Fashion Consumer Research

Neha Suradkar
Module 3, Consumer Psychographics, ASFDT
Module Outline
• Consumer Evaluation and profiling,
• Group and interpersonal influence;
• Consumer culture,
• Segmentation – product and market.
• Marketing strategies.
Consumer Profiling
• Customer profiling is a way to create a portrait of
your customers to help make design decisions
concerning your service.
• Your customers are broken down into groups of
customers sharing similar goals and characteristics
and each group is given a representative with a
photo, a name, and a description.
• Customer profiles are ‘customer types’, which are
generated to represent the typical users of a product
or service and are used to help the project team
make customer-centred decisions without confusing
the project scope with personal opinion.
Consumer Profiling
• A customer profile, or a consumer profile, is a
detailed description of your current customers. In a
customer profile, you’d identify purchasing
behaviours, pain points, psychographic data, and
demographic data with the intent of targeting similar
customers in your sales and marketing campaigns.
• If you don’t create customer profiles, you risk
marketing to a nondescript audience, which can lead
to wasted time and closed-lost deals. Defining your
ideal customers will help you identify the attributes
and purchasing behaviours of the customers whose
business you’ve already won.
• Customer profiles are created from the pool of
customers you already have rather than coming up
with ideal and imaginary attributes.
 Indian Consumers

Socially Value
Materialistic Cautious
Connected Conscious

Rising
Low Brand
Disposable Aspiring
Loyalty
Income
Consumers in Indian Market
Indian market has three segments :
• The first comprises the top end with the mindset: “I pay more to get more”,
where the purchase is driven by the emotional surplus that the consumer
experiences.
• The second is the mid-level which thinks: “I get good value at a reasonable price”.
• Third is the large block at the bottom which says: “I pay less and I get less” and is
totally satisfied with that.
Profiling of Consumers
• Assignment
 Evaluating the
Consumers
• All businesses look for good customers.
• How to know whether the customer who has come to
you or approached you is ‘Good’ or not can be tricky
• To find the ‘Good’ customer, one needs to evaluate
the consumers from the target market.
• Define your ideal consumer- Once you understand
the type of client you prefer to work with, you can
target that type of client in your marketing. Also, you
can use your ideal client profile to evaluate potential
clients
Group Influence on Consumers

• Reference group—a group of individuals who has significant relevance for a

consumer and who impacts the consumer’s evaluations, aspirations, and
behaviour.
• Group influence—refers to how group members influence the attitudes,
opinions, and behaviors of others within the group.
• Group members:
• Share common goals and interests.
• Communicate with, and influence one another.
• Share a set of expectations, rules, and roles.
• View themselves as members of a common social unit.
 Group Influence on Consumers

• Primary group—includes members who have frequent, direct contact with one another.
• Most influence
• Strong social ties
• Secondary group—less frequent interaction than in a primary group.
• Brand community—groups of consumers who develop relationships based on shared interests
or product usage.
• Formal group—one in which a consumer formally becomes a member.
• Set of stated rules
• Accepted values
• Codes of conduct
• Informal group—one with no membership or application requirements and codes of conduct
may be non-existent.
Group Influence on Consumers

• Aspirational group—one in which a consumer desires to become

a member. Often appeals to the consumer’s ideal self.
• Dissociative group—one to which a consumer does not want to
belong.
• Conformity—a result of group influence in which individual yields
to the attitudes and behaviors of others.
• Peer pressure—the extent to which group members feel pressure
to behave under group expectations.
 • Interpersonal influence is a type of social influence
which results from group members encouraging or
Interpersonal forcing conformity while discouraging and possibly
punishing nonconformity.

Influence on • It is one of three social influences that lead people

to conform to the majority or the group's norms.
• Black-sheep effect is one of the consequences of
Consumer interpersonal influence.
• It occurs when group members who perform an
Behaviour offensive behavior are judged more harshly by their
ingroup than an outgroup member who does the
same.
Interpersonal Influence Marketing
• Interpersonal influence marketing is a concept that describes how
social influences impact buyers and consumers.
• Apple products are marketed as luxury high-end devices.
When people buy them, they don’t just buy them because the
products are durable. They buy them because it makes them
feel like they’re part of an elite class. This is because Apple has
positioned itself as belonging to a class of its own.
• Interpersonal influence marketing covers various factors that
influence the decisions of consumers. Brands can exploit these
factors.
• When a brand offers sample products and free trials, they not
only serve as avenues for consumers to test the product but
also as triggers of a sense of reciprocity in the consumer,
making the consumers desire to buy the product as a payment
for an abstract debt.
• Interpersonal influence marketing is exploiting subliminal
emotional and cognitive biases of consumers to drive marketing
decisions.
Consumer Culture

• Consumer culture is a form of material culture facilitated by the

market, which thus created a particular relationship between the
consumer and the goods or services he or she uses or consumes.
• Consumer culture is a business term that describes the effect of
social status, societal values, and community activities on the
overall purchase and consumption of goods and services in society.
• Over the 20th century, capitalism preserved momentum by
moulding the ordinary person into a consumer with an
unquenchable thirst for more stuff.
 Consumer Culture

