Fashion and tech now intertwined, researcher argues

Fashion is discovered on runways, store home windows and the accounts of social media influencers. Till lately, Varun Grover, Distinguished Professor on the Sam M. Walton Faculty of Enterprise, and different info methods researchers had thought-about style and expertise uncomfortable bedfellows.

“More often than not once we discuss expertise, we’re speaking about utility,” stated Grover, who additionally holds the George M. and Boyce W. Billingsley Endowed Chair in Info Methods.

At the moment, when TikTok, Apple Watches and VR headsets form tradition, nonetheless, style and shopper expertise are intertwined.

In a paper revealed in Info Methods Analysis, Grover breaks down how IT turns into trendy, what makes IT style totally different and how style influences a shopper’s determination to purchase a brand new system.

The ever-shrinking dimension of electronics has made style a extra essential think about IT. At the moment we are able to maintain a robust laptop in our hand or put on one on our wrist. The IT we stock round can sign that we contemplate ourselves a member of an in-group. The tech we purchase will also be a type of self-expression.

“This marriage of utility and aesthetics is exclusive right this moment,” Grover stated.

Demand for novelty

“You can not have a expertise that is trendy except it has one thing novel in it,” Grover stated.

Novelty has at all times been a part of style. However with expertise, the novelty might come from each the design and the utility. A tool might turn into trendy as a result of it does one thing higher or totally different than what got here earlier than.

In contrast to the life cycle of a standard product, in style the preliminary progress is explosive, attracting consideration and turning into a social phenomenon. When the expansion ends, the merchandise is “out of style.”

The important thing discovering is that buyers see style on the societal degree when it’s extensively adopted and embraced by folks with status and affect, like actors, on-line influencers or different elites. In addition they see it on the particular person degree when it suits their self-image.

The winds of fashions

Grover and his co-authors confirmed that style influences attitudes towards shopper IT by means of a survey with greater than 200 contributors. They even discovered that when folks determine to undertake a brand new expertise, whether it is trendy, then the system’s utility issues much less.

“There’s a phase of society that may be very delicate to style. So optimizing on utility and sub-optimizing on aesthetics will most likely not maximize your market penetration,” Grover stated.

Not all shopper applied sciences may be trendy. Corporations would possibly determine that specializing in utility, even when it results in a bulkier or much less elegant system, is the best strategy.

An organization can use social media, influencer campaigns and different promotions to sway shoppers. However style is fickle. No enterprise can assure an IT product will catch hearth with clients.

“Issues can go viral or not go viral, and the corporate does not have direct management over that,” Grover stated. “And corporations wish to be accountable for their merchandise and how they will be obtained available in the market.”