Shopping and Socialising: Online Journey to Product Evaluation and Purchase in Fashion Retail

The online customer journey is becoming essential for online retailers in the United Kingdom (UK) because more then 74% of adults purchased products and services online with clothes being the most popular online purchase in 2014 purchased by more then 49% of adults. Understanding this customer journey involves a deeper understanding of the customer activities between social networking platforms andecommerce sites. These social networks are interactional platforms through which customers interact with themselves and online retailers. Facebook in particular is the largest social networking platform in the world and therefore presenting an opportunity for online companies to interact with potential customers 24 hours a day and 365 days a year. Fashion retailers are both one of the largest sectors and also recognise the value of these social networking platforms. This research aims at exploring customer journey origination on social networking and finishing at the online fashion retailer. The main objective of this research is to explore customerinteractions (touchpoints) between social networks and ecommerce sites, and their contribution to this product evaluation phase. Consequently, to understand and explore this journey, we combined the theoretical foundation from the Socio-Technical Theory, linking users to online systems, with the Purchasing Decision model. We have developed an initial theoretical framework from the critical review of the literature. This framework has been extended further into an Ecommerce Customer Journey framework thanks to the primary data from 615 survey participants and 64 focus groups participants. This paper shares emerging key themes from our review of relevant ecommerce and social networking literature and linking this with an online survey and follow up focus groups exploring customer journey attitudes. The findings show the importance of creating this customer journey framework. Particularly, those aspects of external influence that help assure customers' understanding of product compatibility. Ultimately from the retailer perspective, this customer journey framework helpsdirectly in the development of online strategies.