Online Fashion Retailing: Analysis and Evaluation of ASOS Digital Retail Presence

This report focuses on the analysis and evaluation of ASOS's digital retail presence in the online fashion retailing industry. It discusses the importance of customer insight from keyword research and explores the customer journey through the online fashion retailer site. The report also recommends two online tools that ASOS can use to enhance its online presence.

Online Fashion
Retailing

TABLE OF CONTENTS
INTRODUCTION...........................................................................................................................1
Background of the company.......................................................................................................1
Analysis and evaluation of the ASOS digital Retail presence....................................................1
Importance of customer insight from keywords research ..........................................................3
Customer Journey through the online fashion retailer site..............................................................4
Recommending the two online tools not currently used by ASOS.............................................9
Digital fashion retailing legislation................................................................................................10
CONCLUSION..............................................................................................................................11
REFERENCES..............................................................................................................................12
Books and Journals...................................................................................................................12
Online .......................................................................................................................................12

INTRODUCTION
In the present era of modernisation and globalisation, individuals are laying their major
concern over maintaining a standard and premium life. Their attributes, tastes and preferences
are changing over a period of time. They are now changing their track of shopping from
traditional mode to online shopping. With this perspective, the mechanism of online fashion
retailing is showing a rapid increase. Currently, almost more than half of the population now
prefers to shop online for clothes and other accessories (McCormick and Livett, 2012). The
online fashion retailing segment has made tremendous profit by gaining £5.6bn in 2014. The
concerned sector is now predicted to increase by 41% by 2018. A huge proportion of consumers
use wide range of online channels for the purpose of shopping, therefore an integrated
experience of retail is very significant. In this context, the retailers are acknowledging the crucial
significance of click and shop as it effectively combines the experience of in-store retail along
with shopping online thereby gaining a strong brand recognition and loyalty across the world.
With regard to this context, the report will highlight the crucial aspects of online fashion retailing
of ASOS in a very effective and significant way. The report will focus on Men's clothing
segment along with its analysis with respect to its digital Retail presence in the increasingly
competitive corporate environment.
Background of the company
ASOS is one of the leading British beauty and online fashion store headquartered in
London, England. The company has its target market of young adults. It deals in selling over 850
brands along with its own range of exotic clothing and other accessories (Moore, Doherty and
Doyle, 2010). The major products which the said company renders to its target market include
menswear, womenswear, footwear, beauty products and fascinating jewellery items. The
company's websites targets the market of UK, USA, Australia, Germany, France, China, Italy,
Spain and Russia and gains maximum share in the market by attaining the highest level of
customer satisfaction through its premium and impressive customer services.
Analysis and evaluation of the ASOS digital Retail presence
The role of online marketing or digital marketing is showing a tremendous increase in the
present hyper competitive environment. It is one of the most impressively used channel for
shopping online. This mode of shopping is driving a major change in the retail industries. The
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retail stores are now changing their overall mindset and are significantly focusing on expanding
their business activities by the means of online sales. The fashion retailers are on a great threat
and to overcome such threat, the concerned retailer sector is laying its utmost attention over
conducting its business by rendering the premium services through online market. With regard to
this context, the online fashion retailing is growing immensely and is acquiring a significant
market share in the tough trading corporate environment (Jones and Kim 2010).
ASOS is one of the leading online fashion retail company in UK. Currently, a study
reveals the fact that the stated entity is experiencing slow and poor market growth in the vast and
volatile international market. The company's share is dropped by 8% and its overall revenue and
income generation has experienced a sudden downturn. With this context, ASOS has laid its
prime concern over making huge and significant investment in new and innovative technologies
to enhance its customer experience and maximise its total sales revenue (Pentecost and Andrews,
2010). For this purpose, the company has undertaken a cross-channel plan of approach with a
view to promote its brand along with a wide range of its fascinating products across the globe.
