This is my last re[p]ort

 Dear all,

I hope you all had a good summer and are ready to start the new semester with fresh energy!

These past months have been a lot. I had many ups and downs in many ways with the field study beening more challenging than I anticipated. However, I am slowly coming to an end; one final push and I am hopefully done and happy with my results.

One of the biggest struggles for me has been to simply sit down and focus on the research with everything happening around me. With my mind being all over the place, the research kind of went a bit the same and got lost. I ended up researching too broad, losing the focus and having too much information and no real structure. Nevertheless, I am on the right track now: restructuring, refocusing and restricting the research.

I am finally done with the findings and am now moving on to the conclusion and discussion for which I already have brief structure, ideas and notes.

Finishing off with what I do best, a song reference. Papa Roach: This is my last resort. This song summarises the path of this field study in its own (slightly overdramatic ;)) words.

Stay safe and take care of yourself and the ones you love.

See you soon with fresh energy and drive to learn!

/Laura 

Part III: Research assistance in scalability strategies used by the fashion industry to increase CBM activities

Dear all,

this is my final blog entry, and I can tell you that this field study has been a rollercoaster! One moment I was really satisfied with all the theoretical background I researched, the next I doubted its relevance for the whole case. In the end I had to cut down the word count by two thirds, which hurt a lot due to all that time and effort of establishing an informative background for the reader.
However, I admit that I lost the research question out of sight and included a lot of interesting but not as relevant facts. Also, I focused too much on the establishment of the mapping framework, which solely had the function to exemplify scalability strategies used by the industry.

However, this process also pointed out that the developed Scalability Matrix Model by Hultberg et al. is only applicable on a general level rather than showing off a road map of actions towards increased circular business model (CBM) scalability. In general, my findings of what the industry is currently pursuing to increase CBMs is performed with the aim towards efficiency, rather than adaptability. Also, collaboration seems to be preferred in uncertain fields, whereas "safe" practices are carried out individually.

Enjoy the rest of the summer – and see you soon! :-)

Melanie

Research Assitant Internship with the Handelslabbet, Blogpost #3

 Hej alla,

It’s been a hot second since you’ve read from me last but now I am back to give you my final update of the field study experience.

The last time you’ve heard from me, I have been struggling with a serious case of FOMOA (fear of missing out on an article) and have been tasked with the creation of my own research model and experimental guideline.
Going from there, I focussed on analyzing the research models and experimental guidelines of articles I read, filtered out the hypothesized relationships, and evaluated which connections were proven to be correlated and which weren't.
As I am a very visual person, it helped me a lot to actually draw onto those models (via Adobe Illustrator) and visually map out my thought process. Like this, I was able to see which hypotheses were proven, which scholars managed to prove similar relationships and which connections were proven to not exist or influence each other in a reversed way. Additionally, I was able to see, which connections weren’t hypothesized within this group of articles I evaluated. Furthermore, how trust is incorporated within the observed research models is done in a variety of ways. Seeing this, helped me to formulate and design my own research model by thinking about the connections that I am curious about, and that would help e-tailers gain insights into the cognitive and emotional processes influencing a customer's decision to purchase. I sketched out my research model on paper and then transferred it to adobe illustrator to be able to move around and test out different ideas.
Together with Jenny Balkow and her research team from the Handelslabbet, the research model was discussed and further refined. I was tasked to narrow it down and think about ways to operationalize my hypothesized connections within an experiment with the digital showroom. Our final meeting involved me presenting my idea and thought process and us further refining the model. This was the final product of my research assistant internship and could be tested within an experiment on a later stage.
To conclude, I can definitely say that this experience taught me a lot and gave me a new perspective on the work of a researcher within social sciences. I learned, that, even though no paint, fabric, or other material is involved, the work of researching is still a very creative process that requires curiosity, thinking out of the box, and analytical skills. It is safe to say that this time opened up a new perspective and sparked an interest in research in me.

So, if you are wondering whether a research assistant internship would be the right thing for you, I can tell you don’t be afraid to dive into it and try researching out even when coming from a practical background. You’ll learn a lot and gain a new understanding of academia and social sciences.

Literature Review: Risk Management strategies and practices to cope with risks in the Textile Supply Chain

Hey fellow students! 

