The Relevance of Visual Merchandising for Online Retailers

In response to consumer needs for online sensory experiences and ease of access to information, developments in online visual merchandising techniques can help to enhance the virtual environment for e-shopping. Online visual merchandising helps to reduce perceived risk for the consumer, so enabling Internet-based shopping to compete with-or to augment-traditional sales channels. The present analysis aims to test a hypothesized relationship between the visual merchandising techniques in use on those Web sites and the commercial success of fashion industry e-commerce sites (as measured by traffic data). The study uses content analysis to assess the visual merchandising techniques of 30 distribution companies in the clothing industry. On the basis of these findings, commercial enterprises of this kind using the online channel should be better able to understand the limitations and/or strengths of their current Web site, and to improve the effectiveness of their virtual environment for e-shopping.