The major digital channels which ASOS is using are explained as follows-
Twitter- The company has multiple profiles on Twitter which renders impressive customer
support, trend updates to a large crowd of its core audience. By tweeting many times within a
day, ASOS uses a variety of effective combination of men's clothing and accessories items which
highly satisfies the needs and demands of its main customers (Xia and et.al., 2012). The said
entity also offers exclusive discounts and unique content to its followers which they usually don't
get on any other channels.
Google+ - ASOS has created exotic features for its products and services which are daily posted
on Google+. This enables the organisation to share its products by showing an impressive
'human side' towards its brand.
Facebook- The entity alters its content on Facebook to catch the attention of its users in a very
significant way.
Therefore, by altering the content of its products and items across the different digital
channels, ASOS is able to make a significant share in the international market by gaining a
strong brand recognition across different corners of the world (Choi and Chiu, 2012).
Apart from this, the core competitors of ASOS include Bohoo, N Brown, Marks and
Spencer, New Look and Tesco. The concerned online fashion retail company is having a
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significant threat from its core competitors. Therefore, with a view to overcome its threat, ASOS
focuses on adopting competitive price strategies thereby offering attractive discounts to beat the
line of its core competitors in an effective and appropriate way.
Importance of customer insight from keywords research
When an individual wants to search a particular thing online by using different search
engines like Google, Bing etc. they seek to type certain words into the search column to expect
the relevant results which they need. This method is known as keywords research. It therefore
becomes important for online retail companies to use appropriate and suitable keywords within
its site's content with a view to reach to large crowd of audience around the world. This is one of
the most valuable thing of conducting the business operations via online channels (Diamond,
Diamond and Litt, 2015). Researching the correct keywords helps the company to gain detailed
understanding of the personal phrases which its customers use the most. It also benefits the entity
to gain appropriate knowledge regarding the types of customers it uses to have in large.
With regard to the present case scenario, ASOS lays its focus on effectively analysing
and evaluating the keywords research in a very significant way. It has a separate agency which
works for the company on its keyword research. Doing this helps the stated firm to recognise the
consumer insight and perception regarding the company's products and services. The major
keywords applied to ASOS for men's clothing segment includes Tartan, Leather, Black shirts\
White shirts, sweatshirts/leather jackets, Bomber jackets-quilted and leather, T-shirts/vests-
slogan, long line, graphic and oversized etc. All such keywords help the said entity to effectively
and impressively reaches the huge crowd of audience thereby acquiring immense market share
(Willems And et.al., 2011). The company chooses the best keywords by undertaking the
following steps in an effective and systematic manner-
 Analysing the local and monthly researches.
 Monitoring the relevant keyword ideas.
 Matching the keywords with the company's content.
By following the above discussed three main steps, ASOS is able to create and define a
prominent list of appropriate keywords for its campaign which helps it to gain the perception
level of its core customers in a very significant way. It helps the company to gain the acceptance
of its products from its customers and benefits it to reveal the hidden opportunities and strengths
in a significant and effective manner.
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Customer Journey through the online fashion retailer site
The online fashion retailer sites have increased in a considerable and significant rate in
the present hyper competitive global and technological environment. In the current era of
modernisation, a customer or an individual is never far away from tablet, phone screen or some
other technological or interactive tool. Fashion retailer is now not only confined to printed media
or physical outlets but has gained an open gate for expanding its business and experiencing the
leading heights of company's success through online marketing. Because of such factor,
organisations are becoming more innovative by harnessing immense digital technology to offer
customers with the same kind of fashion retail experience which they are expecting to enjoy.
In context with the present company, that is, ASOS, the company posts its advertisements
on all the major digital platforms which broadly includes Twitter, Google+, Facebook, Instagram
and Pinterest to market its products thereby reaching to a huge crowd of population in a very
significant way (Zhenxiang and Lijie, 2011). The customers are now having a changing mindset.