I hope you had a great summer, even though the weather (in Europe) did not show its best side .. 

 

It’s time for the third and last blog entry about my attempt to conduct a systematic literature review. Since the last time, I finished summarizing the risks prevalent in the Textile Supply Chain and started to summarize my findings from the literature search in order to analyze them. The 3^rd phase included issues like what type of information I need to be abstracted to fulfill the purpose of my review. Since I aimed to find strategies to cope with risks specifically prevalent to the Textile Supply Chain, I sorted the literature I found regarding the risk types to see if certain risks allow specific strategy or practices. 

Moreover, it was important to determine which type of information I need to conduct my analysis. Since I aimed to additionally investigate trends in Risk Management strategies in the era of digitalization, not only the findings of each study were important for my analysis, but also the publication dates and research methods. Nevertheless, the difficult part of the 3^rd phase is to see specific patterns or irregularities in the literature to abstract findings. Luckily, Excel is a helpful tool. 

 

Finally, I could start with the 4^th phase, structuring and writing the review. I started off with clarifying the purpose and motivation of my review. Afterwards, it is important to document and report my research process as detailed as possible to ensure replicability. The level of information provided needs to be appropriate in order to allow for transparency, so that the reader can easily judge the quality of my literature review. However, I am aware that my review is highly biased since I searched, summarized, categorized and analyzed all the data myself. 

Next, I am going to present and explain my findings, hopefully in a clear and structured way, so that my review makes a contribution to the literature.

 

I do not regret the choice to conduct a literature review during the field study, especially since the topic I choose seems relevant and up to date. However, looking back I recommend to not work by yourself on a literature review, because a second opinion on certain issues is very valuable. I had several times when I got stuck in my thinking and conclusions and even though I asked friends for advice, they could not help me since they did not have the same level of knowledge about the topic as I did. This definitely prolonged the process. 

 

I hope you all had a good experience during your field study!

See you soon!

 

Best,

Michaela

Part II: Research assistance in scalability strategies used by the fashion industry to increase CBM activities

Dear all,

in my previous blog I described the task and the problematic process of establishing a mapping framework to detect the strategies used by companies to upscale circular business models (CBMs). Having read multiple sources on circularity and encompassing business models, I have come to the conclusion that it is not possible for me to map generalised strategies for upscaling CBMs, as literature suggests different approaches to facilitate different reverse cycles of otherwise linear processes. 

Hence, I have decided to cluster CBMs according to literature into six approaches towards circularity. Here, the most common CBMs support recycling and reuse, but also repair and remanufacturing are being employed by the industry; less heard of is repurposing and organic feedstock extraction. Within these six clusters, I aim to filter sustainability reports according to CBM enablers and suggested strategies by the Scalability Matrix Model of Hultberg et al. (2020). However, I find it difficult to directly pin point a certain strategy being used, as reports merely describe activities taken by companies. In my opinion, a sequence of activities can follow a certain strategy. As different CBMs ask for different strategies, my first step of mapping is to sort found activities in these CBM clusters and detect an orientation, which then in turn suggests the strategy being followed. 

Thus, I first need to determine which activities companies are undertaking to increase the scalability of CBMs, and only thereafter I can make sense of the strategy in use. 

My biggest struggle is to filter relevant information only, as a lot and very interesting information is provided by companies and I learn about projects and collaborations in the field of sustainability. It is quite fascinating, but also frustrating as I continuously come across green-washing and contradicting statements...

I wish you all the best for your studies – but also do not forget to enjoy summer! :-)

Melanie

Blog 3/3: Field Study in progress

Dear All, 

I hope everyone is still safe and is enjoying summer! 

This is my last entry blog about my field study progress, and it is almost August. It has been two weeks already since I gave you an update on my field study and my working experience at Tchibo. 