• The notion of human beings as consumers first took shape before

World War I but became commonplace in America in the 1920s.
• Consumption is now frequently seen as our principal role in the
world.
• People have always “consumed” the necessities of life — food,
shelter, clothing — and have always had to work to get them or have
others work for them. Still, there was little economic motive for
increased consumption among people before the 20th century.
• The period after World War II is often identified as the beginning of
the immense eruption of consumption across the industrialised world
Consumer
Culture for
Business

• As a business owner, identifying your target

market is essential and involves more than
just basic demographics; consumer culture
helps target groups of people who share the
same desire and the same need for a
product or service.
Product Segmentation

• Product segmentation is offering different versions of your product to

different groups of people.
• Businesses split their product into several segments, each designed to cater
to a certain industry, demographic, or customer segment.
• Benefits
• Cater to different customer groups
• Segment your clients according to willingness to pay
• Monitor individual product performance
• Expose new growth opportunities
• Understand target market and determine a correct pricing
 Theory of Product Segmentation

A company can produce a

single product with
relatively minor variations,
Product development
market it to different Segmentation relies on
team then provide
customer groups -- market research to
different iterations of
sometimes under different identify the product
the same basic model
brand names -- and characteristics that
that meet the
thereby increase market resonate with target
preferred traits for
share while reducing the markets.
each market segment.
cost of developing
radically different
products.
Product Segmentation Strategy

• Product segmentation strategy has to be planned well.

• Choosing the wrong approach in product segmentation can lead to spending
a lot of time and money for minimal ROI.
• The key elements in product segmentation are-
• Analysis of product usage & why people buy your product
• Customer & market segmentation strategy- Demographic/
Psychographic/ Behavioural/ Geographic
• Price Segmentation Strategy
• Product positioning and Effective Marketing Strategy
Example- Ritu Kumar

• Ritu Kumar
• RI: Ritu Kumar
• Label Ritu Kumar
• Aarke
• Ritu Kumar Home
Example- L’Oreal

• Maybelline
• L’Oreal Paris
• NYX
• Lancome Paris
• Yves Saint Laurent
Market Segmentation

• Market segmentation is a marketing term that refers to aggregating

prospective buyers into groups or segments with common needs and who
respond similarly to a marketing action.
• Companies can generally use three criteria to identify different market
segments:
• Homogeneity, or common needs within a segment
• Distinction, or being unique from other groups
• Reaction, or a similar response to the market
Types of Market Segmentation- Demographic

• Demographic segmentation is one of the simple, standard market

segmentation methods.
• It involves breaking the market into customer demographics- age, income,
gender, race, education, or occupation.
• This market segmentation strategy assumes that individuals with similar
demographics will have similar needs.

Example: The market segmentation strategy for corporate wear, bridal wear
etc.
Types of Market Segmentation- Geographic

• Geographic segmentation is technically a subset of demographic

segmentation.
• This approach groups customers by physical location, assuming that people
within a given geographical area may have similar needs.
• This strategy benefits larger companies seeking to expand into different
branches, offices, or locations.

Example: A clothing retailer may display more winterwear in northern India

than in Central or Southern India.
Types of Market Segmentation- Behavioural

• Behavioral segmentation relies heavily on market data, consumer actions,

and decision-making patterns of customers.
• This approach groups consumers based on how they have previously
interacted with markets and products.
• This approach assumes that consumers’ prior spending habits indicate what
they may buy in the future, though spending habits may change over time
or in response to global events.

Example: Millennial consumers are into sustainability, while the older

generation still believes in wearing a new outfit for every occasion.
Types of Market Segmentation- Psychographic

• Often the most difficult market segmentation approach.

• Psychographic segmentation strives to classify consumers based on their lifestyle,
personality, opinions, and interests.
• This may be more difficult to achieve, as these traits (1) may change easily and (2)
may not have readily available objective data.
• However, this approach may yield the strongest market segment results as it groups
individuals based on intrinsic motivators instead of external data points.

Example: A fitness apparel company may target individuals based on their interest in
playing or watching various sports.
Significance of Market Segmentation

• Helps to define and better understand your target audiences and ideal customers.
• Allows you to identify the right market for your products and effectively target your
marketing.
• Offer more precisely targeted advertising options and customise content for
different audience groups.
• Allows you to target your content to the right people in the right way rather than
targeting your entire audience with a generic message.
• This helps increase the chances of people engaging with your ad or content,
resulting in more efficient campaigns and improved return on investment (ROI).
Difference between Market Segmentation & Product Segmentation

• Product segmentation is when a company modifies its product

into several different products to attract different customers or
target different markets.
• Market segmentation modifies your marketing strategy to do the
same.
• Product segmentation can make market segmentation easier by
more directly appealing to the target.
Marketing Strategy
• The marketing mix is a tool to help brands understand what elements
must be combined to meet their marketing goals and objectives.
• This includes the 4 Ps of marketing: product, price, place and
promotion.
• These are the key elements that must be united to effectively foster
and promote a brand’s unique value and help it stand out from the
competition.
• The evolution of the digital age has caused every industry's standard
methods and practices to change and grow to work within this new
paradigm.
Marketing Strategy for Fashion
• Recognize Your Demographic and Niche
• Focus On Your Best Sellers
• Regularly Instill FOMO Through Promotions
• Create Style Guides and Look Books for Your Brand’s Website
• Use Social Media for Fashion Inspiration
• Partner With Fashion Bloggers and Influencers
• Encourage Testimonials and Picture Reviews on Your Website
• Highlight Your Ethical Approaches