Study title

Focus group discussions with women in Manchester and Edinburgh on female consumer perceptions about online shopping for fashion, and product visualisation technology on shop websites. Participants discussed how they currently shop online and in shops and how they prefer to visualise items on shop websites. After showcasing novel visualisation technologies allowing shoppers to interact with models on the shop website and scrunching fabrics, participants discussed their views and preferences for such innovations allowing more visual and tactile interactions in online shopping.

This study aims to address the challenge of the lack of tactile input which currently characterises online fashion shopping, by developing existing applied research to make it more applicable to the UK fashion retail sector. The inability to touch products during the purchase decision-making process is one of the key challenges for fashion retailers. Product returns rates for fashion currently average 25 per cent and the abandoned shopping basket rate for online retail in the UK currently stands at around 65 per cent. The research objectives are: (1)to assess the application of a novel form of image interactivity technology in the fashion retail context. Specifically the research seeks to address the perceptual gap between digital and physical product evaluation both online and in the physical store environment via the use of novel touchscreen technology, developed by Heriot-Watt University; (2)to assess the potential of image interactivity technology in fulfilling consumers' utilitarian and hedonic online shopping motives; (3) to identify the barriers and facilitators of adoption by fashion retailers, with a focus on SMEs. The methodology will include the collection and analysis of quantitative data from retailer websites (Google analytics), supplemented by qualitative data gathered from interviews with retailers and focus groups with consumers.