• This Report covers how the fast fashion retail market has grown rapidly, and is seeing increasing competition drive greater innovation to capture customer interest.

• It investigates how consumers are becoming more demanding of product and service quality, as well as more individualistic in their tastes, and how retailers are responding to this shift in innovative new ways.

• It also looks at how important integration of online and offline channels has become in gaining consumer interest, offering value for money and improving customer experience.

• The Report also looks at different consumer groups, and how they buy different products and seek out different styles of clothes to make their own look.

• The Report also looks at what key factors motivate shoppers when they are looking for products, and what the key criteria are for their choice of fast fashion brand.

• Finally, the Report looks at consumer attitudes towards fast fashion, how they feel they are served well, and where retailers need to work harder to gain their loyalty.

For the purposes of this Report, Mintel has used the following definitions:

Fast fashion is a term used within the fashion retailing industry to define a specific group of fashion retailers that produce designs that reach stores quickly from initial seasonal catwalk shows so as to keep up with current fashion trends. This retail model emphasises optimising the supply chain so that new designs are manufactured and distributed quickly and inexpensively to provide a broad consumer base with new designs at affordable prices.

Retailers in this market typically sell through own-brand stores (including large flagship stores), in-store concessions in department stores and online, both through own-brand online stores and leading online shopping portals, such as Tmall, jd.com and Vipshop.

This kind of retail model is exemplified in China by brands such as Uniqlo, H&M, Zara, Metersbonwe, Mango, C&A, Abercrombie & Fitch and The Gap.