Fashion marketing

Abstract

This issue of Textile Progress provides a critical literature review and reflection relating to academic research in the field of fashion marketing. As the topic has not been reviewed before in Textile Progress, the paper takes the concepts of marketing and fashion in turn, exploring the literature from its origins to the present day and then considers how and why these two concepts have become merged to form a discrete academic research theme.

The exploration of marketing includes a discussion of the origins of the marketing concept which emerged in the 1950s alongside the growth in mass consumerism. The paper discusses the ubiquitous ‘marketing mix’ theory and explains how research in marketing shifted its focus in the 1980s and 1990s as new paradigms developed, and their applicability to the marketing concept were debated.

The concept of fashion is considered in terms of the context of historical research on fashion, for example, from the sociological or psychological perspective, and how the concept of fashion can be considered both academically and commercially.

The review then goes on to evaluate the concept of fashion marketing as a discrete area for academic research, arguing that it has distinct theoretical perspectives from those of pure ‘marketing’ or ‘fashion’ theory, and culminating in a review of contemporary research in the field of fashion marketing, specifically that relating to fast fashion and ‘digital’ fashion marketing.

Keywords:

• marketing
• fashion marketing
• fashion
• fast fashion
• digital fashion

Acknowledgements

The author would like to acknowledge the intellectual debate amongst fellow fashion marketing academics in the design and fashion business subject group in the School of Materials at the University of Manchester, Gaynor Lea-Greenwood of Manchester Metropolitan University, who helped to shape the ideas for this paper, and also the work of Samantha Lynch, PhD student in the School of Materials.