The Fashionable Consumer

Re­searchers have found that test sub­jects that wear a lab coat when they per­form acts of dex­ter­i­ty work in a much more pre­cise and at­ten­tive way than the test sub­jects that wear paint­ing over­alls. This is prob­a­bly be­cause the lab coat and paint­ing over­alls are as­so­ci­at­ed with dif­fer­ent char­ac­ter­is­tics. “En­clothed Cog­ni­tion” de­scribes the in­flu­ence that cloth­ing can have on the wearer’s psy­che. Two fac­tors play a role here: the sym­bol­ic sig­nif­i­cance of the cloth­ing and the phys­i­cal ex­pe­ri­ence of wear­ing the clothes. If there were a world­wide “En­clothed Cog­ni­tion” day, it would sure­ly be Hallowe’en. Hallowe’en is just around the cor­ner and lets peo­ple of all ages slip in­to a dif­fer­ent role for a night. But what if you dress like a phar­ma­cist every day? Will you be­come more trust­wor­thy with time or does the ef­fect be­come weak­er? Ev­i­dent­ly, a per­son us­es their ap­pear­ance to de­ter­mine which val­ues one in­ter­nalis­es and which val­ues one would like to ex­press phys­i­cal­ly.

Cloth­ing and com­pa­nies

Clothes make a vi­su­al state­ment, and the pub­lic are more im­age-hun­gry than ever in today’s world of mass me­dia. But what does this mean for com­pa­nies? It is of the high­est im­por­tance for a com­pa­ny to send the right mes­sage with the per­fect on­line pres­ence. This al­so re­quires a well-thought-out on­line mar­ket­ing strat­e­gy that match­es the company’s “style” and shows in­tu­ition for the lat­est trends. As every­body wears clothes in pub­lic, no­body can es­cape the com­mu­nica­tive pow­er of fash­ion. As a com­pa­ny, we are try­ing to cre­ate the right mind­set with our “out­fit” (staff, on­line pres­ence, lo­ca­tion) on the one hand, and on the oth­er, we are try­ing to present our­selves to the out­side so that the cus­tomers see us the way we see our­selves. In turn, we want to be the item of cloth­ing for our cus­tomers that gives them a feel­ing of in­spi­ra­tion and mo­ti­va­tion and urges them to take ac­tion. The ques­tion now is how we can con­tribute to this to en­sure that we are “clothed” in the best way for our­selves and for oth­ers.

What we can learn from fash­ion

It is im­por­tant to know your own brand and the char­ac­ter­is­tics as­so­ci­at­ed with it. More­over, you should be able to ad­dress the customer’s aes­thet­ic, while at the same time, giv­ing them new in­sights. Try­ing new things in today’s con­stant­ly chang­ing times can be chal­leng­ing when you are try­ing to stand out. As a com­pa­ny, you shouldn’t sell a prod­uct, but rather the de­sire that the prod­uct will ful­fil, like many fash­ion hous­es do. With the lab coat, it’s about a sense of trust, and with us, it’s about the feel­ing of stim­u­la­tion that comes from a suc­cess­ful brand ex­pe­ri­ence.

The con­nec­tion be­tween fash­ion and a com­pa­ny is larg­er than we may have thought. We all agree that clothes con­nect, in­spire, and mo­ti­vate – just like us.