In my previous blog entries, I focused more on my working experience however in this entry blog I want to give you a more detailed update in regard to my field study. In my field study I am conducting a benchmark analysis about the user interface flow of websites with the focus on the mobile checkout process. During my internship I was able to conduct the benchmark analysis very easily. Due to my membership of the “Mobile Checkout Process Team” I was able to get insides, impressions and important details to focus while conducting the benchmark analysis. A few insides I focused on were, the arrangement of the shopping cart, the article presentation and descriptions, the quantity of steps, the voucher box, the express checkout, the click and collect area, the variety of payment options and lastly sticky elements. Moreover, we concentrate on every kind of competitors however I want to concentrate on popular online fashion pure players like About You and Zalando, which also represents a high level of optimization in regard to their mobile checkout process. I was not only responsible for the benchmark analyses itself I also had to collect scrolled screenshots of every competitor. Moreover, I had to present the benchmark analysis to the board of the team. As I told you before we did a qualitative observation, where we scanned six participants while scrolling throughout our checkout process. After both parts of the project we were able to collect findings and establish hypotheses for the optimization of the mobile checkout process. Unfortunately, I am not allowed to give you more details on the qualitative observation, but this was actually nice to get a deeper understanding of customer behaviour and therefore the user interface flow of the Tchibo website. Coming to the part of finding the right literature I will be honest with you guys; it took me actually a while to conduct my literature review based on my strategy as well as to find the best fit for the table of content. and it still does. 

Concluding, I have almost all bits and pieces to actually write down my field study. In Germany you would say “Leichter gesagt als getan” meaning it is easy to say than doing it:D 

#staysafe 

Best, 

Jana

Work in Progress

Hi All,

almost August - time flies.

I hope you are all doing well and are healthy!

I’ll start with a quick reminder about my research topic: For the field study I am conducting a systematic literature review regarding Blockchain in textile and clothing supply chains. The aim of my research is to describe the status quo of Blockchain in this particular industry and to identify new research areas and questions.

Therefore, I have been busy reading and analysing the papers under review in the past few weeks and found some commonalities and repetitive themes across the literature. In general, however, it proved to be quite difficult to compare the different papers since they often only touch the field of textile and clothing supply chain and mainly revolve around a different topic, such as intellectual property law in the fashion industry. However, due to the lack of available sources, these articles were still taken into consideration for the analysis.

The themes that were identified as most important are supply chain transparency, traceability and visibility as well as data management in general, efficiency, ethicality in terms of environment, labour conditions and counterfeit. In the next step my aim is to map these themes to Blockchain capabilities and analyse to which degree the technology can help with these issues.

Wish me luck, wish you luck.

And see you all soon 😊!

Laura

Crisis Management Blogpost 2/3


Hi everyone,

Hope all are doing great and have escaped from this bloody virous so far.

During the past weeks I was sooo busy with finishing all my unfinished assignments of all courses for the two-year program as well as, I had an eye on articles on crisis management at the same time. I have read almost anything that exist, however, the problem is that the number of the relevant literature on crisis management is very little, as apparently people do not have tendency to even think of crisis. The interesting thing is that due to the spread of the Corona Virus, which caused a worldwide crisis, just two or three peer reviewed articles on crisis management have been published recently but unfortunately nothing about fashion industry yet.

 I have learnt a lot though, especially about SMEs which were my main concern. As I was obsessed with this topic, I found some interesting and new things in even everyday life, the most interesting part for me is that every single country in the world had/ have its own approach to this issue and almost none of them have exactly the same approach with its own societal/political reason behind their strategies.

Time flies and I hope to be done before the deadline.

I wish you all health and peace and hope all enjoy the summer.


Best

Kati

Blog 2/3: Update about my working experience at Tchibo and my field study progress

Dear all, 

I hope everyone is still healthy and is enjoying summer!

It has been two months already since I have started my internship at the SEO department of the company Tchibo in Germany. It is time for another update about my working experience as an intern and about my field study progress. 

First of all, I really enjoy working at the company. Although everyone is working from home, my team is trying to provide insights in every kind of way. I am actually very surprised how well everything is going however the pandemic had a huge impact on working surroundings. My portfolio of tasks has increased and therefore I am gaining so much practical knowledge. Most of the time I am responsible to track keyword analysis, update specific SEO information on the website as product text passages, meta-descriptions and related photo images and I am responsible to talk to our content agency about upcoming important topics. What I really enjoyed the last couple of weeks was, to get more creative tasks and more responsibility. I am now responsible to make suggestions for our SEO coffee related text passages. This includes to research about important and interesting information, telling a story to the customer and spreading emotions. Moreover, I am also getting more and more analytical tasks, which I really enjoy, trying to find the best solutions while analysing analytical data. I already mentioned before, that I am a member of a project team with the focus on the optimization of the check-out process of the company, which will be a part of my field study.

