The Challenges of Digital Transformation for Fast-Fashion Brands: A Proposal for an Operational Tool to Measure Omni-Channel Integration

With the rise of mobile technologies and social networks, a new, growing segment of smarter, digitally-connected, price-minded consumers has emerged. These new consumers use multiple shopping channels to obtain the product or service they want, at the right time and at the desired price. This impact of digital transformation on retailing customers is particularly acute in the case of fast-fashion brands, and is forcing them to move from a multi-channel paradigm into an omni-channel one. In this new omni-channel context, the different channels fashion brands use tend to interact with each other, as they are simultaneously and indistinctly used by customers in any phase of the purchasing process, from browsing to point of sale and beyond. Furthermore, omni-shopping customers expect consistency and timeliness across both online and offline channels in terms of a seamless customer experience. They want to engage in a personal conversation with fashion brands through a flux of inadvertent and intentional interactions, that combine instrumental and expressive, individual and community dimensions, across a diversity of channels and touch points. This paper identifies the main challenges that fast-fashion retailers face when trying to turn the combination of multiple channels into truly integrated omni-channel strategies, and proposes a simple operational tool to assess the extent to which fast fashion companies are behaving under an omni-channel paradigm from the point of view of the consumer doing a purchase.