Fashion Business Commons^™

An Exploration Of The Gaps Between Theory And Practice In Fashion Retail Segmentation: A Developmental Paper., Amanda Ratcliffe

Conference proceedings

This developmental paper reviews the literature on market segmentation in the context of the fashion retail sector with specific regard to the mature female consumer of fashion. The paper identifies two gaps between the academic theory and marketing practice: The first gap relates to the prevalence of developing complex, statistical models of segmentation in the literature, while there is a paucity of guidelines for practitioners to implement segmentation projects in practice.

The second gap exists in relation to the segmentation and targeting practices of fashion retailers who are still practising an “only youth = fashion” approach (Jackson and Shaw, 2009). …