Literature revie of success factors of ecommerce in fashion - Essay Example

There has been doubt of being able to sell clothes online however statistics demonstrate that the sale volume of clothing and footwear has been steadily increasing via the internet. (SPELL OUT IMRG THEN PUT IN PARENTHESIS IF APPLICABLE) (IMRG, YEAR) indicated an increase of fashion goods revenues of 30% in the year 2000. They estimated that in 2005, 24 million people would spend 1.6 billion online in September alone. (DID THEY REACH THAT ESTIMATE?) According to ebay (Morrel, 2006) they sell a piece of clothing per seven seconds on their site.

While TopShop´s website is the second largest outlet following Oxford Street Flag Shop store (Dudley, 2005). Online fashion, according to Ashworth et al. (YEAR) has been growing at an increasing rate of 9% in the United Kingdom (UK). It totalled 37 billion in 2004, whereas the book retail market was 3.62 billion (Mintel, YEAR). There is also an increase in consumer expenditures in the academic interest in fashion e-tailing. The interest is in consumer behaviour issues, such as, reasons why it may have lead consumers to purchase clothing online (Kim, YEAR) and the close outlook of cross channel shopping behaviours using catalogues and online (Lu, YEAR), and on consumer perceptions (KIM, YEAR).

Jang and Burns (2004) assert that online fashion retailers, generally fall into four categories. These are: virtual e-tailers, bricks and mortar retailers and catalogue companies that expand their operations to include online retailing, and multi channel retailers who sell their products in their stores through catalogues and online. While M & B (2004) (CHECK THIS SOURCE. IS THAT THE NAME?) offer online fashion retailers product focus and market positioning. This classification is based on a web survey in 2003 which includes products specialists or niche retailers with items such as maternity wear,