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LEARNING DIARY 23E58050 Consumer Behavior and Retail Experience
Management in Fashion and Design Business
Dyasanti Vidya Saputri
# 413781
It’s amazing how far this course has shifted my perception about the fashion
world. Before this course I was never particularly interested in fashion-related
matters—be it fashion editorials or clothing—but now that I have learned
about the different aspects of fashion, I realized that the concepts pertaining
to the fashion world could also be implemented in a much broader context. It
would only be appropriate for me to reflect on the lecture materials by
applying the abstract theories to real-life situations, and thus in this learning
diary I will mostly address cases from my country Indonesia and the fashion
system that I think is prevalent in our culture. If not, I will try to take examples
from relevant situations I’ve been in or articles I’ve come across.
Fashion as a Sign System and Language: Despite my hard time grasping Ronald Barthes’ take on ‘fashion system’ (in
fact, I’m still in the process of fully understanding it) as well as Blumer’s
definition of ‘fashion theory’, this topic was eye-opening as it enabled me to
see how ‘fashion’ isn’t always about clothing and accessories. What struck me
the most was the complicated nature of fashion itself.
Starting off with examples from my own country; Blumer’s (1969) concept of
‘collective taste’ prevails amongst Indonesian youth by their seemingly
communal way of dressing. In 2008, it was asymmetrical haircuts. In 2011, it
was feminine translucent chiffon blouses that sway side-to-side when you
walk. In 2012, the boys began to dress drapperly with their crisp, patterned
button-downs and their mustard washed denim trousers. Mind that I observed
this as part of the so-called youth, therefore I experienced it first-hand. As I
too felt the need to move in the direction everyone else was going, a
realization dawned upon me—everybody was doing it for the sake of
acknowledgment. They were all seeking for that sought-after confirmation of
their existence in the community. Copying each other’s way of dressing
oneself was, indeed, one of the easiest things to do to be accepted into a
social circle.
Needless to say, Blumer’s theory of the ‘acting crowd’ is pertinent to many
aspects of today’s social issues. The five stages,
1. Tension or unrest
2. Exciting event
3. Milling
4. A common object of attention
5. Common impulses
are common features one can find in perhaps every single social movement,
including fashion.
Fashion as a Power Structure:
Referring to Bourdieu’s idea of social capital and his system of ‘habitus’,
‘capital’ and ‘field’—I think it’s safe to say that in Indonesia, we still have this
massive wall dividing the different social classes. As an exchange student
here in Finland, I’ve been very impressed by how the country is run based on
equality, diminishing the gap between each social class as much as possible.
It’s an entirely different case back in my country.
Interestingly, this class difference is highlighted through fashion—amongst
other things, of course. One of the many cases for Indonesian youth
correlates nicely with what Sundie et al. (2011) suggests, “Men might use
costly products to display their wealth to potential mates.” The current trend
amongst Indonesian young men is to join the ‘hipster movement’ (clean
shave, smart-casual clothing, possible futile addition of a beanie/cardigan) by
purchasing and wearing expensive local handmade products. Fig. 1 and 2 are
examples taken from two local Indonesian products whose target segment
includes said young men.
Another article that was also brought up on the subject of power structure was
written by Perez et al. (2010) that discusses an issue mainly found in
developing countries; the consumption of counterfeit luxury goods. The case
in Indonesia is not very much different—you will find shops that are dedicated
to counterfeit goods everywhere you go. It reaches to a point where none can
no longer tell which one’s legitimate and which one’s fake. My mother, being
one of those women who actually make an effort to purchase the authentic
goods, would, in fact, think twice about walking out of the house with a
branded bag. The consensus is that those with authentic goods would most
likely group together, and those who pride themselves in being able to find
eerily similar counterfeit goods belong to a whole different social circle. When
the two clash, they probably couldn’t care less, as long as their closest friends
in the group know which one it is they’ve got.
