How might we help people find the perfect size when online fashion shopping?
After some talks with strangers, friends and family members about their shopping experiences, I decided to narrow down my problem space to the online fashion shopping experiences. The reason why I chose it as my problem space is that I want to solve the real-life problem which I am actually interested in and also I am facing everyday life. I already found several important problems about online shopping experiences through the talks with people and some researches. And then trying historical thinking about my problem space helped me to find one specific problem, which is the apparel size problem.
Customer Side
Returning the item became one huge portion of problems since the world started online shopping. Online shopping is convenient for customers compared to in-store shopping because it can save time and energy. However, it has a limitation that customers cannot try the items before purchasing. So when they receive and open the items at home, they often are not satisfied with them for several main reasons: designs, colors, textures, conditions, and sizes. And the most common reason for the return among them is size. Apparel sizes are so different in each brand and even different in one brand according to the style (skinny/slim/standard/loose fit). And printing or ordering the return labels and dropping off the return items at the shipping store is really annoying to the customers. It actually makes them spend unnecessary energy and time. So if the customer can find the perfect size for them online it will improve their life.
Company Side
The return service is also a critical cost to the e-commerce fashion company. They should pay tons of money for the return shipping. And they should repackage them for the next purchase. Even some items cannot be sold again due to the damage from the returning process. All those are huge costs to the company. So I am sure if the company sells the perfect size to the customers it can reduce the company’s cost a lot.
