Culture is something that transfers, conveys and generates value patterns and related content, notions, concepts and other symbolic systems that are highly meaningful in nature. These together serve as factors in shaping human behavior as well as the products that are generated or created through such behavior, which further get transferred through various generations since many ages. Thus, culture essentially acts as a pivotal element in shaping the penchant and behavioral patterns of individuals belonging to various cultures globally.
Global Consumerism
Consumer culture is a “social arrangement in which the relations between the [lived cultural experience of everyday life] and social resources, between meaningful [valued] ways of life and the symbolic and material resources on which they depend, is mediated through markets.” Consumerism is a way of life that is basically a blend of high degree of material comfort that further stresses upon representational and sensitive meanings related to things like shopping and belongings.
United States is the leader in global consumerism today, but the singularity is not just limited to United States alone, as it is spread all over the globe today. A positive interpretation of consumerism denotes economic encouragement while enabling the liberties of the public for shaping their identities along with their subcultures. On the contrary, there is also widespread criticism about consumerism according to which it is assumed to be an influenced and ecologically disparaging practice that leads to excessive amounts of products being manufactured, advertised in the market, traded, and also wasted.
Consumerism is not limited to just independent and individual consumers who spend excessive amounts of money on shopping for products, but also comprises of a complex set of establishments and even unethical business practices that involves sophisticated technology and scientific advancement.
Globalization, movement and consumerism can be connected with the help of three important aspects, as listed under:
1) Global access to both resources as well as markets.
2) Production of massive number of products all over the world and their availability of the same to the global population, like never before.
3) Primary understanding of globalization and the contemporary world being based increasingly on the idea of “consumerism.” However, this notion seems to be undergoing a change gradually.
Cultural Brailing
Cultural Brailing is a term that was coined by Faith Popcorn, an American forecaster, a trend forecaster. The technique of cultural brailing has been used extensively by Faith Popcorn since the 1980s for detecting as well as tracking changes occurring in the lifestyle of consumers globally.
Brailing basically means being excessively cautious and wary about every new development in all fields like one’s professions, civilizations, nations or businesses irrespective of people having true interest in such things or not knowing anything about them. “Brailing is all consuming and something that must be done all the time regardless of where you are or who you are with.”
Cultural brailing is to feel the bumps of culture everywhere and all over the world. Trend forecasting deals with understanding the consumers as well as to understand the ways in which organizations can be fed with information that would help them meet both their long terms as well as short term demands. For instance, if the case of the fashion industry is considered, the industry capitalizes on trend forecasting as it means observing the cultures and their transformations in a tireless manner and eventually absorbing the maximum possible. This is exactly cultural brailing in relation to the fashion industry.
Cultural brailing in the fashion industry is something wherein the industry tries to acquire the maximum possible information about the ongoing or upcoming trends in various cultures across the world and make the best out of such information by making products that suit the upcoming or ongoing trend in a particular culture and make it suitable to a different culture all over the world. Such kind of trend forecasting helps the industry in predicting the tastes of the consumers globally and eventually predict the trend that would become a reality in a period of two to three years from the time of forecast by way of putting the gather information together.
Every business or industry in this world essentially comprises of four different categories or types, in terms of current and future trends of the industry. They are namely
Early adopters
Early majority
Late majority, and
Lagers
Amazon is a great example of the early adopters’ category as the company’s growth is based predominantly on innovation in the field of benchmarking and trend forecasting. On the contrary, companies like HMV and Woolworths can be categorized as being late majority or lagers as these companies have visually seen their market share being taken away by late entrants into the industry like Netflix.
The buying behavior in the Fashion industry is based more upon individualistic gender based preferences and choices. The preferences related to clothing and the relevant choices might vary from one individual to another in terms of the choice of color, the brand, fashion, as well as the material from which the apparel is made from.
Retail Landscape
Quite a few global manufacturers of designer fashion clothing today, are striving extremely hard to connect intercultural variances while also creating cultural consonance across various consumer segments. This is done on several contexts, which basically help in provoking the consumers’ interest in fashion clothing. The development of a marketing strategy that is more customer centric and focuses on the various attributes of self-esteem of the consumers are the modern day trend that today’s fashion manufacturing companies are using for boosting the purchase intentions of consumers towards fashion clothing.
A number of powerful and effective marketing mechanisms are being used these days by the fashion marketers. A few of them are fashion shows aired on television, advertisements related to fashion apparel, extensive displays within fashion retail stores, and also events related to fashion apparel in various shopping malls situated in urban areas.
Such powerful stimulants have known to have massive power of influence upon the transcontinental cosmopolitanism among global consumers. Such highly collaborative strategies used for the marketing of fashion clothing have proved to serve as a means of convergence between the conventional and contemporary values as well as lifestyles of consumers and eventually fashion manufacturers to create a standardized and uniform global consumer culture. The conventional method of using societal icons as the cultural drivers have now been replaced by global fashion players with flagship brands as a basis for product position and market segmentation.
Globalization in union with the growing competition world over and across all industry verticals, as well as extremely short product life cycles in the fashion retailing have resulted in disproportionate consumer behavior and the same is eventually posing numerous challenges for the fashion marketer, especially for the fashion industry players in regions like Mexico.
In order to successfully exist and grow in this particular industry, it is important that the fashion manufacturers as well as retailers of fashion develop and also leverage capabilities of their core marketing. The consumer market of the fashion industry has become increasingly diverse due to the existence of numerous designer brands, store brands, excessive personalization, increased advertising, as well as ethnicity in the world markets of fashion apparel. If the manufacturers of fashion apparel as well as the fashion retailers can successfully identify the preferences and choices of the target consumer group, they can successfully attract and sustain their customer base in the long run.
The intention to purchase a fashion clothing or a designer apparel in the minds of consumers is primarily inspired by the social contexts. The uniqueness and individuality featured by the fashion industry, like for instance brand reviews, celebrity endorsements etc., which continue to be unfailingly related to the emotional expressions of the consumers tends to play the most significant role in influencing the consumer buying behavior of fashion apparel.
Trend Forecasting in the Fashion Industry and its Significance
Fashion is basically a style that is prevalent and widespread in the current time period or is alternatively considered as a set of trends that have been widely accepted by several audience in various parts of the globe. However, the fact that is important to be borne in mind is that fashion in itself is not just a simple term or element. It is essentially a complicated notion stemming from the perspectives of psychological, sociological, cultural viewpoints.
Trends in the fashion industry are ideas related to style that are common to several famous or popular collections. They denote the basic course taken by fashion, at large. The predictors or trend forecasters of the fashion industry primarily are on the watch for issues related to styles that are prophetic in nature, ideas helping in capturing the mood of the current era as well as also signaling a new and innovative trend in the industry.
Predicting the future demand for specific styles, particular fabrics and colors form a crucial part of the fashion apparel industry. Fashion predictors as well as specialists in this filed starting watching out for new trends at least 2-3 years ahead in order to ascertain the universal strategies for each and every fashion season. As part of trend prediction, forecasters observe the various happenings in the market, lifestyles of the people and the way the same changes, cultural changes, and many more similar things.
Predicting the future trends is a crucial and significant activity of the fashion industry as it helps the industry players to ensure that the observation process associated with both the short and long term planning happens based on profound, balanced, coherent decision making and is not made out of publicity or momentary or temporary excitement. Trend prediction or trend forecast helps the fashion industry in bridging the gap between uncertain and incompatible signs and help the design team in taking preventive actions well in advance.
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