DIGITAL MARKETING IN FASHION INDUSTRY: TRANSITION FROM MCDONALDIZATION AND NEFLIXIZATION TO STITCHFIXIZATION

다국어 초록 (Multilingual Abstract)

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.