Retailing activity - the online fashion challenge

The retail fashion market is big business in the UK - yet only 6% of sales are made by customers online (a much lower percentage than other consumer product markets such as electronics, music, games and books). Here is an article that could be used to support an interesting student challenge.

Most students will be more than familiar with the process of high street fashion shopping. So the two questions for them are:

(1) What is it about the physical process of shopping for clothes that makes it so preferable to buying online, and

(2) What could an e-tailer of fashion do using a web site to encourage a higher proportion of sales online.

A group exercise might identify a variety of methods / approached to enhancing the online fashion experience.

You could then compare the student responses with the information in this excellent article, which reports the results of some market research by online retail consultants: