India has emerged as one of the world’s fastest-growing fashion markets over the past few years. It is projected to grow at 15 per cent CAGR till 2022 and become a $102 billion market for apparel, as per a recent report.

Mobile platforms are expected to influence more than two-thirds of both apparel and fashion accessories purchases by 2022.

The growing penetration of the internet, social media and e-commerce is now providing the consumers in tier 2 cities and below, increased access to brands and products, says the ‘Eliminating Friction in Fashion Path to Purchase’ report by Facebook, KPMG and Nielsen.

New operating models such as omnichannel and assisted e-commerce could further fuel growth and adoption of online commerce.

The report aims to understand the reasons that lead to dropouts in the path to purchase of apparel and fashion accessories, referred to as ‘friction’, which may lead to potential loss of revenue for the brands.

With reduced attention span, increased connectivity and acceptance of new technology, consumers are demanding everything with limited effort at a click of a button and any change in the expectation can cause them to abandon the purchase journey.

The research indicates that in the apparel category, 19 per cent of consumers drop out due to friction, and more than two-thirds of this friction is caused by the media.

Facebook is expected to influence more than half of mobile-influenced purchases for both apparel and fashion accessories by 2022.

Additionally, mobile-enabled purchase journeys of apparel are 14 per cent shorter than offline journeys, while that of fashion accessories are 25 per cent shorter than offline, notes the report.

Mobile could help apparel brands to tap into potential sales opportunity of nearly $5 billion by reducing media friction.

A random listing study was conducted by Nielsen India on 3,000 respondents to understand the path to purchase and friction at different stages of the purchase journey, and the proportion of the population that falls at each stage of the journey.

A further deep-dive study was also conducted among 1,025 respondents in the fashion category across varied demographic and socio-economic groups.

KPMG in India also interacted with industry experts to obtain their perspective on the possible solutions to eliminate friction and improve conversion rates.