The old mindset of customers reflects the careless consumption habits whereas the new mindset
reflected the considered consumption habits in a highly effective way. The below diagram
clearly reflects the customers' mindset towards the online fashion retailing market segment in a
systematic and appropriate way-
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Besides such a changing mindset attributes of the consumers, the customers journey
through the online fashion retailer site is increasing at a rapid pace. As per the consumer research
survey conducted by Conlumino, it was revealed that more than half of the world's population
was using around two to three different channels for the purpose of online shopping. The overall
journey of consumers through such online fashion retailer site is explained with the help of
following figure-
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Illustration 1: Changing mindsets of the consumer in fashion
(Source : Barnes and Lea-Greenwood, 2010)

Illustration 2: Growth of online spend for fashion sector
(Source : Kawaf and Tagg, 2012 )
§
Besides this, ASOS lays its major concern over implementing consumer buying
behaviour theory in a systematic and appropriate way. With the help of such theory, the said
entity is effectively able to analyse and evaluate the consumer’s journey through its online
retailer site. The theory underlies the consumer's changing mindset towards shopping over the
period of time.
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By undertaking this theory, ASOS focuses on its two set of core consumers which either
possess a high involvement or low business involvement. For this purpose, the company uses
two set of consumers namely, complex buying behaviour customers and variety seeking
behaviour customers. The study now focuses on their journey through the online fashion retailer
site of ASOS. The customers in earlier times did not possess the trust, confidence, commitment
and loyalty towards the online products. With this fact, ASOS took into consideration the
product specification approach which enabled the customers to get detailed knowledge and
understanding of the products in a significant and effective way. For the customers who posses
complex buying behaviour, ASOS focuses to deal with effective and impressive promotional
strategies. The company uses social and digital media as on of the major ground to seek the
attention of large crowd of audience effectively (Ha and Stoel, 2012). It uses Twitter, Google+,
Facebook to gain the customers interest thereby detailing all the aspects of men's clothing, that
is, the size, colour, fabric, price etc. With the help of such product specification approach, the
cited firm was able to gain higher market share with great level of customer satisfaction and
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Illustration 3: Consumer buying behaviour theory
(Source: Bhardwaj and Fairhurst, 2010)

enjoyment. The customers were now showing an upward movement towards the online shopping
which helped ASOS to increase its sales revenue thereby gaining maximum profit and turnover.
For its another set of consumers that is customers having a behaviour of varieties, ASOS
lays its concern over rendering exotic and unique varieties to its huge crowd of target market.
For this purpose, the company uses online billboards as one of the essential online sales
promotional techniques (Brynjolfsson and Rahman, 2013). With this approach, the customers
were heavily and impressively attracted towards the brand which helped the concerned entity to
gain strong and positive brand recognition across the globe. A small glimpse of the customer's
journey through the online retailer site is listed below-
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From the above diagram it can be assessed that consumers have shown a rapid increase in
online shopping which is expected to move upward impressively in the future years.
Recommending the two online tools not currently used by ASOS
ASOS make effective use of social media tools such as Twitter, Facebook, Google+,
Instagram etc. to reach to a huge crowd of audience in a highly significant and appropriate way.
By using such effective online tools for its marketing, the company is impressively able to gain a
large and heavy share in the market thereby making a competitive and winning edge in the vast
international economies (10 Tools For Business Development and Relationship Management,
2011). However, besides attaining such a global exposure the company fails to beat its core line
of competitors which broadly includes Tesco, Marks and Spencer, New Look etc. All such
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Illustration 4: Customer's Journey through online retail websites
(Source : Caro and Gallien,, 2010)

companies uses social media to gain large scale public attraction thereby generating an immense
threat for ASOS (Fernie and Sparks, 2014). All of its competitors focus on using mobile
marketing services along with introducing mobile android apps in a significant and effective
manner. This benefits the crowd to gain a strong brand recognition of other companies thereby
resulting ASOS in failure.
