Understanding fashion lovers
With the winter fashion weeks well under way, Kantar Media’s Alice Dunn takes a look at a new study that reveals that in Britain 10 million adults – 20% of the population – care deeply about what they wear. So how can marketers target this audience most effectively?
Fashion lovers are particularly valuable to marketers because of their enthusiasm to spend and their ability to promote brand messages far and wide.
Along with a slightly higher family income than the average adult, this fashion conscious group is 69% more likely to admit they spend money without thinking, using a credit card to splash out on things that they couldn’t normally afford.
These fashion lovers do not simply shop passively, instead they have strong views which they like to share. When it comes to clothes and accessories, they are well over twice as likely as the average Brit to talk to many different people, as well as posting their comments online about what’s hot and what’s not. They live and breathe fashion.
This group of fashionistas are over three times as likely to fall into the TGI Word of Mouth segment of ‘champions’ for clothes and accessories. This means they promote their fashion views to the widest audience, carry a great deal of influence through their fashion knowledge and have strong powers of persuasion in this area.
By successfully engaging with this audience, marketers may thus be able to gain an advantage over their rivals.
This fashion-conscious group are also easily influenced themselves. They are over twice as likely as the average Brit to buy products from companies who sponsor exhibitions or music events, like M.A.C and Toni & Guy, who were just a couple of the long list of sponsors for Britain’s favourite fashion calendar event, London Fashion Week. They are also more likely to openly admit that advertising helps them choose what they buy and enjoy ads featuring their favourite celebrities.
However, they are also a discerning bunch, being 48% more likely than the average Brit to only buy products from companies with whose ethics they agree with.
TGI’s WHY Code insights further reveal the underlying values of consumers as well as their conscious motivations.
The ‘Social DNA’ component of The WHY Code indicates an individual’s levels of cultural and economic capital. Rooted in accredited academic thinking, cultural capital is determined by knowledge and cultural activities while economic capital is determined by income and savings. Combinations of cultural and economic capital can vary significantly.
This fashion-conscious group are 25% more likely than the average Brit to have medium amounts of both kinds of capital, with cultural dominating. This suggests that even though they like to keep up with the latest trends, it is more likely to be the status that comes with these trends than readiness of money that is driving their behaviour. This hints that they are more aspirational shoppers, undeterred by their economic means.
WHY Code insights also reveal the factors that consciously affect consumer purchase decisions. When choosing clothes and accessories, these fashion lovers are over twice as likely as the average Brit to cite advertising as the most important factor.
They are also more likely to view the brand, reviews and personal recommendations as important deciding factors. So the label and how it is perceived is what is all important.
Mixed-media campaigns are the best way to reach this group effectively, given their particular likelihood to consume a range of media channels. They are 64% more likely than the average adult to be amongst the heaviest 20% of consumers of cinema. They are also likely to be heavy consumers of magazines and the internet.
When it comes to TV, fashion and well-being programmes and reality TV shows top the list.