The Omnichannel Imperative: Marketing Trends Influencing Apparel Purchases

The Omnichannel Imperative: Marketing Trends Influencing Apparel Purchases

Our work with consumers, who provide us with insights on where they are shopping, what they are spending, how macro issues are impacting their lives, as well as the media influencers of their motivations to buy, give us a unique, essential perspective for our clients in this uncertain economic climate. Marketers today, now more than ever, are challenged with driving sales and revenue growth in the most efficient way possible. There’s no time for over-hyped, underperforming marketing campaigns in this environment; failed efforts can turn off customers and lead them to competitors, which is a costly mistake for retailers in what has become a zero-sum game in recent years.

With this in mind, we’ll take a look at a few of the marketing trends influencing apparel purchases among today’s shoppers.

Social media may be the next big influencer in apparel purchasing. Though so-called “new media” – social media, mobile, and blogs – have yet to rank among the top ten media influencers for apparel, it likely won’t be long before one or more of these forms finally does. Social media (Facebook, Instagram, etc.) appears to be the biggest contender, currently residing in twelfth position among consumers overall. Our current reading for social media as an influencer represents a 30% rise over the same period in 2010.

These insights highlight two key points for retailers:

1. The Rising Importance of Digital. Digital is playing an active and expanding role in the buying process for shoppers. Even in categories like apparel, which are typically thought of as a more experiential, instore shopping occasions, consumers will increasingly look to the virtual world and their arsenal of mobile devices to engage in the buying process.
2. The Omnichannel Imperative. As the lines between virtual and physical shopping experiences to blur for increasingly channel agnostic consumers, retailers will have to adapt their marketing strategies, providing shoppers with clear, cohesive, and consistent messaging across all channels, delivering a delightful shopping experience from the cash register to the online shopping cart.

Pam Goodfellow is Principal Analyst for Prosper Insights & Analytics™, editor of the monthly Consumer Snapshot, and contributor for the Prosper Now group on Forbes.com.