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Retail Intel is fascinated with how consumers think about and shop retail brands across all channels and types of retailing, from food to personal care, and from apparel to electronics — and everything in between and around. It is this burning desire to understand why some retailers are top-of-mind for consumers and others only arise as afterthoughts that has compelled us to step back and take a look at retail brand identity from the vantage point of that consumer. Using apparel as a launching pad for this Retail Intel study, we step outside the formal arena of brand management to explore the real reasons why consumers consider one retailer over another as their source for apparel.
We've been consistently interested in how consumers think about and shop for clothing, as a purchase that is often more significant than, say, typical CPG purchases. In a broad sense, we're interested in understanding how consumer lifestyles impact category preferences (in this case, the macro-category of apparel), as well as adapting retail design and execution (i.e., how a store should look and feel) in ways relevant to those lifestyles and category preferences. In this way, “shopper insights” are not just a narrow construct of what happens, immediately, in a store, but a larger and more coherent picture.
In 2008, we immersed ourselves into the world of clothing retail through an ethnographic shopper study in the Seattle area. To paint an accurate picture of how consumers construct brand identities, we interviewed a select group of shoppers extensively about their apparel shopping habits and experiences with various retailers, both in-store and out-of-store (e.g., their reactions to advertising). As part of this process we also paid visits to, among others, four well-known apparel brands, Abercrombie & Fitch, Old Navy, The Gap and Macy’s, using our Retail Audit methodology to capture key elements of shopper experience.
