With the goal of bringing the online shopping experience to the offline world, C&A Brazil has developed an initiative that leads Facebook interactions to the brick-and-mortar store, prompting shoppers to try-on and purchase products.

Key Data

Format: Department Store
Year Opened: 2012
Store Location: São Paulo (Brazil) and Facebook
Number of Stores: 1 (for the Fashion Like initiative)
Size of Store: 2,300 m2
Product Mix: Women’s Apparel (Mother’s Day Collection)

Market Opportunity

Today, one of retail’s big challenges is to bring the online shopping experience to the offline world in an integrated way. In Brazil, the Dutch retailer C&A launched the “Fashion Like” initiative, to become the women’s ally in the shopping process, helping them choose their clothing. As shoppers like to ask their friends´ opinions on their looks and purchases, why not bring Facebook users in to help? With that goal in mind, C&A sought to help their customers make the right choice for their Mother’s Day purchases.

The concept

A preview of ten items from C&A’s Mother’s Day collection became available on the company’s Facebook page. A “Like” button next to each item allowed Facebook users to choose which pieces were their favorites. Four days later these ten items were displayed on special hangers in C&A´s concept store in the Iguatemi São Paulo Shopping Center. A display integrated in each hanger showed the number of Facebook “Likes” received in real time.

This way, while consumers were in the store, they were able to see the popularity of each garment, replicating offline the concept of crowdsourcing, in which other consumers, their peers, help in the decision-making process.The profile of consumers visiting the C&A Fashion Like page is mainly female, 13-34 years old and from southern Brazil, the country’s most connected and wealthy region. With Fashion Like, C&A was able to promote its image of a trendy brand and edgy stores that are more upbeat than those of their competition.

Conclusions

The results C&A achieved with the promotion were astounding. In Brazil, C&A has become the biggest fashion brand on Facebook, adding 55,000 new fans as a direct result of this initiative and growing to almost 285,000 followers on the social network. In addition, there were more than 800 press mentions due to the Fashion Like initiative.
The selling rate of the collection that took part in the initiative was higher than average, not only in the Shopping Iguatemi store, but also in the other C&A stores. The promotion was a huge success that helped increase C&A’s media reach and bring awareness to its Mother’s Day collection.