Firstly, we will be going to introduce the business, what procedures we did and analyze them. Afterwards, providing the company with new recommendations.
With a catalogue of 600.000 tempting objects, checked for 100% quality and authenticity makes this platform absolutely exclusive. All the items are chosen and authenticated by the experts in Paris. It’s a website for authenticated pre-owned luxury fashion.
The website was launched in Paris in October 2009, by Fanny Moizant, Sébastien Fabre, Sophie Hersen, Alexander Cognard, Henrique Fernandes and Christian Jorge. Fanny Moizant knew that people sold previous season clothes on their blogs but it didn’t rely on an online site that could guarantee the authenticity of the products and provide a fair price depending on their value and conditions. 8 years ago they launched the websites from their own houses and now they have 230 employees, offices in the biggest cities of the world and more than 6 million members in 50 countries. The site consistently uploads new items every week, and individuals connect with each other, making inquiries and arranging costs. It’s important that they make sure how they promote themselves, with advertisements on websites and magazines, social medias and pop-up stores.
Procedures :
By looking at different platforms and analyzing the reviews we realized that online review management is something very unique to the internet world. The word “online” makes it quite obvious. This strategy is crucial for a business like Vestiaire Collective. A business where most of the consumers pay a lot of attention to what other people, in the same situation, think about their company. Our job was then to analyse all of these informations, described as primary and secondary data. Online reviews can be either positive or negative but these vary from the kind of services the business gives. An online review is basically the consumer’s point of view of what kind of service he or she received.
“Users of the fashion shopping guide sites first search for product reviews by checking out the pictures and text of the reviews, the product ranking given by reviewers, and degree of concerns. Then they evaluate the usefulness of the review information together with their own considerations. If the review is useful, they may adopt the information and use it for making purchase decisions.” – Liu, Z., & Park, S. (2015, page 150). This shows how crucial online reviews are.
To begin our research with the company, we tried understanding what kind of website Vestiaire Collective was. We looked through the internet and looked through the basic reviews, that first appeared when you type “reviews for Vestiaire Collective”. Websites like Trustpilot or Sitejabber, are websites where we went deep in the subject. Collecting this range of data, also known as secondary data, was very important because it is what you read at first about the company and what everyone sees.
After collecting some reviews we obviously looked at the trustworthiness of the websites. For example, TrustPilot, it says on the front page : “trustpilot is the leading global online review platform”.
To be able to check the trustworthiness of the reviews on the internet surface we have made some researches by checking the business in several websites as we mentioned.
We then applied an online review strategy because it is essential for a company like theirs to know what consumers think of the business. Thus it was important for us to understand whether Vestiaire Collective, has an online review management strategy. Concerning primary data, we sent a survey to the company but we did not get further information. Our survey would of helped us get more information to get more into the details and understand what’s the company’s position in regard to reviews. Anyways what we personally found was already very helpful.
With many competitors like Vente privée, Vide dressing or even eBay but for the fashion industry, it is important that they know how to make the difference and stand out.
Our team connected all the informations and we proceeded in a very simple way and thereafter we made some conclusions about your company, which we are going to explain now.
On the bottom here, appears our survey, which we created all 4 of us.
Findings:
By collecting data regarding vestiaire collective`s online review strategy and as well information about online reviews in general some findings have been discovered.
First of all general data regarding online consumer-generated reviews will be presented.
According to Hyounae et al (2015), how a company handles complaints from customers online, can have an impact on customer satisfaction. If a customer is satisfied with the response that is given when contacting a company later the customer is more likely to give the company a higher rate therefore they will be more satisfied. Customers are allegedly more satisfied with the response if there is a personal dialogue between them, and the customer service. Company’s sales are affected by online reviews which has been studied in various reports.
It has been discussed that since companies nowadays use digital platforms increasingly in their marketing strategy, what is said online by customers has a bigger meaning for companies than ever before. It can have an effect on the sales elasticity, meaning the number of sales. (Floyd et al, 2014)
If sales increase or decrease depends on what characteristics the reviews hold because that will influence how the reader perceives the information. The reader can after reviewing a review, accept what is written and thereby consider it trustworthy.
To what extent readers trust online reviews has been connected to a couple of factors or in fact some characteristics of the reviewers profile. The characteristics are reputation, involvement, competence, experience, positivity and sociability. (Banerjee et al, 2017).
According to Aerts et al (2017) prior reviews can influence how the next writer phrases his review. The language that is used by one in a written review has been studied to have an effect on the language that other writers use. Further on, if there are multiple reviews that are similar to each other this could affect how readers interpreters the review criteria and thereby make decision based on false information.