Working in the project team really supports me to get more ideas and impacts for my field study. I was responsible to conduct a benchmark analysis, focusing on seven different competitors including online fashion pure players like Zalando and AboutYou. Moreover, our project highlight was the event of the “UX BUS”. The event can be described as a qualitative observation. An observation team out of ten people, including myself were responsible to conduct findings while observing six participants who scrolled throughout our check-out process online, answering questions and giving feedback to the presenter. I find it very interesting to see the different actions of different participants and also to collect findings, which were already discussed beforehand. 

I get so many interesting insights however I am really struggling to conduct the right literature. I will provide you an more detailed update on that on my next blog entry. 

#staysafe

(3/3) Internship at the Institute for Ecological Economy Research (IÖW)

My internship came officially to an end. I am very thankful for all the insights I got especially under those circumstances of a pandemic. During the last weeks, when being at the office, I realized that it makes such a huge difference to be physically present at an institute: communication ways are shorter, it is easier to get in contact with other employees and interns from other projects and working together at one place makes a truly interdisciplinary exchange possible. I am very thankful that I got the chance to experience office live even if it was only for a month. The last weeks of my internship had been very intense. I conducted ten interviews, sometimes three interviews per day, though it showed me that it was the right choice to undertake my field study in collaboration with a well-known and established institute. Enterprises were easier approachable, and the practical part of the project made it sometimes easier for my interview partners to answer my questions. Therefore, I could collect a rich material that has to be transcribed and analyzed during the upcoming weeks and I am excited to share the results not only during the final presentation but also with the Institute of Economic studies in August. I want to say thank you again, for giving me the opportunity to conduct my own research and the trust that was given to me from the institute. I want to emphasize that it is not self-evident to welcome, offline and online, interns in times of a pandemic. 

Next to my research the internship made me realize to focus more on the political dimension of sustainability. There is this tendency of enterprises complaining that there are not enough rules and regulations when it comes to sustainability although there are. I also missed out to study these regulations during my studies. There is a political framework in place but if managers do not know about it and therefore do not implement it, it remains meaningless. We must start to think about how to interpret the possibly upcoming Supply Chain Law and how to incorporate the European Action Plan for Circular Economy next to the European Packaging Directive into the corporate context. Laws and regulations must be translated into the reality of enterprises and should not remain on the paper.

Blockchain in Textile and Clothing Supply Chains

Dear Everyone,

I hope you are all fine and healthy and you enjoy the nice weather in Sweden :)!

This is my first blog entry coming in a little bit late due to various reasons. But I am not going to bore you with these and will cut straight to the chase.

For the past weeks I have been researching about blockchain in textile and clothing supply chains. This research field has been incredibly interesting and challenging at the same time - keeping my brain busy with questioning existing conditions, behaviors and the industry in general.

To give you some background information about the research field: Blockchain is a relatively new invention by Satoshi Nakamoto and was introduced in 2008. Simplified it is a global public ledger that allows data to be stored and shared in an accessible and secure manner in a broad network, where trust is not necessarily existent, by means of different encryption mechanisms and mathematical functions. The technology was first introduced in the financing sector, in the context of Bitcoin, and has been widely adapted to various fields since. In the context of supply chain management, blockchain is i.a. used to make products during production stages traceable and to make a transparent supply chain feasible unlocking many advantages while also carrying challenges.

In my research project I am analyzing the status quo of blockchain in the textile and clothing industry by applying the approach of a systematic literature review. This process proved to be more difficult than anticipated since hardly any literature in this specific field exists. Therefore, the sample in review is comparably small for a systematic literature review. However, according to Pautasso (2013) the need for a literature review where the amount of published research as well as the amount of literature reviews are low can still be motivated in the context of identifying new research questions. Hence, the aim of my research project is to review commonalities and differences between the analyzed literature and appoint the status quo of blockchain in textile and clothing supply chains, yielding future research questions in this field as a result.

