societies and economies of UK. Although it is also true that some of the factors destroyed the nature and produced wastage polluting the environment. Some of the waste can be recycled making new products and sell them again but these can be operatively very low in the efforts.

Fashion Industry: Competition involved

The classification of the types of competition in the fashion industry is divided among the actual competitors, potential competitors and emerging competitors. The actual competitors are those competitors who are of the same industry and acknowledge the same population range and are connected with the same relevant market. The top fashion brand companies are Burberry, Next Plc., Mark & Spencer and ASOS which are listed under the actual competition list (Rienda et al. 2020). The primary competition of the fashion industry involves all the small, medium and large brands where these four are on the top list of being competitors of the fashion industry retail and wholesale market.

As per Tariq and Chowdhury (2020), the potential competitors involves those companies and brands who are involved in the same customer range an deals with the same products of the same industry but the markets where the competitors deals are different from the primary company. These companies or brands may be the competitors but they cannot be referred as the direct competitors to be in the same market sector. As an example of potential brands of UK like Burberry Group & Next Plc., NIKE of USA, GUCCI of Italy, Adidas of Germany can be named in the list of top potential competitors.

The emerging competitors are the third type in the list of various types of competitors. As per Winterton and Winterton (2019) the future developing brands and companies of the fashion industry are referred as the emerging competitors because they are known as upcoming and emerging brands. The emerging competitors are ready to enter in the actual competition of the fashion industry market. As an example, the brands like Threads, Saveyourwardrobe, Metail and many more are included in the list of the emerging and developing brands of the fashion industry of UK.

Customer Segmentation

Customer segmentation can be referred towards the classification of the type of customers towards the brands or products according to their buying patterns and attitudes. And this customer segmentation categorises the customers into three segments as actual, potential and emerging.

The actual customer segment is that portion of the population who are loyal and definite about some of their choices of the products and brands. The actual category customers show pure dedication and loyalty towards the company or brand by implying revisits and repurchases and along with that recommending the brands to others too (Mosquera et al. 2019). They can also be put under the habituated customers who are fixed in their daily habit product or goods about any brand or company. Their attitude towards the company is general and non-competitive until any further better product comes to the market of their choice and that is hard to fix the focus on from the old product to the new product.

The next segment is named as the potential customers and in other words they can also be called as Target Audiences. Rashid (2017) stated that this group of the population are hard to convince about any new product but they can be proved to potential ad valuable asset for the company to hold on for. A huge population segment towards which a brand or the company is targeted to achieve is the potential customer segment.

The last segment is the emerging customer segment where the population is said to spend their disposable income on the various types of luxury and consumer products. These customers can be put into all the three income ranges of middle, upper to lower and they spend a certain amount of their extra income on fulfilling their wishes by sending on occasional or leading products (Shokouhyar et al. 2021). This segment of customers can be very less in number and rare to attract.

Buying Behaviour Patterns

In the clothing market industry, the fashion trends have always changed as the time passed and the taste and buying patterns of the customers have also differentiated due to the effects of the motivational factors. The buying behaviour patterns of the customers can be classified into four major categories namely Dissonance-reducing buying behaviour, Complex buying behaviour, Variety seeking behaviour and Habitual buying behaviour (appendices image 3). Though, the buying behavioral pattern also depends on certain other factors like income level, the habit of using any particular product or brand, various demands, and so on. The four categories are –

Dissonance-reducing buying behaviour is the first category in which the consumer involvement if found to be very high due to mat be the high prices of the products and the infrequent purchasing patterns of the customers (Zhang et al. 2021). According to this pattern, the consumers are forced to buy any product or goods with less and limited options to choose from and the decision of the customers remain limited.

The Complex buying behaviour pattern can be seen in consumers who encounter particularly when buying the expensive products and goods which they face difficult to decide whether to buy or not if the product is unfamiliar. In this pattern, according to Meraviglia (2018), the beliefs about the product and the buying attitude work for encouraging in purchasing the product instead of the learning process. In this pattern, the marketers must acquire deep core knowledge and understanding of the products to convince the customers for purchasing them else the prices may differ in the buying decision.

The Variety seeking behaviour is the next in this list where the customer involvement is comparatively low where the customers are significant of switching their purchases many times as per the requirements and income level. The uncertain buying happens due to the dissatisfaction from the current product due to any reason and creates the urge to opt for something new and different probably more convenient for them.

