Customer Experience in Fashion Retailing

Book excerpt: This text provides a holistic, integrated and in-depth perspective on the growing field of customer experience (CX), in a fashion context. Merging three core perspectives – academic, creative agency and retailer – the book takes a chronological approach to tracing the evolution of customer experience from the physical store, to omnichannel through channel convergence to consider the future of fashion retailing and customer experience. Beginning with the theoretical perspective, customer experience evolution in a fashion retail context is traced, considering the definition of customer experience, physical retail, the digitalisation of customer experience, omni-channel retail, in-store technologies and envisioning future retail CX. The retail creative agency perspective looks at how to locate and design customer experience journeys, designing harmonised CX across retail brand environments online and offline, responsible retailing and taking a human-centric approach to create visceral, wellbeing-based experiences. Finally, the retailer perspective explores real-life case studies of great customer experience from international brands, including Zara, Nike, Ecoalf, To Summer and Anya Hindmarch. Pedagogical features to aid understanding are built in throughout, including chapter objectives and reflective questions. Comprehensive and unique in its approach, Customer Experience in Fashion Retailing is recommended reading for students studying Fashion Retail Management, Customer Experience, Retail Design and Visual Merchandising, Fashion Psychology and Fashion Marketing.