Abstract
The purpose of this study was to analyze fashion merchandising process, to apply customer information in merchandising process and to examine customer management strategies of fashion industry in on-line and off-line channel. In depth, face to face interviews with structured questionnaires were conducted with MD and customer managers from selected 4 brands, one from each categories of men's, women's, casual and sports wear. Key findings of the study were as follows: First, they followed fashion merchandising process of 18 steps and collected trend information and sales data were applied to planning, selling/promoting process to plan season concept, design, and promotion activity. Second, commonly applied customer information types in fashion merchandising process were all from indirect information collected from sales data and forecasting companies. However, casual and sports wear conducted consumer monitoring activity f3r collecting customer data directly from customer participation. Third, in off-line channel, customers are segmented by amount of purchase they make in a specific time period and all the categories show high interest in valuable customers. However, only men's and woman's wear conducted promotion activities for valuable customers as a differentiated marketing strategy. In on-line channel, companies were interacting with the customers through internet web site to determine their demands. In conclusion, this study has significance in that it propose the necessity and strategy of differentiated customer management approaching by analyzing and comparing fashion merchandising activity process cases.