Habitual buying behaviour is the fourth pattern where the consumers buy their products or goods due to their habit of buying the same for a long time. Radhakrishnan (2020) defined that the customers are not that much interested in switching for any other brand or products since they might not get the same response from the new one as compared with the habituated product or brand for their everyday life.

Fashion Industry: Decision making influences

Not only in the fashion industry but also in other industries too, there are some of the decision making process of buying a product or from any brand or not in influences or impacted by certain factors. According to the statistics of a recent study in 2019-2020 (Appendices image 4), the social factors, the psychological factors and the personal factors has been found to change the decision making process of the consumers in many aspects.

The social influential and impactful factors are like the family choices, friend or reference groups and roles ad status of that particular brand or company. In a family the purchasing of the products and items are done after discussion and according to the majority choices and in this process somewhere the trial of any new product or brand remains unchanged because the decisions are most of the times rigid in nature (Blazquez et al. 2019). The references groups are those people who themselves use any item or goods and refers them to their known and that particular customers may buy the same believing on the references. And the third factor is the status and image of the brand due to which customer might think of buying the same or switching their old products or company.

The personal factors are mainly the income of a family, age group of the population, occupation of the people and the lifestyle which the customers lead. Many times it has been seen and found that due to the income level of the customers restricts them to opt for any new or desired products and influences the purchase (Khoa et al. 2020). In the same way the lifestyle and occupation type are the decision influencing factors in case of setting the buying preferences and taste of people.

The psychological factors like motivation to move towards any item or brand, the perception about any product or company and the knowledge and attitude of people towards a particular brand name or company item plays a great role in the decision making process while buying products. The psychological factors are also influenced majorly by the contribution of the social media platforms nowadays as they are believed to be able to either make or break the image of any brand or product or services in the public prospect (Esteban-Santos et al. 2018).

Consumer trend emergence

In the recent past years, the trends of the fashion and clothing industry has been successfully emerging day by day. In the global market, the UK fashion industry grew with an average of above 2.5 per cent before the recent pandemic crisis. In the year 2019 due to the pandemic like other industries, the UK fashion industry also faced a huge decline. Though, the pandemic also showed some, positive results as the trend of physical shopping trend shifted to the digital shopping trends in the fashion industry. Since going out was not possible during the pandemic situation, the indulgence of the customers in the digital shopping trends and habits have risen according to The State of Fashion 2021 (Lai et al. 2017).

During the pandemic year that is 2020, the fashion industry globally got affected because lots of the showrooms and physical shops shutdown in the year 2020. The statistical report (Appendices image 5) shows that there was approximately 93 per cent of downfall in the profit as expected. According to Djafarova and Bowes (2021), this decrease was seen after a slight increase of 4 per cent in the year 2019. Though, the digital and online shopping trends have made out some of the losses that the fashion industry faced and incurred due to the Covid-19 pandemic. As per the records, nearly about 1,875 fashion retailers of UK have to shut down due to the pandemic crisis and 10,000 more closures were forecasted by the researchers. Madsen (2019) revealed that the UK data search presented that the online sales from the e-Commerce sector showed 18.5 per cent increase in the year 2019 with a boost of 30 per cent as compared to the past records. As per the statistical reports, few fashion brands like M and M Direct, ASOS, Farfetch & Footlocker have witnessed around 11% growth in the period during pre-COVID and about approximately -9% growth during COVID-19 period. Apart from these, the own-label various brands like the Boohoo, Next, H&M & New Look have seen approximately about -1% growth while handling the pre-COVID-19 duration and different from this -13% growth have been fund while the COVID-19 period is going on.

Conclusion

The above presented trend report have showed that what is the fashion industry in and how it works. The competitors with all the types are like the actual, potential and emerging categories are described in the above assessment. The trends of the fashion industry during the pandemic year that is 2020 have seen losses and the fashion industry globally got affected because lots of the showrooms and physical shops shutdown in the year 2020. Though, the digital and online shopping trends have made out some of the losses that the fashion industry faced and incurred due to the Covid-19 pandemic. It can be said that not only in the fashion industry but also in other industries too, there are some of the decision making process of buying a product or from any brand or not in influences or impacted by certain factors. Lastly it can be concluded that despite of the ups and downs in the fashion industry due to the issues and crises can be recovered with time and the changing economies.

References

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