Insight of the Week: Finding the Fashion Followers

With New York and London seeing their respective Fashion Weeks next month and fashion representing a fast changing and high-spend sector, it is timely to examine those consumers for whom fashion is a big part of their lives. Latest data from Kantar Media’s Republic of Ireland TGI study into consumer behaviour and characteristics reveals that 29% of adults (1 million people) say that they like to keep up with the latest fashions. This compares to 23% of adults in Great Britain and 29% in Northern Ireland.

In the Republic of Ireland the demographic skew of these fashion followers is young and female. 36% of fashion lovers are men and 63% women, whilst 15-24 year olds are 52% more likely than the average adult to be in this group.

Fashion followers are not only more likely to wish to make a statement with their appearance, but they are also willing to splash out to make this happen. They are twice as likely to wish to stand out in a crowd and 54% more likely to believe that being beautiful means asserting their personality and difference. However, they are also 97% more likely to say they spend a lot of money on toiletries and cosmetics for personal use, 96% more likely to state they can’t resist expensive perfume/aftershave and 81% more likely to admit that they have expensive tastes.

In terms of which media can efficiently engage these fashion lovers, sponsorship is potentially very effective. They are over twice as likely as the average adult to say that they tend to buy products from companies who sponsor TV programmes, similarly more likely to buy from companies who sponsor exhibitions or music events and twice as likely to buy from companies who sponsor radio programmes.

Beyond sponsorship, they are also 90% more likely to claim they cannot resist buying magazines, 84% more likely to be willing to pay to access content on magazine websites and 82% more likely to agree that pop-up ads help them to find interesting things on the internet.