Today’s lesson focuses on the most important group in the fashion industry: the customer. It taught me how to survey customers’ consumption habits by setting up archives and how different stores attract the corresponding consumer groups of the brand.
Accurate understanding of consumer information is very important for the development of brands. In this class, I learned a very effective way to investigate consumer information: conducting street research. In daily life, I would pay attention to the clothes of passers-by and would be deeply impressed by those with distinctive styles. However, I did not imagine them as my future customers. I did not have a deep understanding and thinking about how to judge their consumption habits and how to attract them to become my customers. Through the case given by the teacher, I know the key direction of the research. I can deduce their consumption preferences by studying their living habits, shopping methods and favorite styles.
Due to my own reasons, I cannot conduct street research at present, so I chose ten of my friends and made ten customer data sheets through communication with them. I used to think that different consumer groups could be distinguished simply by gender and age, but after the research, I found that my previous idea was too simple. This is because the ten friends I investigated have similar age differences, but through sorting out their personal information, I found that their consumption habits are very different. They like different styles, some of them like sporty clothes, some like traditional clothes, some like retro clothes. There are many ways for them to shop, such as shopping on websites or in malls. Some people like to buy second-hand clothes or transform clothes by themselves. They generally have two attitudes towards buying clothes. One is that they attach great importance to their own collocation, spend a lot of energy on shopping and like fashion very much. The other is that they do not have much shopping demand and mainly buy comfortable clothes. In addition, everyone’s favorite brand and shopping budget are also different.
After my investigation of these ten people, I have mastered the way of collecting customer information and improved my ability to compare information. I made a file for everyone, and in the process, I became more proficient in the use of Photoshop.
In this class, we also carried out research on the store, such as the decoration style and the way of commodity display. After class, I completed a comparative report of stores. I investigated two stores with different styles and analyzed how they attract customers. In the process of investigation, I found that the decoration of these two stores can well reflect the style of their own brands, and they have their own characteristics in many details, which can attract customers matching the brand, such as site selection, service mode and commodity display mode. And each has its own unique selling point to attract more customer groups.
When I was doing my homework, I had some thoughts of my own. Through the investigation of stores, I found that if a brand wants to develop well, it first needs to define its own audience and have its own distinct style, so as to attract corresponding customers. However, these are far from enough. Brands should also study how to expand their audience groups and attract more consumers, for example, through publicity on social networking sites and increase their sales methods. The relationship between brands and consumers is complementary. Brands not only cater to consumers’ preferences, but also lead consumers’ preferences.