I hope you found this entry interesting and I was able to give you a small insight into the research field. If you are intrigued to know more, I am always happy to swap ideas and knowledge and discuss about this topic. I wish you all a wonderful day and a joyful and relaxing summertime :)!!

All the very best,

Laura

Pautasso M (2013) Ten Simple Rules for Writing a Literature Review. PLoS Comput Biol 9(7): e1003149. doi:10.1371/journal.pcbi.1003149

Hej everyone! I hope everyone of you is staying safe and healthy!

It has been over a month since my last blog entry and I was able to finish phase #2 since then, meaning that I conducted the literature review based on my search strategy. In the last month I scanned article after article to find the right information to answer my research question: What are the risks prevalent in Textile Supply Chains and what are the strategies to cope with them in terms of Risk Management?

The 2^nd phase was very intense, because it is hard to decide how much and how detailed the articles need to be read to not overlook the information I was looking for. 

During the 2^nd phase, I realized that I needed some adjustments of my search strategy. As a result, I excluded theoretical and conceptual papers, because they do not reflect practical strategies to cope with risks. By focusing on empirical papers, I want to make sure to gather information from real life practices. 

I gathered all the important information, such as basic information like title, authors, journal, etc., as well as the main information which included the research question, research method and findings/results in an excel table. This table allows for a good overview and helps as a base for the 3^rd phase which will focus on analyzing my findings. 

Another step of preparation for the 3^rd phase is to identify and summarize the risks prevalent in Textile Supply Chains in order to apply the strategies gathered in the literature review. It is very interesting to see that although all kinds of risks are prevalent in the Textile Supply Chain, the recent literature mainly focuses on the sustainability risks and the environmental and social impact of this industry. This makes me realize how important and urgent this issue is and that an improvement in the future is more than necessary. And only the future will tell if the disruption caused by the pandemic will function as a “restart”. So many online articles talk about how the pandemic highlighted the grievances in the textile and fashion industry, how unfair and unethical the purchasing practices from Western giant companies are, how much more resilient a sustainable supply chain can be and how this could change our consumer habits. This is still a scary and uncertain time, but it also can bring positive change we are all hoping for!

So, the upcoming weeks I will be analyzing my findings to see what the literature found as strategies to cope with risks in the Supply Chain. I will keep you updated how that is going! 

Stay safe! 

Second Update About Product Management Internship at a German Luxury Fashion Company

Hello everyone,

It is time for another Update about my Product Management Internship!

While we watch companies and whole countries responding in various ways to crises, many people wonder what is depends on when conquering those challenges successfully. 

On the one hand, crises may include smaller challenges for manufacturing industries if, for example, a customer demands adaption or the company wishes to revive relationships with high-volume wholesalers. On the other hand, bigger scale challenges such as Covid-19 may occur, in which fast response and most commonly production adaptions play a crucial role. 

 

As of my experience, the successful mastering not only comes down to efficient and effective management but is often grounded on other level decisions, just like sophisticated product management practices.

Meaning, in the meanwhile, the Covid-19 crises has impacted my internship company as well, wherefore fast actions were required by the CEO of my internship company. As for now, I have been busy working on analyses for the upcoming collections in 2021 with regard to the styles and fabrics that were meant to be produced. The Pre-Spring and Spring/Summer 2021 collection volumes had to be reduced by about 30%, still achieving the minimum margins. Therefore, by means of analyses, I was able to reveal products with low margins and based on that my supervisors either adjusted the costs of goods sold, or the retail prices; if not eliminating the product completely.

Overall, the changes mainly lie within the Pre-Sales Phase of the luxury fashion products because afterwards everything is in production already and cannot be stopped anymore, it has to be sold in the stores anyway. What is more, the suppliers’ circumstances were never left aside, and the company was striving to not cancel too many orders, but rather postpone them for the upcoming collection release.

Retrospective, having a very good established product management system with skilled workers who take major decisions is key; containing of ongoing analyses that are supported by sophisticated workflows is essential to endure an efficient risk management as a whole company in times of crises. At this fashion company agility was essential for this to provide a more flexible workflow. Thus, the strategy and roadmaps can be adapted more easily according to management decisions and customer inquiries. 

