Influence of product involvement, online brand interaction and promotions on apparel purchase

Abstract

Online aggregators like Flipkart and Amazon, which keep product categories other than apparels have the motto of fulfilling every need of the customer. Even for fashion, they try to keep apparels across all price and quality points. As consumer sophistication increased, emerged players like Myntra and Jabong who cater to only fashion apparels and accessories. With years, emerged the demand for niche fashion apparels with even higher focus on quality and uniqueness of design. Hence aggregators like Shein, Koovs, Ajio emerged catering to specific needs of customers and personalizing the search results further. As the internet penetration in India is increasing, the top barrier to online shopping is being addressed. People are browsing more, getting exposed to more content and hence higher levels of awareness. Moreover, the apprehension regarding online shopping is reducing as online retailers are now providing easy return options. People are more and more ready to make their purchases online and seek convenience. Still this hasn’t been a big threat to the traditional brick and mortar store as consumers still place much importance to touch and feel in the apparel category. In the emerging retail landscape, the companies are trying to play to their full strength via omnichannel. The online channels are proving attractive for the companies in terms of low Customer acquisition cost, wider assortments, and right price points. On the other hand, the offline retail still makes the major chunk of business through instant gratification and benefit of touch and feel. The environment and service, and more importantly brand-building exercised at the offline stores are even attracting some online players to build physical stores. The companies with omnichannel presence face the challenge of providing a coherent experience to customer at every brand interaction.