Zara’s official website has a size estimation function, but can big data really allow you to buy clothes that fit you without trying them on?

Treating the symptoms rather than the root cause is better than nothing.

Not long ago, Zara was playing with a lot of new technologies in offline stores. In the past two days, Zara has been playing another round of “technological innovation” online. Similar to solving the long-criticized queuing problem in offline stores, Zara’s new technology wants to transform the core problem that has always existed in online sales: how to let customers buy a fit without trying it on. clothes?

If you visit the US version of Zara’s official website recently, you will find that each of the brand’s product details pages has a blue question mark and a clickable link that says “What’s my size?” – this is Zara’s throwaway solution. Before this, Zara, like most e-commerce companies, would only mark the model’s height as a reference for customers to choose sizes.

After clicking on the “What’s my size?” link, a questionnaire including height, weight, and clothing looseness preferences will be displayed in front of the customer. After customers answer this questionnaire, they will get a recommended size from the official website.

Recommendations are based on suggestions from customers with similar body shapes who have purchased the same product in the past, which is the “big data” accumulated by Zara. At the same time, the customer’s body data will also be recorded by the official website. On the one hand, it will be used to match all the products sold on the website and provide customers with long-term size recommendation services. On the other hand, this also increases the brand’s data reserve, making the website’s subsequent recommendations to other customers more accurate.

This reminds me of the questions often seen in the comment section of Taobao stores, similar to “I am XXXcm tall and weigh XXkg. Is it appropriate to wear size S?” This attempt by Zara should indeed make some customers less confused about size selection.

In fact, many fashion brands and fashion e-commerce companies have also tried to solve the problem of inappropriate sizes in online shopping. For example, Forever 21 has always clearly marked the model’s height and weight, three-dimensional data and the size worn to provide customers with as much reference information as possible. At present, this is also a method commonly used by most fashion e-commerce websites.

Another example comes from ASOS. As a professional e-commerce company, the brand has already formulated size charts for different markets. In addition to identifying model body information, it also provides video demonstrations to help customers make appropriate size choices.

However, the matter of “fitting” cannot be achieved simply through simple numerical calculations and reference to other people’s experiences. When commenting on Zara’s attempt, the fashion news website Teen Vogue mentioned that people’s body shapes can vary greatly at the same height and weight. This directly determines that Zara’s new service still faces difficulties in adjusting. result.

Of course, from Zara’s perspective, it may not expect the “What’s my size?” service to improve customers’ online shopping experience – in comparison, the effect of data collection should be more important to it. of.

As the business news media “Bloomberg Business Weekly” once wrote, the core reason why Zara has become the world’s most profitable fast fashion brand is that it makes good use of big data, so it can always launch products that are in line with trends faster and more accurately. Keep sales at a high level. Now, with the data of body shape information from customers, Zara can perform more in line with consumer tastes in terms of design and pattern making.

Source: Interface