 

Beyond these issues, in times like these, company’s general weak points are identified. We realised that digitalization of collection material was our extensive problem. Up to 2020 all collection handovers and the sales phase activities afterwards were hold as very big sales events in the different showrooms of the company all over the world. Thus, all collections were shown physically, having samples set up in the locations and the salespeople came to understand the new/adapted styles, touch the fabrics and experience the feel of the products. However, with restricted travel possibilities, these physical events were cancelled, wherefore all products have to be digitalized now. For some product groups digital showrooms are established already, but unfortunately not for ours yet. This depicts a major challenge. Accordingly, I have been working on visualizing the products lately and setting up presentations precisely so that the retailers and key account manager will be able to understand the new collections for 2021 coherently and somehow imagine the fit, feel and texture of the styles. The success of the implementation definitely also depends on the product group since, for example, polo shirt styles can more easily be constituted digitally. Whereas suits have more complex constructions anyway and its fabrics are in most cases very hard to display digitally. In the latter case, the salespeople need way better know-how about the fabrics and imagination while they are also much pickier due to the higher prices of suits in comparison to, for example, polo shirts. 

 

Yet, the departments’ proactive behaviour in previous months and coherent understanding of their products and processes emerge to have definitely helped my team itself with achieving the requirements set up by the board in the twinkling of an eye. As for now, our actions contributed decisively to the company’s successful crisis management. 

 

 

// Josephina 

Is it too much to expect clothing to fit? (3)

I don’t like to say it, but yes.

Since we come in all verity of shapes and we’re so different due to the fact like ethnicity or demographic and yet we expect brands to make clothing that fit all of us. And this is moderately a new expectation while historically it was very normal for everyone to get their clothing tailored, custom made, or do alterations by themselves. With the rise of fast fashion and ready to wear clothing, cloths are so cheap and abundant that we really care less about how it fits and don’t want to spend extra money to get it tailored according to our body.

As a customer if you know your measurements and always compare your measurements to a brand’s size chart, that may help, also make sure you know how to measure yourself properly. With such huge variations in size and shapes it actually feels like a miracle that someone can walk into a store and find a piece that fits him/her perfectly (though I’m pretty sure that miracle’s name is Spandex 😆). 

It’s easy to blame the clothing industry for not making clothes that fit, but after I go through my survey result, it seems really impossible to create clothes that will even fit the majority of people. If it fitted 1/4 of people regularly well, then it actually doesn’t seem so bad if you look at all the variation in our bodies have.

The main takeaway from this study to me is that, we should never blame our bodies if clothes off the rack don’t fit. We shouldn’t be criticising ourselves when clothes don’t fit, it’s an issue with the clothes not us! This project really showed me how incredibly unique everyone is, of the 50+ participants. I think that’s pretty incredible. We love to compare ourselves to others, but I actually think it’s really freeing and empowering that everyone’s body is uniquely theirs I think that uniqueness is something we should celebrate 💕.

I found working on this topic extremely fascinating and would really love to hear your thoughts! Also, if you have filled out the survey, thank you so much for contributing to this project!

Regards//Khadiza

The Challenging Increase of Online Customer Returns in Fashion - A literature Review (3)

As we now go into a long-awaited summer vacation, the final field study report is finally handed in. The motivation to sit inside and write has faded during the last weeks, and thereby did the report not get finished in time for the presentations in the beginning of June, however as expected. What took most of the time was formulation of all the themes derived from the literature review, followed by the conclusion of the study. Such a simple thing as organizing all the references took several hours as well.

The last couple of days before the submission of the report has been spent with my aunt. We did go through the study together, and by doing so getting important and good insights from her as a bystander. Since the tuition with Jenny has been held online making it more difficult to show my progress in words, and also that the last scheduled time was in May, my aunt has been as a mentor for me in the process of writing my final report. It is always useful to have someone outside of your process to have a look at it, because that person sees things with new eyes that you don't due to blindness of your own work (just my own thoughts). Together, we managed to get a grip of how the second part of the report should be formulated which I had such difficulties of understanding (where concepts of the study where to be defined). Since the purpose of my report isn't about defining a concept, but to give an overview of the field of research on the topic of online customer returns and show gaps for future research, it was hard to understand what I was suppose to "define" in that section. The section ended up being called "The challenge with online customer returns", and it shortly treats the main challenges with that phenomena, finishing of with the purpose of the study in order to show the importance and relevance of doing my study on the chosen topic.

