The wide application of digital media technology in fashion shows has become the epitome of the development and innovation of today's fashion industry, enabling designers to break through the constraints of time and space, changing the performance of today's fashion shows, and making them present unprecedented new features. With the development of information technology, the integration of emerging digital technology and the fashion industry is accelerating. So far, separate studies have been carried out in various academic fields on the combination of Metaverse and NFT, but the current status and nature of relevant research are still incomplete. Furthermore, the current research on virtual fashion shows and NFT in China's apparel industry is limited. The purpose of this study is to investigate the influence of digital fashion marketing stimulation on consumer brand attitudes using the stimulation-organ-response (SOR) framework model. By analyzing 77 cases of virtual fashion shows in China, this study obtained antecedent variables and designed a research model. An online sample of 300 Chinese Gen Z consumers was collected and analyzed using SPSS and FSQCA. This research hopes to provide valuable information for the sustainable development of China's fashion industry, and to help Chinese fashion brands confirm the future market development direction of Metaverse and NFT.
Digital technological development has created different new possibilities. New products and services are developed to cater the needs and wants of these digital consumers (or digital natives). It has also changed the means of marketing communications. Social media has become an integral part of many people’s lives, thus social media marketing is found in the marketing strategy of every brand.
Western social media platforms like Facebook, YouTube, Twitter and so on are banned in China. In their places, Weibo, WeChat, Youku and more are the main social media channels in China and thus the main battlefields of social marketing for brands entering China Market. WeChat is the largest social network in China, with over 900 million users daily. Chinese users spend an average of over 70 minutes a day using WeChat, for nearly all types of services, including booking flights, restaurant table reservation, shopping, paying bills, hailing taxi, transferring money, and posting Moments on their walls, etc. Not only that, WeChat allows companies and celebrities to create official accounts to generate content for promotional purposes. Moreover, WeChat allows one-to-one personalized interaction between brands and the users.
To cater the needs of the new generation of Chinese digital natives, a mobile app eM++ was developed that creates new customer services and enables tailored fashion marketing. The eM++ app has three components. The first core component is 1Measure, which users can obtain their body measurements by skimpily taking two photographs of themselves in normal clothing anywhere and anytime. Without the involvement of expensive equipment, users can enjoy similar benefit of body scanning but more flexibility and convenience, they not only instantly receive their measurements but also have their digital body model and a shape analysis report. Based on this information, the second component of the app eShop allow users to shop fashion items currently available in different online fashion stores like ASOS, Zara, and H & M, etc. In eShop, users are suggested the right sizes to order for different fashion items, based on their measurements and shape information, and also mix-and-match recommendations. The last component is eTailor, where users can order clothing like suit jackets, pants and shirts that tailored made for them, but save the need to take body measurements in a physical store. This new digital service will first be launched in China as there is high demand on Made-to-Measure fashion and marketing through WeChat social media platform. This paper will discuss how to market this new digital service using social media like WeChat in China and consumers’ reactions to this new business model in this digital world.
Fashion and apparel industry is facing difficult challenges due to several factors such as technology development, environmental changes, inherent characteristics of fashion industry itself, fast changing demands, supply chain, and consumer’s expectation of seamless purchase process. Consumers have the power in that fashion retailers need to provide variety and new products, to build brand loyalty, to provide corporate responsibility and sustainability, and to develop inventory intelligence (Beswick 2016). That said, enhanced efficiencies in those will grant fashion retailers and firms with sustainable competitive advantages. Such efficiencies are often based on digital technology development, creating a new trend. In this study, we examine and compare three big trends in the fashion industry along with an advance of technology in digital marketing.
First, Ritzer (1993) observed a process by which the four principles of the fast-food restaurant began to increasingly dominate several aspects of American society. The four principles are efficiency, calculability, predictability, and control, based on the observation of McDonald’s daily operation. He labeled this process and phenomenon as McDonaldization. In other words, any society or subsectors of society can be very successful with the four principles of McDonaldization, including the fashion industry.
Second, in addition to McDonaldization, Netflix added one more, yet an extremely important aspect of such operation, that is personalized suggestions. Personalization becomes essential for most services and even for lots of products (personalized T-shirts, bags, etc.). Based on customers’ history of what they had watched, Netflix provides personalized suggestions of next movies, dramas, or episodes. More importantly, instead of physical DVD, Netflix provides online streaming services with personalized suggestions. Thus, an online order system with personalized suggestions for clothes would be an important aspect of fashion industry and retailers, which can be called as Netflixization.
Lastly, from the case of Stitch Fix, we’d like to propose a new concept, that is, Netflix of fashion. Stitch Fix is an interesting firm in the fashion industry. The firm uses customized stylists for each customer based on the responses from style quiz. Thus, it focuses on personalization of what customers really want and need in terms of occasions and preferences. Second, it delivers, by mail, five clothes to customers so that customers can choose one or more from the five clothes or choose nothing. By doing this, the firm provides not only convenience, but also choice options for customers. Third, the firm guarantees customer satisfaction with an easy return policy. A more important thing is the fact that the firm can accumulate intelligence based on the customers’ feedbacks of why customers did not like the suggest clothes and decided to return. Thus, the firm can build a “Big data” for better understanding of customer’s needs and wants. In other words, the firm develops a new concept of “your fix.” I would label the whole process of Stitch Fix as Stitchfixization.
In sum, any fashion industry and retailer that adopts the concept of Stitchfixization of efficiency, calculability, predictability, control, personalization, feedback, convenience, and intelligence building, would be well accepted by current tough customers throughout the world.