Worth Creation through Lifestyle Branding

Priyanka Sharma^*
*Correspondence: Priyanka Sharma, Department of textiles and clothing, Avinashilingam Institute for Home Science and Higher Education for Women, Coimbatore, India, Email:

Editorial

Lifestyle is a pervasive word in the textile and fashion industry and in academia. There is no consensus as to a unified, sustained theory of lifestyle branding and operationalization tools for such a brand strategy. However, the social media surge since 2013 has increased the need to understand how brands can interact with consumers lifestyles portrayed online. This article discusses theoretical underpinnings of ”lifestyle”, in order for Fashion and nonfashion brands to provide relevant “lifestyle” content and allow value-creation for niche consumer lifestyles.If you type “lifestyle fashion branding” in Google more than 60million results appear. It has been a buzzword in fashion media for the last fifteen years, but many in the textile and fashion industryconsider it is an overused word. The rise of social media platforms. since 2013, means that a wide array of consumer lifestyles isinstantly available for brands online. Lifestyle “showcases” are much more accessible than 50 years ago when market research had to be conducted in order to discover attitudes, interests and behaviors of different consumers.

However, all this big data -images or texts- are only useful forbrand strategy when relevant content for people’s lives is presented.Consumers live “fragments” of different lifestyles simultaneously and according to moments of the day, week, month, year, so it is essential to provide tailored content for each individual’s personal and social style, since “lifestyle” encompasses both dimensions. Various fashion platforms already successfully leverage specific content for niches. For instance, Yoox Net-a-porter launched a project titled “Hi_GuyZ!” focused on interests of Generation Z. It includes a section with a panel of state of mind/feelings composed of images, suggestions and words so that generation can get inspired and express culture and values.For brands, specifically non-fashion brands, entering the lifestyle terrain implies a higher competition level with any kind of self-expressive activity or self-expressive brand consumers adopt, so it is a harder challenge. Gonzalo Brujó, Global CEO at Interbrand claims we are moving towards a world of “geobrands” localized by region, city or by neighborhoods, so brands must search for their communities, listen to them and think in terms of “microsegments” . This overarching trends towards “communities of lifestyle” is evident in the surge of podcasts, specifically oriented towards “niches” for all kinds of tastes: fiction, humor, current news, drama, etc.and in video platforms such as TikTok. The streaming service Netflix in December 2017 revealed how it displays targeted artwork as backgrounds of film titles according to user’s viewing habits and preferences. This exemplifies how technological personalization and customization targeted at customer’s lifestyles is possible due to Internet and can be adopted by Fashion retail or wholesale brands by tracking customer profiles in brand apps, Instagram, or e-commerce websites, etc. The algorithm of technological platforms.