Revitalizing Premium Womenswear Stores: Experience-Centric Strategies for China's Millennial Female Consumers

Abstract

Background: Due to the shift in consumer behavior towards minimizing social contact established during the pandemic, compounded by the lingering economic downturn and the typically higher price points associated with physical stores compared to online channels, the status of fashion brand stores has been significantly undermined.  due to post-pandemic economic downturn, consumers began to reduce or refuse to shop in physical stores, this also has accelerated the development of e-commerce. Therefore, retailers need to respond to people’s perpetual shift to online shopping. And if the economic recession continues, the recovery momentum of brand physical stores will continue to be sluggish. This paper aims to provide guidelines on how premium womenswear brands can drive more millennial female Chinese customers into their retail space in China, especially after Covid-19 and the rise of online shopping. This paper analyses and discusses the data and case studies in six related market intelligence reports through secondary research. Although these reports have different investigation directions, they all add to the examination inquiries of this paper. The reports incorporate quantitative and subjective examinations, which can cross-supplement the information and data required by this paper. The research results of this paper show that hedonism and in-person experience are the main motivations for customers to go to physical stores, which cannot be replaced by online shopping, and most retailers also have invested in customer experience and digital retail. Research shows that high-quality customer experience can attract and retain customers and bring profits. Therefore, optimizing the customer experience of physical stores is the best approach for premium womenswear brands to attract consumers to physical stores after the COVID-19, which is also the author's recommendation to premium womenswear brands.