This article reflects information as of 2020. For the latest details, please contact us.
Written by: Tomohiro Koizumi, Representative Director, tentus inc.
Why a Fashion Brand's Fans Do and Don't Use EC
When we were helping run a fashion brand's EC site, we once ran a survey among the users who are fans of that brand.
The survey had several questions, and the one that produced a very characteristic answer was this:
Q. Do you shop on this EC site?
Q. For the previous question, please tell us the reason for your 【yes】 or 【no】.
There were all sorts of answers, but roughly summarized:
【I do shop → Because there's no store nearby】
【I don't shop → Because there's a store nearby】
Put into words it's obvious, but it became the question where users' fan psychology toward the brand showed most clearly.
This also appears in the data: sales were quite high on a per-population basis in areas about 1–2 hours from Tokyo, and we could confirm from the order history that people who can casually drop by the store in Tokyo don't use EC much, while people living in places that take a bit of resolve to visit actively use EC. ※This is a summary of tendencies, so of course there are many exceptions. So far, this is the ordinary part of the story.
The Relationship Between Stores and EC
The point I want to focus on this time was the data from when that brand opened its first store in the Kyushu region.
Its first Kyushu store was in the Tenjin district of Hakata, and after it opened, EC sales across all of Kyushu rose sharply.
By the earlier classification of "people who can't get to a store use EC," fans living in Kyushu should originally have been actively using EC when there was no store in Kyushu.
But in reality, EC sales rose after the store opened.
Looking at the user data in a bit more detail, sales from areas close to Hakata hadn't changed much, while sales from the slightly more distant areas of Kumamoto, Nagasaki, and the like had surged.
In other words, as I also noted earlier:
People who can drop by the Tokyo store don't use EC much, while people living in places that take a bit of resolve to visit actively use EC.
This happened in the Kyushu region too.
In other words:
Areas with no store → low EC sales
Areas with a store → EC sales rise in the surrounding areas
That's what we found.
Why? Beyond Awareness and Experience
Because that brand enjoyed overwhelming support from teens to those in their twenties, it always appeared in magazines and was featured with a special every season.
So regardless of whether there was a local store, awareness was high in any region among people interested in fashion.
Normally, if those people couldn't get to a store, they should have used the EC site.
But when broadly classified, that wasn't the case.
The answer was 【experience】, a point written in many marketing books.
Many fashion-loving users were originally aware of the brand, but only after making a bit of effort on a day off to go shopping at a store, and actually experiencing the real store, did they first become fans — and as a result, came to use the EC site.
Creating Experience Points
In this case, I explained experience using the easy-to-understand point of a store, but it doesn't have to be a store.
There are various methods for going beyond awareness, but I think the most important point is to consider 【users touching the brand】 and 【the brand touching users】 as equal.
Merely having users one-sidedly touch the brand through advertising and the like doesn't create experience.
Once you understand that the brand side firmly touching the customer is what, as a result, creates experience for the user, you can create any number of experience points.
It's important to start by first deepening your understanding of your current users.
If you have a challenge like understanding users and creating experience points, please do get in touch.
We'll help you from the very first step.