Styling Success: Analysing Sales & Customer Consumer Patterns in Fashion

Fashion is more than just clothing. It is a powerful statement of self-expression and a dynamic industry that is ever changing and constantly evolving with new styles and trends. For fashion boutiques, understanding sales patterns and customer behaviour is crucial to staying competitive and meeting market demands. By analysing sales data alongside customer preferences, boutiques can make informed decisions about style trends, marketing, and product offerings. This not only boosts profitability but also enhances customer satisfaction by delivering styles that truly resonate with their audience. In this report, the key insights derived from a fashion boutique dataset were explored to uncover popular trends, customer purchasing habits, and opportunities for growth.

The fashion boutique dataset was retrieved from Kaggle.com, with the intention to generate sales insights and customer consumer patterns. There were 2176 entries and 14 columns, of which brand, season, category, size, colour, current price, customer rating and returns were evaluated. Pre-processing of the fashion boutique dataset was necessary to transform all the missing values in customer rating by imputing the K-Nearest Neighbours (KNN) method. Additionally, an ordinal encoder was applied to transform the size variable into a numeric format for further analysis.

Summer

During summer, the most popular fashion item purchased by customers was XS sized green bottoms from Zara. Overall, the top-selling categories for the season were bottoms, shoes, tops, outerwear, and dresses.

Analysis of the summer sales showed that XXL was the most purchased size, with S, L, XL, XS, and M also showing strong demand.

Summer sales data indicated black as the top selling colour, with strong demand also observed for green, pink, white, red, blue, navy, brown, gray, purple, and beige.

In summer, customers showed a strong preference for H&M, followed closely by Mango, Banana Republic, Forever21, Zara, Uniqlo, Ann Taylor, and Gap topping the list.

Spring

During spring, the most popular fashion item purchased by customers was S sized purple tops from Zara. Overall, the top-selling categories for the season were tops, outwear, bottoms, shoes, and dresses.

Analysis of the spring sales showed that S was the most purchased size, with XL, XS, L, XXL, and M also showing strong demand.

Spring sales data indicated purple as the top selling colour, with strong demand also observed for red, green, gray, brown, white, beige, navy, blue, black and pink.

In spring, customers showed a strong preference for Zara, followed closely by Banana Republic, H&M, Ann Taylor, Uniqlo, Mango, Gap and Forever21.

Autumn

During autumn, the most popular fashion item purchased by customers was M sized pink bottoms from Mango. Overall, the top-selling categories for the season were tops, outwear, bottoms, shoes, and dresses.

Analysis of the autumn sales showed that M was the most purchased size, with XS, XXL, S, L, and XL also showing strong demand.

Autumn sales data indicated pink as the top selling colour, with strong demand also observed for green, white, navy, blue, red, beige, black, purple, gray and brown.

In autumn, customers showed a strong preference for Mango, followed closely by Uniqlo, H&M, Zara, Forever21, Banana Republic, Gap and Ann Taylor.

Winter

During winter the most popular fashion style customers purchased was XL white shoes from Zara. The most popular fashion category in autumn was bottoms, outerwear, tops, shoes and dresses.

Analysis of the winter sales showed that XL was the most purchased size, with XXL, XS, S, L, and M also showing strong demand.

Winter sales data indicated white as the top selling colour, with strong demand also observed for black, blue, gray, pink, green, red, beige, navy, brown and purple.

In winter, customers showed a strong preference for Zara, followed closely by Bana Republic, Mango, Gap, Forever21, H&M, Ann Taylor and Uniqlo.

Overview

The most popular fashion categories overall were bottoms, shoes, tops, outerwear, and dresses.

The overall popularity of sizes were XS, S, XL, XXL, L and M.

The seasons with the highest overall sales were summer, followed by spring, autumn, and winter.

The most popular colour overall was green, closely followed by white, with only a marginal difference between green to brown.

The overall most popular brands were Zara, H&M, Banana Republic, Mango, Uniqlo, Ann Taylor, Forever21 and Gap.

Conclusion

The fashion boutique dataset provided valuable insights into sales trends and seasonal customer behaviour, providing essential guidance for future marketing strategies and inventory planning to drive sustained success in the competitive fashion industry. Although summer recorded the highest sales, these figures were only slightly higher than those of winter, indicating that seasonal fashion trends remain resilient throughout the year. XS sizes led in sales, with marginal differences of sales in size M, highlighting the importance of maintaining a broad size range to accommodate diverse consumer size preferences. Green was the top selling colour, with only a marginal difference compared to brown, suggesting that colour choices were influenced by seasonal fashion trends. Bottoms were the leading category in sales, with dresses trailing closely behind. A key limitation of the dataset was the absence of gender specific variables to clothing items, which restricted the analysis of clothing preferences between men and women. Additionally, brand popularity was fairly uniform, with only slight differences observed among leading brands such as Zara and Gap.

Looking ahead, boutiques that continue to monitor and adapt to these stable seasonal trends, while expanding their size offerings and diversifying their fashion categories, are likely to capture a broader market share. Incorporating gender specific data in future analyses will provide deeper insights, enabling more targeted marketing and product development. Furthermore, as consumer preferences evolve, brands that maintain inventory flexibility and personalise their offerings will be better positioned to capitalise on emerging fashion trends and sustain long term growth.