Fashion as a Retail Experience:
When discussing fashion as a retail experience in class, I was reminded by an
article on Harvard Business Review (September 2013) I once read,
“Touchpoints matter, but it’s the full journey that really counts.” The idea is to
ensure that customers do not feel like they’ve lost connection with the brand
in the middle of his/her purchasing journey. If done well, customer journeys
can deliver an unquestionable competitive advantage over competitors.
Fig. 1 and 2. A picture from Hooghan ID’s lookbook (on the left). A picture from AYE! Denim’s lookbook (on the right).
In Indonesia, there’s an increasingly popular phenomenon that is “Instagram
online shops”, which is pretty much self-explanatory—Instagram accounts are
used as a catalogue, lookbook, and method of order at the same time. These
people are often resellers of imported clothes from Bangkok or Hong Kong
that might have else ended up at a factory outlet. But never doubt the power
of low prices—these shops, although at a disadvantage in terms of physical
store elements, are still able to generate profits and secure loyal customers.
Even though one might deem it impossible to gain a customer base simply
through the use of one single social media platform, these shops have proved
him wrong. Regardless of their limited resources, these shops have If we
were to break down dissect these “Instagram shops” according to the Online
Customer Experience framework provided by Gentile et al. (2007), it would be
as follows:
• Sensorial: Pictures of the garments are used to stimulate sight. Most
shops almost always include brief information about the material of the
clothing to give potential customers a better sense of the fabric.
• Emotional: There isn’t any significant emotional experience generated by
these shops. Their focus is short-term—as long as the items are sold,
they’ll be satisfied.
Fig. 3 and 4. Screenshots taken from two Indonesian online “Instagram shops”, @iymelsayshijab (on the left) and @girlshoooop (on the right).
• Cognitive: The obvious mental process is that if the price is inside a certain
range, most of the time the customer wouldn’t even think twice about
purchasing it—these shops tend to sell garments at a fairly low price.
• Pragmatic: The concept of usability is helped through celebrity
endorsements. These endorsements aren’t what you may be used to
seeing—all they need to do is to ship the garments to singer A and then
wait until said singer posts a picture of herself in the garment on her social
media account (primarily Instagram), while at the same time promoting the
shop by including captions such as, “Thank you for the dress, @XXshop!”
• Lifestyle: Not quite present. The majority of these shops does not care
about long-term branding and thus very rarely tries to show how their
items will reaffirm one’s beliefs and values.
• Relational: There is an occasional attempt at the creation of communities
by posting testimonials from previous customers as Instagram posts
(hence why the feed often looks messy due to lack of organization and
prior planning).
Fashion as a Movement:
Describing fashion as a movement may be well translated into creating a
whole new consumer phenomenon in which fashion plays a big part. For
example, McQuarrie (2013) suggests that the online platform is changing
today’s consumer behavior in a way that ordinary consumers today—‘ordinary
consumers’ refer to consumers outside of the existing ‘fashion system’
(McCracken 1986)—are able to “grab hold of the megaphone”. The Internet
allows ongoing communication by ordinary consumers to a mass of strangers,
and consumers such as fashion bloggers use this opportunity to its full
potential.
Fashion bloggers share user-generated content and end up acquiring a mass
audience for these posts, allowing them to slowly climb up the ‘taste
leadership’ (Gronow 1997) ladder. I thought this article was relevant to the
subject of employing fashion as a movement from the way it discusses the
possibility of turning an ordinary consumer into a leader inside the fashion
system.
In unrelated news, I’ve seen firsthand the ‘possession rituals’ activities
discussed by Campbell (2005) and I thought I’d share it here. In my second
year of college, I was involved in a project where we produced products of our
own with the intention of selling them to generate a certain amount of
revenue. One of our products was a notebook wrapped in cork fabric, and
customers could opt for a ‘personalized’ notebook which meant that they were
able to request for a specific drawing to be engraved on the front cover—
referring to Campbell (2005), ‘personalizing’ means “produced products are
‘marked’, either by the retailer or the individual consumer, so as to indicate
that they are the singular possession of a specific individual”. These
notebooks sold very well compared to our other products that couldn’t be
personalized. This goes to show how personalization is very often sought out.