With such a perspective, the concerned company is recommended to lay its significant
attention on using other exotic and fascinating online promotional tools to gain high market share
with relative market growth. Therefore, the company is advised to post banners on third party
websites and uses video posting in order to seek the interest, preference and customer attention in
a very effective and significant way. The detailed analysis of such online promotional tools along
with the factors which bring tremendous success and benefits to the company is explained as
follows-
Posting banners on third party websites- With a view to gain a large market share in its men's
clothing segment, ASOS lays its concern over promoting its products and items in a very
impressive way. For this purpose, the concerned company focuses on posting banners on third
party websites which helps it to reach to huge crowd of population in a significant and effective
way. The said online retail group posts effective and impressive advertisements on the home
page of other websites which enables the consumers to directly click on that advertisement and
reach to the home page of ASOS and select the clothing and other accessories as per the needs
and requirement of an individual (Magrath and McCormick, 2013). The said entity also mention
all the details regarding the men's clothing products that is the maximum number of stock
available, size of the material, its fabric, colour, price, vat charges etc. which provides
accessibility and comfort to its core audience and helps them to develop a strong sense of brand
loyalty, commitment and confidence in a very significant way.
Video posting- The concept of video posting is new which will help the company to gain
maximum level of attention for its concerned products and services. Video posting generally
refers to the criteria of uploading a prominent and impressive video of the company's product in
its official website to gain the attraction of huge crowd of masses in a very significant and
effective way. Therefore, with regard to the present case scenario, ASOS is highly recommended
adopting such an innovative and differentiated online promotional tools to expand its market
within the vast international economies (Blázquez, 2014). By uploading an exotic and attractive
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posts in its official website, the said entity with no doubt would be able to gain maximum
benefits which in turn will allow it to maximise its overall sales revenue thereby multiplying its
profit margin ratio. Apart from this, with the help of posting the video of its major products in
you-tube and other official websites, the company would be able to gain a strong and positive
brand recognition in the increasingly competitive global environment. Furthermore, it will help
the said entity to attain an exotic and fascinating global exposure thereby gaining the highest
public satisfaction and enjoyment (Lee, Youn and Lee, 2012). Besides posting its video in many
websites, the company should also take into consideration, the posting of videos which are
ethical and seeks to influence the interest, taste and preferences of its customers in a highly
effective and impressive manner.
Digital fashion retailing legislation
The online fashion retailing companies should lay their prominent focus on its legal and
regulatory framework. This is one of the crucial factor which allows its customers to develop a
strong sense of trust, loyalty and confidence towards its brand. With a view to gain this
objective, ASOS focuses to maintain a high level of data security in a very effective and
significant way. The company maintains proper security of its client's data along with the
customer transaction process. Apart from this, ASOS develops proper licensing arrangements in
order to build strong and positive relationships with its target customers. Furthermore, the
concept of antitrust applicable to online retailers and brands helps ASOS to identify and
determine the type of business conduct that is whether a horizontal or vertical conduct of
business activities is suitable for its overall organisational structure (Castelli and Brun, 2010).
Besides all such legislation, the company very effectively focuses on posting ethical and proper
advertisements regarding its products and services in an impressive and appropriate way. It
avoids false advertising phenomenon which helps the concerned entity to avoid the interference
of government and judicial legislation within its framework thereby gaining maximum trust and
loyalty from its core customers. ASOS also takes into account the labour and employment act
which benefits the organisation to address all the fundamental and ethical issues significantly
related to wages and working hours, working conditions and the other related issues. In addition,
the rights of publicity is also viewed as one of the major legislative activity by ASOS which
assist the company to address the issues and rights arising within the online fashion retail market
segment (Havice, 2016).
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CONCLUSION
From the above report, it can be concluded that online fashion retailing is growing at a
rapid speed and is expected to further increase in the same manner. The tastes and buying habits
of the consumers have shown a rapid change by shifting immensely from traditional buying
approach to modern buying approach. Taking all such perspectives in mind, ASOS came with all
the innovative and exotic ideas to gain a prominent and competitive market share in the vast
international economies. The report has effectively helped to gain detailed knowledge regarding
the company's digital retail presence along with the evaluation of the significance of customer
insight from the organisation's keywords research.
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REFERENCES
Books and Journals
Barnes, L. and Lea-Greenwood, G., 2010. Fast fashion in the retail store environment.
