Fashion Paving The Way For M-Commerce

Long gone are the days when you had to wait over six months to purchase the clothes being shown at runways all over the world. British luxury fashion retailer Burberry allowed its show to be streamed online and the collection was available to purchase straight after through their mobile website. Topshop too allowed its fans to view the fashion live on their website and to participate through social media, allowing them to shop the collection online as it reached the runway.

High Street brands are banking on the online trend, with European giant retailers Zara and H&M having their own mobile applications and many more having mobile-optimized websites. Mobile shopping apps are incredibly popular with British high street brands – Tosphop, Oasis, Office and Miss Selfridge all have their own. These applications and mobile websites are being launched in the face of changing shopping habits.

We previously looked at the latest MRG Capgemini Quarterly Benchmarking Index, which uncovered that, in Q2 2012, 11,6% of UK online purchases were being made on mobile devices. Earlier this summer ComScore noted that mobile shopping in the five leading European markets (France, Spain, Italy, Germany, UK) has doubled in one year and that one out of eight users in those markets has conducted a purchase through their mobile in the past year. In France, 10% of Ebay’s revenue comes from mobile shoppers and that is expected to grow to 25% in 2013.

Moreover, smartphone penetration is high in Europe, presenting enormous potential market for retailers.

These new innovative fashion shopping experiences seem to follow customers’ demands but not all sectors seem to be catching on. While mobile applications are common for high street fashion retailers in Europe, the same cannot be said for non-fashion merchants. Earlier this year we reported the need for British retailers to catch-up on mobile clients if they really want to benefit from the holiday season. While innovative retailers like Tesco or Pizza Express have already caught up on the trend and been very successful, many British high street brands remain stuck on their desktop users.