Fashion and Reproduction of Gender: Out of all the lecture materials I must admit that this sub-topic was the one I
was most interested in. The media’s representation of women is a
continuously debatable topic, with fresh content being reported each day. One
case I personally deem memorable is Dove’s Dove Real Beauty Sketches
campaign that went viral on YouTube with more than 60 million views. I
remember coming across an article that fully opposes this campaign by
mentioning how in retrospect, instead of making women realize just how
beautiful they are, it’s indirectly emphasizing the notion of none other than
exterior beauty itself—your face is what your degree of beauty is being
decided upon. It’s amusing how even the most seemingly sincere campaigns
can spark controversy.
In regard to the talk of beauty, women are relentlessly being bombarded with
the concept of flawlessness, what’s with all those Photoshopped false
advertisings and whatnot. Consequently, this creates an environment where
men are given the power to suppress women with these ideals, seeing that
men aren’t the ones being told to trim down their waist or lift their bust. Who
then suffers? The female individuals who fall into this trap thinking that they
need to conform to such standards.
That being said, women high in the fashion system hierarchy are almost like
aforementioned men—fashion system being “the designers and
manufacturers of fashion clothing and accessories, the media institutions that
promote such clothing in editorials and advertising, and the social elite who
engage in the vast public relations machine” (McCracken 1986). These
women have the cultural and social capital and thus, the authority to construct
certain ideals for ‘lower’ women to abide by. Examples include female editors
of high-fashion magazines who literally handpick the styles that are to be
featured each month for the rest of the female population to follow. The
question is: if women still do this to one another, are we really in the position
of wishing the men—the media—would stop?
Debates arise as women continue to be objectified by mass media—their
bodies turned into things, denoting the absence of soul. Alex Blimes, the
Editor of one of the most acclaimed magazines, Esquire UK, even admitted so
himself, “The women we feature in in the magazine are ornamental,” to which
he added, “We provide pictures of girls in the same way we provide pictures
of cool cars. It is ornamental,” (The Guardian, 2013). Literal examples of
objectification of women can be taken from many existing ads. Michelob Beer
uses the idea of recreating a beer bottle with a woman’s body—implying that
women are disposable, as are glass bottles (Fig. 5). Likewise, Che Men’s
Magazine connects a woman’s body to a game console—most likely to be
suggesting that women are to be played around (Fig. 6). This kind of ads
dehumanizes women, which is, sadly, the first step towards devaluation.
No wonder today we have moral degradation issues such as the culture of
plastic surgery in South Korea, where one in five women from 19 to 49 years
has undergone some sort of cosmetic surgery. The constant pressure of
having to be able to present oneself beautifully, along with the omnipresent
propaganda (Fig. 7 shows a plastic surgery ad that’s been put at a Subway
station somewhere in Seoul), has pushed these women’s level of self-
confidence to the point where they decide it’d be best to go under the knife to
settle everything once and for all.
Fig. 7. A South Korean subway ad on plastic surgery.
Fig. 5 and 6. Michelob beer ad (on the left), Che Men’s Magazine ad (on the right).
Looking back at the points I mentioned above regarding reproduction of
gender in fashion, it comes as no surprise to us why feminist movements and
campaigns are becoming more widespread than ever. Thanks to the burden
being put on women by various advertisements and media alike, major
problems such as eating disorders, gender inequality at work, and sexual
abuse have long begun to surface. I will not go in depth regarding the issue,
but come to think of it—women’s rights movements date back to the late 19th
century when the Suffragettes shook a greater part of the world by using
violence to get what they wanted, which was the right to vote. It’s both funny
and sad that even with all this history, a great deal of representations of
women today still linger on the demand for us to be “beautiful”—on the
outside that is—while blatantly disregarding a woman’s professional, critical
side.
