Shoppers hate to pay full price, but athleisure and trainers buck the trend

By

Sandra Halliday

Published
Oct 28, 2016

Consumers are happier to pay closer to full price for athleisure than for ‘regular’ footwear, tops, dresses or outerwear, new analysis based on three years of data shows.

Research specialist Fung Global Retail & Technology and tech firm First Insight analysed 57,000 womenswear products in 11 countries and across 10 categories in the period up to June 2016. Countries studied included China, France, Germany, the UK, the US, Mexico, Spain and Poland.

“On average, across all womenswear categories tested between January 2013 and June 2016, consumers were willing to pay only 76% of full price,” the report said. It added that this overall trend aligns with the “increasingly promotional nature of retail, the impact of multi-channel selling, and off-price retail and fast-fashion retail.”

The data showed that in the key regular tops and bottoms categories, shoppers were willing to pay between 74% to 79% of the full retail price. The means a £30 item would only be attractive at a price of around £23, making it more likely that the item would hang on the shelves around until it was marked down. This is despite prices of tops and bottoms having fallen between 13% and 14% in recent years.

But while in the athleisure category the same 74% figure showed up in the leggings sub category, for knitted bottoms it rose to 82%. And both of these figures are higher than in 2013, by 9% for knitted bottoms and by 12% for leggings.

Across all categories, the analysis showed items becoming attractive to shoppers at between 65% and 93% of full price with an average of 76%.

Footwear was among the lowest scoring categories with items only becoming attractive at 74% of their full price. But, in line with the trend towards paying more for athleisure, sports footwear sentiment has held up well. First Insight said that average prices for most of the sub categories in this area had risen in the past three years.

The researchers said: “We found that there is a persistent and significant gap between the planned MSRPs tested and the prices consumers are willing to pay. Consumers are more willing to accept price growth in athleisurewear and activewear than in other categories and are unwilling to pay top dollar for footwear.”