Now a hectic job awaits with creating a power point presentation for the seminars on 18th June, where I plan on presenting my results. I hope to make it on time, otherwise there is nothing else to do than await the seminars in August. The presentation needs to "wow" the audience, and thereby time and accuracy is needed for the creation of the power point. You only have 15 minutes to present, so it is of big importance to carefully chose what parts to bring forward from your field study report. The audience, my fellow students, should learn and bring something important with them from my presentation.

Clothing Fits…. Who Exactly?

A few weeks ago, I posted a questionnaire that included a link to a survey. I wanted to get some insight into the mystery of clothing sizes and fit and have actual data on how people choose their sizes. First, I want to say a huge THANK YOU to everyone who filled out the survey! You input has been incredibly helpful.

It’s taken me quite a while to wade through all the numbers and to be honest the scope and variables of this kind of data collection were a lot more complex than I initially anticipated. However, I found it really interesting and also was quite surprised by what I learned.

Entirely my study with Jenny Balkow so far explore that fit evaluation at an individual level is subtle and very complex. Also, women’s fit expectations relay on interpretations of individuals bodily aspirations. If these expectations are not met by sizing system of fashion retailers the following cloths are more likely to remain unsold can produce textile waste. 

I must admit, I learnt a lot from Jenny and being able to explore the fact from different perspective, which made me more interested on this topic that I don´t mind investing more time to know more about how people choose size than I initially expected.

Your comments are appreciated and Happy summer!

Thank you,

Khadiza

Blog 1/3: My first weeks as an SEO-Intern at the German company Tchibo

Who would have thought that this year will be year to accept the need of change, declare change, work for change and become the change? Who would have thought that the Pandemic would affect us? It seemed to be so far away, away from everything. But it affected us all in different kind of ways. 

But I hope that everyone is safe.

From the business perspective, Covid-19 had a huge impact on the fashion industry especially retail. Due to this, my first internship got cancelled last minute, just a day before I actually would have started. But in the moment, I remined myself that everything happens for a reason. I ended up applying for other internships last minute and finally got the acceptance from the German company Tchibo in the beautiful city Hamburg. The History of the company started with selling coffee but today Tchibo’s product range runs from fashion to furniture and even insurances. The company follows a multichannel approach and has a unique business concept of presenting “Themenwelten” every week. 

It has been almost four weeks already that I have started the internship at the SEO department at Tchibo. I have never experienced the first weeks at a company like this. Everyone is working from home and I was kind of nervous, not meeting my fellow colleagues, not having interactions with other people and being by myself. But everything went pretty well in the first weeks. My lovely superior Annika allowed me an easy start and she is always available for questions and answers. The SEO-Team is located in the “Business Development Department” at Tchibo and works hand in hand with “SEA”, “Onsite Marketing”, “Affiliate Marketing” and “Online Sales”. My department is responsible to generate higher traffic on the website itself and getting higher rated at Google.com, while working with Google Analytics and optimizing keyword analyses. After the first weeks I really felt that the support was very much needed and that my team is treating me as a full team member and not really like an intern. Due to that I really enjoy learning new things and taking responsibility for some important upcoming tasks. The company is very much aware of change and is constantly trying to take this into consideration. Every week the whole business development department is having a virtual coffee chat to talk about important tasks and updates to inform all team members. Every team member takes action in the meeting to present their current tasks and processes they are working on. 

Before the internship I already finalized the topic of my field study. I will conduct a benchmark analysis with the focus on the “User-Interface-Flow” of Tchibo and compare this with the fashion industry, while using pure online players like About You and Zalando. During get-to-know-meetings with the most of my team members my first impression was that the user interface flow and especially the optimization of the check-out process is a huge discussed topic and has relevance to my department. I see a lot of potential to combine the user interface flow with focussing on the check-out process for the upcoming field study. I am really looking forward to work on it and to get more insights about the changes the company is about to make in regard to optimize the website. I will keep you updated in the next blog entry about the process of my field study. 

#staysafe