A name-brand tag matters more to men (and to the $5.7b they spend on men’s clothes)

4.4 million Australians 14+ agree, “I will buy a product because of the label”—and 53% of them are men. New retail data from Roy Morgan Research breaks down the dollars and finds that fashionable fellows are worth more than label-loving ladies to their respective clothing markets.

Men buying Men’s Clothes

• 2.3 million Aussie men (24%) agree they will buy a product because of the label.
• These men are 19% more likely than others to buy men’s clothes in an average four weeks.
• They bought an estimated 26 million items of menswear last year, costing at an average $79 apiece (36% more than the average item cost for other men).
• All up, these brand-buying blokes spent $2,030 million on men’s clothes in 2015—35% of the total $5,747 million that Australian men spent on menswear.

Women buying Women’s Clothes

• 2.1 million Aussie women (21%) agree they will buy a product because of the label.
• 64% of them buy clothes in an average four weeks (only 6% more likely than others).
• They bought an estimated 55 million items of womenswear last year, costing at an average $58 apiece (26% more than other women’s average spend per item).
• All up, women with an eye on the label spent $3,195 million on women’s clothes in 2015—27% of the total $11,824 million that Australian women spent on womenswear.

Source: Roy Morgan Single Source Australia, January – December 2015, n = 14,666 Australians 14+

Michele Levine, CEO, Roy Morgan Research, says:

“Although less than one in four Australians agree they will buy products because of their labels, these brand-hunters punch well above their weight in the clothing market—especially men.

“Overall, when we include children’s clothing as well as men and women buying clothes for the opposite sex, people who agree they will buy a product based on the label spent $7.2 billion on clothes in 2015—29% of the estimated $25 billion clothing market in Australia.  

“In terms of their respective shares of market dollars, label-conscious men are more important than women to Australia’s clothing retailers. 35% of all money that men spent on menswear last year came from those who can be swayed by the name on the tag, compared with 27% of women’s expenditure on women’s clothes.

“Clothing retailers need to be well aware of their market positions when it comes to this attitude among shoppers, and how this impacts everything from optimal advertising and media placement, pricing and product range, sales and loyalty offers, and communications.  

“Clothing and footwear stores with a well above-average proportion of shoppers saying they’ll buy something because of the label include Nike Stores, Forever New, Zara, David Jones and H&M. But of course, buying brand names and labels isn’t just applicable to fashion. Our comprehensive retail research also shows that customers at Adairs, Apple Store, Betta and JB Hi Fi are all between 25-70% more likely than average to buy name brands.   

“Roy Morgan Single Source data connects a long list of shopping attitudes with comprehensive demographic, geographic and psychographic profiling, as well as purchasing incidence and expenditure across different retail categories, right down to product level, at a huge range of specific bricks-and-mortar and online stores.”