Factors influencing fashion in marketing
Celebrities
Nowadays, one of the most influential industries is the world of fashion. If a company wants to expose the word about new product, they need to try hard to get the product in the hands of opinion leaders who bring goods to the product by having special knowledge about it. The role of opinion leaders which can directly affects the innovation spreading by promoting new product interest as well as trial are important for a marketer. For the fashion industry, celebrities can be named as opinion leaders, which through them interpersonal communication about latest fashions are facilitated (Spolter & Thakkar, 2011). Celebrities showing off their individuality by wearing clothes that reflects their personality and style. Research conducted by Spolter and Thakkar (2011), their respondent says that celebrities want to stand out from each other and from the rest of us, thus they do not have to worry what others will think they are crazy for trying something new. Street wear or luxury fashion, what are the celebrities wear will always praised and greatly appreciated since it could become the next trend. A lot of styles worn by celebrities have greatly influenced the world of fashion. Another respondent stated that after watching an award show, she will spent the next few weeks taking with her friends about what all the celebrities were wearing, and they will go shopping and try to find similar things for themselves Spolter and Thakkar (2011). This shows why celebrity clothing has become a trend because clothes look great on them, and normal person want to look fabulous wearing them. This will have a great impact on the sales for the designer’s brand the celebrity is wearing. From the designer’s shoes, bags to a stylish dress people will give their best efforts to have their favorite celebrity’s look. There are also some people who will go to the extent of copying celebrity looks they saw in magazines, which is now very popular among ordinary people.
Cultures
Each country has its own culture. Culture is the sign of unique of particular ethnicity that can differentiate their lifestyles with others. According to John Storey (1997), culture can be defined as “how we live nature and it is the shared meanings we make and encounter in our lives.” Culture also can be defined as the system include beliefs, performance, rituals, lifestyle patterns, art forms, symbols, language, clothing, music, dance and other mode of human expressive, intellectual and communicative behaviour that is associated with a society during a particular time period (Danasi, 2008). Trends and lifestyle are strongly influenced by social-cultural changes. We believed that the cultures from all around the world are associated with fashion and individual lifestyle. People now easily affected by new comer, which is they want to try something new in their life especially the teenagers. Generally, people are interested to the particular culture which they seen it specialize on their eyes. They will try to develop or imitate the culture on themselves. So, trend analysis will look through the customer lifestyles and culture as the framework in understanding and interpreting the fashion changes. One of the main sources of culture affecting the fashion trend is popular or pop culture. Pop culture defined as mass culture (Storey 1997). Pop culture has strong influence which is they can be easily accepted, followed and appreciated by a huge amount of audience. According to Francesca, Tsz Yankong (2013), fashion was becoming more popular in 1970. The western popular culture influenced the local pop star in Hong Kong in terms of dressing such as the local pop star like Sam Hui, who was dressing like Beatles. One of the big influence culture in the world is Korean popular culture. It accepted by many countries such as Malaysia, Japan, Vietnam, and Philiphines. For example, demand of Korean product such as fashion is growing in Vietnam (West, 2008).
Media
Media also one of the most influencing factor in fashion marketing. Media is a powerful tool in which can be used to spread information faster and efficiently. In order to gain new information from variety of resources people will try their hard to be alert with their surroundings at all cost. In the fashion world, media will be the best platform for designers and marketers to approach their target customer to purchase their brand. The marketer often using the media in advertising their products, hoping that their target customer will aware of the existence of their product in the marketing world. Many fashion designers fighting for pages in famous magazine and runway space for fashion across the world. Models whose figure the designer clothes in magazine will be seen by readers, this will give a great impact towards the brand development. And designers who love creating couture designs for their celebrity friends, it is vice versa celebrities’ dawn the newest creations and push the sales for designers too. Especially, their celebrity friends appear in an award show on television which watched by thousand or more viewers. According to Francesca and Yan (2011), television is the most popular and influential medium in the world since 1980s. Nowadays, almost every household across the world own television, a person can easily watch fashion related show on TV at home and will absolutely carefully watched their favorite celebrity newest style. Seeing their favorite celebrity styles on television might influence one’s decision in purchasing certain brands product. Nevertheless, social media also useful in fashion industry. The social media slowly becomes the primary platform in marketing strategies. Internet user in the world has reached 2.27 billion in 2012, increasing more than 200 percent since 2000 (Internet World Status, 2012). Social media such as blogs, pins and boards, networking sites and traditional advertising have cause the businesses to change their marketing strategies. Social media has opened access to new potential buyers, expanded access to information about fashion and provided numerous new outlets for advertising.