International Journal of Retail & Distribution Management. 38(10). pp.760-772.
Bhardwaj, V. and Fairhurst, A., 2010. Fast fashion: response to changes in the fashion industry.
The International Review of Retail, Distribution and Consumer Research. 20(1). pp.165-
173.
Blázquez, M., 2014. Fashion shopping in multichannel retail: The role of technology in
enhancing the customer experience. International Journal of Electronic Commerce.
18(4). pp.97-116.
Brynjolfsson, E., Hu, Y.J. and Rahman, M.S., 2013. Competing in the age of omnichannel
retailing. MIT Sloan Management Review. 54(4). p.23.
Caro, F. and Gallien, J., 2010. Inventory management of a fast-fashion retail network.
Operations Research. 58(2). pp.257-273.
Castelli, C.M. and Brun, A., 2010. Alignment of retail channels in the fashion supply chain: An
empirical study of Italian fashion retailers. International Journal of Retail & Distribution
Management. 38(1). pp.24-44.
Choi, T.M. and Chiu, C.H., 2012. Mean-downside-risk and mean-variance newsvendor models:
Implications for sustainable fashion retailing.International Journal of Production
Economics. 135(2). pp.552-560.
Diamond, J., Diamond, E. and Litt, S., 2015. Fashion retailing: a multi-channel approach.
Bloomsbury Publishing USA.
Fernie, J. and Sparks, L., 2014. Logistics and retail management: emerging issues and new
challenges in the retail supply chain. Kogan Page Publishers.
Ha, S. and Stoel, L., 2012. Online apparel retailing: roles of e-shopping quality and experiential
e-shopping motives. Journal of Service Managemen. 23(2). pp.197-215.
Jones, C. and Kim, S., 2010. Influences of retail brand trust, off‐line patronage, clothing
involvement and website quality on online apparel shopping intention. International
Journal of Consumer Studies. 34(6). pp.627-637.
Kawaf, F. and Tagg, S., 2012. Online shopping environments in fashion shopping: An SOR
based review. The Marketing Review. 12(2). pp.161-180.
Lee, N., Choi, Y.J., Youn, C. and Lee, Y., 2012. Does green fashion retailing make consumers
more eco-friendly? The influence of green fashion products and campaigns on green
consciousness and behavior. Clothing and Textiles Research Journal. 30(1). pp.67-82.
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Magrath, V. and McCormick, H., 2013. Marketing design elements of mobile fashion retail apps.
Journal of Fashion Marketing and Management: An International Journal. 17(1).
pp.115-134.
McCormick, H. and Livett, C., 2012. Analysing the influence of the presentation of fashion
garments on young consumers' online behaviour.Journal of Fashion Marketing and
Management: An International Journal. 16(1). pp.21-41.
Moore, C.M., Doherty, A.M. and Doyle, S.A., 2010. Flagship stores as a market entry method:
the perspective of luxury fashion retailing. European Journal of Marketing. 44(1/2).
pp.139-161.
Pentecost, R. and Andrews, L., 2010. Fashion retailing and the bottom line: The effects of
generational cohorts, gender, fashion fanship, attitudes and impulse buying on fashion
expenditure. Journal of Retailing and Consumer Services. 17(1). pp.43-52.
Willems, K. And et.al., 2011. Fashion store personality: Scale development and relation to self-
congruity theory.Journal of Global Fashion Marketing. 2(2). pp.55-65.
Xia, M., and et.al., 2012. Fashion retailing forecasting based on extreme learning machine with
adaptive metrics of inputs.Knowledge-Based Systems. 36, pp.253-259.
Zhenxiang, W. and Lijie, Z., 2011. Case study of online retailing fast fashion industry.
International Journal of e-Education, e-Business, e-Management and e-Learning. 1(3).
p.195.
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Havice, J., 2016. A Step By Step Guide To Building Customer Journey Maps. [PDF]. Available through:
<http://conversionxl.com/customer-journey-maps-better-website-retention/>. [Accessed
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