IDENTIFYING MY CONSUMER BASE/ AUDIENCE

When looking at the current consumer base for my business, I have identified that this group of consumers are members of Gen Z. With regards to how I have attracted my consumer base, I have built up a community over on TikTok of consumers within Gen Z that buy into vintage second hand fashion. I have identified that TikTok has been very useful in targeting and attracting a particular audience. Based on my content and how the algorithm works, my TikToks are being pushed out to the consumers that pay an interest in my business and the products I am selling, and when I post TikToks prior to a new drop, it generally creates more demand and hype for my drops as I am able to reach thousands of potential new customers. As a result of this community I have built, it appears that I have mainly built up a community of individuals that shop on Vinted, I have noticed that a lot of these consumers that view my TikToks have gone on to follow my Vinted. From this, I have also built up a community of returning customers who have loved my drops so much that they have returned to buy more.

In summary, TikTok has been a very useful tool in bringing in more traffic and attracting a particular audience to visit my shop where I sell my products. Through making TikToks for my business, I have learnt that the algorithm works by filtering content based on what users are interested in e.g. what videos they like and watch until the end, and they are fed more of that, so this is how I am able to reach a select audience of users who are interested in what I sell. On the previous page and the next pages, I have included some screenshots from my TikTok analytics to portray how TikTok has helped in gaining more traction and targeting specific audiences.

As mentioned in my research for the consumer case study, I envision my typical consumer to be a Gen Z member who has a preference for vintage second hand fashion and would prefer to spend time on resale sites or in charity shops instead of shopping on fast fashion sites.

From TikTok, I have noticed that it has become popular for Gen Zers to post their Vinted hauls and give advice to their audience of brands/keywords to search for when shopping on the app. The whole vintage second hand market has become a community of likeminded individuals, who have a habit of consuming too much clothes from Vinted because of the low price point.

With regards to my consumer base, I have noticed that TikTok if anything has helped grow my Vinted rather than my Depop in terms of bringing in more traffic, and I think that’s because Vinted has grown a lot in popularity and I think that it could be overtaking Depop in terms of popularity and success. Owing to this success, about 95% of my sales are made through Vinted. From my angle, it seems that Vinted has created a lot more demand and hype than Depop has and the majority of my customers from TikTok are visiting my Vinted page instead.

Moving forwards after university, I would like to move onto further identifying why my customers buy from my shop and what attracts them to the clothes I sell. it’s difficult to identify this but I think it will be relevant to understand this in order for me to see which direction I need to take my business in next.

From what I understand so far, I believe that the clothes I sell have some sort of hype and demand as I get a lot of positive feedback from my customers regarding these clothes, which shows that I have an understanding of this market and what consumers want to buy which is the difficult part.