This course provides an overview of the disciplines of textiles, fashion design, and merchandising, and how fashion business combines fashion marketing, retailing, social psychology, and information technology to understand consumer behavior and create successful strategies for the global marketplace.
The study of apparel is relatively familiar to us compared to other disciplines. However, this familiarity makes it difficult to explain to others what makes it unique. First of all, the English name of the Department of Apparel is “Dept of Textiles, Merchandising and Fashion Design”. As the name suggests, the department is divided into three main departments: Textile, Merchandising, and Fashion Design. When you hear the word “apparel,” you might think of the basic building blocks of clothing: materials, fibers, and design. However, just as important as these two majors is fashion business.
Fashion business is a subdiscipline of apparel that studies the relationship between fashion and consumers. Fashion business, or merchandising, tries to understand this relationship through various studies. One such study is fashion marketing. Fashion marketing understands fashion as a social phenomenon and the characteristics of consumer behavior towards fashion products. It is the study of the characteristics of fashion products, fashion trademarks, stores, etc. Specifically, students study theories on management techniques and fashion marketing strategies to maximize consumer satisfaction and improve management efficiency. Students study and analyze the success and failure cases of fashion companies to develop strategies. It studies effective global fashion marketing by investigating the cases of foreign fashion companies and analyzing their success factors, not limited to Korea. In particular, this course presents strategies for entering the global market by identifying cultural differences, fashion trends, and market size in each country.
Another important aspect of the fashion business is fashion retailing. This is not just a process of delivering products to consumers, but also involves in-depth research on how to provide consumers with a better shopping experience. For example, with the recent changes in consumer trends and the emergence of multiple purchase channels, fashion retailing explores how to maximize synergies between brick-and-mortar stores and online platforms. These changes show that fashion businesses are moving beyond simply selling clothes to continuously managing and developing relationships with consumers.
Understanding the distribution process of a product is as important as marketing, and fashion retailing is a field of study that aims to fulfill consumer satisfaction by understanding the specifics of retailing, including store types and characteristics, product planning, sales planning, and promotion planning. By investigating the different retail processes of each fashion product, products with similar characteristics are grouped together and studied as a group characteristic. This makes it easier to understand fashion and consumer behavior by category. It also allows us to understand the international distribution of fashion products, just like fashion marketing. By comparing this distribution structure with Korea’s distribution structure, you can see where your country’s distribution structure is in the world and reflect the globalization trend.
In addition to marketing and retailing, social psychology, the foundation of fashion business, is also a fundamental discipline for understanding the relationship between fashion and consumers. Social psychology of clothing is the study of how human behavior toward fashion is influenced and changed by the social and cultural context, and it also explores issues such as how people behave in relation to each other or for psychological satisfaction. Students learn about the motivation of human beings to wear clothing, social factors that influence social and cultural behavior, and psychological factors such as individual personality, values, attitudes, interests, and self-concept and their relevance to consumer behavior. It is a process of approaching consumers based on these factors. The end goal of the fashion business is focused on understanding consumer behavior. Therefore, fashion social psychology keeps up with the ever-changing fashions and identifies these trends to continue to meet the needs of consumers. Furthermore, it must reflect the modern trend of globalization.
In recent years, the fashion industry has evolved in various forms as the development of communication and IT technologies has led to the convergence of fashion and IT. Fashion business learns about the new channels of fashion distribution that have been diversified due to the development of IT, which is a new way to reach consumers. Recently, fashion companies have been utilizing various methods such as mobile shopping as well as online shopping. As a result, consumers have overwhelmingly more access to fashion than ever before. This ease of access is being utilized by electronic advertisements, fashion brand sound images, and online voting. As such, fashion businesses are exploring the myriad of strategies that arise from the marriage of fashion and IT.
As you can see, the fashion business is not just about selling fashion products to consumers. It is a detailed major that analyzes the process of how modern clothing is delivered from production to consumers, and provides an efficient approach by combining it with the discipline of management. In addition, fashion business is also studying environmental issues and ethical consumption for sustainable development in a rapidly changing global market. Minimizing the environmental impact of the fashion industry and recognizing the importance of ethical fashion, including fair trade fashion, are becoming important factors in the future of fashion business. We look forward to seeing what approaches the fashion industry will take as society changes.
