Study shows millennials are impervious to influencers when buying apparel, accessories

By

Obi Anyanwu

Published
Jan 26, 2017

Surveys and studies have found that Millennials buy luxury goods, spend more on experiences and, according to Bra Journey Insights, changed the way women buy bras. LIM College on Wednesday released a study, "Shopping Trends Among 18-35 Year-Olds," which found that millennials are also not influenced by the opinions of bloggers and vloggers.

 
The study, which was conducted by LIM College professors Robert Conrad, MBA and Kenneth M. Kambara, Ph.D., found that only 7% of the 665 millennials surveyed are influenced by bloggers and vloggers for apparel and accessories purchases.
 
Professor Conrad said that the product’s uniqueness is more important than the brand itself and ‘influencer’ opinions.

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“Our study is very revealing about what these millennials’ purchase drivers are and how the fashion industry is executing on them,” Conrad said. “Each views her or himself as a ‘market of one’ and wants to have something exclusive and not readily available to others. They want to put their look together in their own original, authentic way.”
 
45% of respondents “strongly agreed” that online retailers encourage loyalty compared to only 30% for department and specialty stores.
 
Professor Conrad added, “The fact is, stores are closing. This helps explain why. Because millennials’ attention spans are much shorter, stores need to change product assortments more quickly. E-commerce allows for this, but brick-and-mortar can’t do it quickly enough.”
 
Dr. Kambara congratulated Zara as one of the brands that offers new and different products that are not readily available.
 
He said, “The fashion industry is approaching millennials with old habits that won’t work. Fashion brands are offering much of the same products and too much of them. Then they use advertising and ‘influencers,’ — social media and paid bloggers and vloggers — to tell these increasingly discriminating millennials to buy what they are pushing. While customer satisfaction, perceived price-value ratio and the overall shopping experience drive choice, for millennials the fundamental differentiating factor is product uniqueness and innovation.”
 
Dr. Kambara added that brand names ranked lowest in “determining value.” “Millennial consumers don’t want to see the sweater they just purchased on 10 other people,” he said.