It’s unfortunate that the media opts to continue to uphold these dehumanizing
ideals for women, while considering all the power it holds in a community
along with the large-scale media consumption that follows, essentially, they
should be used to advocate what’s “right” and “equal”—and in this case, it’s
definitely not the objectification of women. As actress Jennifer Lawrence so
aptly put it in an interview, “[...] With these unrealistic expectations for women,
it’s disappointing that the media keeps it alive and fuels that fire,”
(Yahoo!Screen, 2013).
In the end, I think we can all agree that fashion—amidst its ever-growing
popularity and relevance in today’s society—is still not to be glorified as a
cornerstone of moral judgment. As far as I’m concerned, fashion is to be
treated as a form of entertainment or hobby, a field of interest that can be
shared to form interpersonal ties or even spark arguments instead of being
used to alienate certain body types and face shapes. As part of an educated
society, we should all know better than to regard biased portrayals of
“perfection” as the true definition of beauty.
References: Blumer, H., 1969. Fashion: From Class Differentiation to Collective Selection. Barthes, R., 1983. The Fashion System. California: University of California Press. Bourdieu, P., 1980, The Logic of Practice, Stanford, CA: Stanford University Press. Sundie et al., 2011. Peacocks, Porsches, and Thorstein Veblen: Conspicuous Consumption as a Sexual Signaling System. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology [online], Vol. 100, No. 4, 664–680 Perez, M.E., Castano, R. and Claudia Quintanilla, C., 2010. Constructing Identity Through the Consumption of Counterfeit Luxury Goods. Qualitative Market Research: An International Journal [online], Vol. 13, No. 3, pp. 219-235 Rawson, A., Duncan, E. and Jones, C., 2013. The Truth About Customer Experience. Harvard Business Review, 2013, pp. 90. Edward F. McQuarrie, Jessica Miller, and Barbara J. Phillips, 2013. The Megaphone Effect: Taste and Audience in Fashion Blogging. Journal of Consumer Research [online], Vol. 40, No. 1, pp. 136-158 Campbell, C., 2005. The Craft Consumer: Culture, Craft, and Consumption in the Post-modern Society. Journal of Consumer Culture [online], Vol. 5, No. 1, pp. 23-42. Dove United States, 2013. Dove Real Beauty Sketches [video, online]. Available from: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XpaOjMXyJGk [Accessed on December 6 2013].
Ahmed, M., 2013. What K-Pop Has to Do With South Korea's Plastic Surgery Obsession [online]. Jezebel. Available from: http://jezebel.com/what-k-pop-has-to-do-with-south-koreas-plastic-surgery-573424674 [Accessed on 6 December 2013]. Lee, H., 2013. Perfecting the Face-Lift, Gangnam Style [online]. Bloomberg Businessweek. Available from: http://www.businessweek.com/articles/2013-10-10/plastic-surgery-lifts-south-korean-tourism [Accessed on 6 December 2013]. Sweney, M., 2013. Esquire editor: We show 'ornamental' women in same way as cars [online]. The Guardian. Available from: http://www.theguardian.com/media/2013/mar/19/esquire-editor-show-women-like-cars [Accessed on 6 December 2013]. Media Education Foundation, 2012. Killing Us Softly 4 - Trailer [Featuring Jean Kilbourne] [video, online] http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jWKXit_3rpQ#t=121 [Accessed on 6 December 2013]. Yahoo!Screen, 2013. Jennifer Lawrence's Heartfelt Commentary on Body Image: 'Stop Calling Each Other Fat' [video, online]. Available from: http://screen.yahoo.com/jennifer-lawrences-heartfelt-commentary-body-234610417.html [Accessed on 6 December 2013].