Now, let’s consider online consumer-generated reviews for Vestiaire Collective.
Collecting relevant information regarding Vestiaire Collective’s online reviews, many observations have been carried out. The findings will be presented below. Since the website itself does not offer customers to review, sites like trustpilot have been used in this report to collect recurrent phenomena in reviews created by Vestiaire Collective customers.
On the review site (trustpilot) it is shown how the platform is used by companies. Either the company profile can be claimed by the company, meaning they actively collect reviews written by customers or they just don’t claim their profile on trustpilot and thereby not actively collecting reviews. Another alternative is to have claimed the
profile but not collecting reviews anyway. By writing a review on trustpilot you agree to your eligibility of reviewing by proof of purchase (trustpilot, 2015). Vestiaire Collective has claimed their profile on trustpilot and is considered to claim their reviews. There are 702 reviews written on the company profile when this study has been compiled. Out of a five stars rating system the company has in average three stars from the customers (trustpilot).
By analysing the reviews there are some recurring topics that customers share. Recurrent issues acknowledged by reviewers were the authenticity of received products and as well the process of controlling the authenticity of the products on the site.
In contrast, Milligan (2014) explained that a well working authenticity controlling process was performed by qualified staff. Other reviews that are often recurrent are connected to payment. Both for sellers and buyers collecting money that is rightfully theirs, seems to be a hard task when the company often comes up with excuses not transmitting the money. Studying the reviews, what has been seen was that eventually everything led up to one thing, bad customer service. Nearly every review does in someway touch the company’s customer service.
Customers reaching out to the company’s experience unpleasant responses and a customer service that neglect their customers. The responses are experienced impersonal and not helpful.
The overall Review criteria for Vestiaire Collective are compiled below:
• Non working authenticity control
• Unsound customer service
• Disoriented process for purchases
• Non working payment system
More reviews have been collected and are found further down in the appendix.
Conclusions
From the stated above, some conclusion can be drawn. First of all Vestiaire Collective does not seem to have an online review management according to what have been seen through this study. In order to not lose customers they need to create an ORM strategy to be able to managing customer complaints. Dissatisfaction is what makes customers write negative reviews on the contrary to customers being satisfied and writing positive reviews. This will affect the company by either reducing or increasing sales since customers are affected by what is written in reviews.
Another conclusion that can be made is that the authenticity control of the products made by the company can be doubtful. It happened apparently, that customers received imitated products when the company claims to have only authentic products. In contrast Vogue has written an article stating they have a working authenticity control which deceives customers, believing they will possess authentic products when they do not.
For Vestiaire Collective, the reviews have a potential of reducing sales and as well stop customers from using it again. The reviews are not favorable for the company which is why the company needs to create an online review strategy.
The complaints of customers and problems of the company are adjustable, therefore the company has to work hard to create a value between their company and customers. Although, it will take an efficient and effective strategy to complete it. The internet is taking a big part of our world so by making sure they analyse each reviews and try to adapt themselves by what customers say, step by step they could have a chance of getting better reviews. Their advertising looks pretty well managed because we’ve been through the website many times and whenever we do something completely different on the net, an advert of your company pops-up. It is a shame to see many negative reviews when on the other side, the company is quite “visible” and well-known on the web.
Recommendations :
Since we have seen massive mistakes of the company, we as consultants, based on the findings came with recommendations for Vestiaire Collective.
We recommend:
• that the company takes an immediate action of improving their online review strategy, creates a section on their website where customers can write reviews and ask questions. That they build a stronger relationship and trust between the customers and employers.
• Recruit literate, organized and convenient staff. Although we know this varies from people to people.
• They have to build an employee value. Because jobs mostly involve communication between the members of the company and mostly with the customers.
• To re-check the authenticity of the received goods and demand less commission for the products.
• To come up with new delivery channels and deliver the products which are well packaged within 5 to 14 days since the customers have already purchased the product and they deserve to get it on time.
• Try to show an empathy towards the customers and reply appropriately and immediately to the reviews and need of their buyers
• To shorten the refunding process, it is important they provide a good experience for their customers.
• The entity has to take all the recommendation above because there are a lot of competitors such as; Vide Dressing, Designer Exchange, The RealReal, Seams to Fit, Girl Meets Dress and much more, considering that they could lose their market share very quickly. Customers demand new ideas, best service and good pricing.
The line graph represents the amount of Facebook Followers for Vestiaire Collective and other competitors as well. Even though there are some mistakes and improvements to do, Vestiaire Collective remains a trustworthy re-sale website. As it shows here, compared to their competitors, they have more followers than them. It is a positive sign for the company, even though they should keep on track and never stop managing online reviews, especially in today’s world.