Amazon Adds "Outfit Compare" Feature To Shopping App
By Christine Kern, contributing writer
Consumers now have access to fashion advice online.
Shopper comparisons are not a new idea. Most customers admit that they shop around to compare models, prices, features, and other information before making purchases online. But clothing purchases have been harder to tack down, until now. And Amazon has been actively pursuing the fashion segment of ecommerce for several years now, from investing in its own private labels to increasing fashion ad spending and its own trend-centric TV show, Style Code Live, as Tech Crunch reported. Now Amazon has developed an “Outfit Compare” feature, available on the newest version of the Amazon shopping app, which allows Amazon Prime members to share photos of themselves wearing two different outfits, and receive ratings from Amazon stylists and fashion experts.
The app prompts users to share two photos, and Amazon’s stylists provides responses a minute or so later, with recommendations based on a variety of factors, including how the clothes fit, what colors look best on the user, how they’re styled and what styles are trending, according to TechCrunch. Amazon states that shared photos are only viewed by Amazon staff, and they can be deleted from the app at any time by the user.
The “Outfit Compare” can be found in the app under the “Programs and Features” section in the navigation sidebar.
While the feature does not directly boost ecommerce sales, by collecting data from online shoppers (in this case, via photos), Amazon can glean important information about users’ personal style to help personalize shopping recommendations in the future. And PYMTS.com suggests that “If Outfit Compare is the start of something larger in the realm of fashion consulting, this could work to boost millennial spending even further.”
Available only to Prime members, the app is visible to non-Prime members with a prompt to join Prime in order to gain access. The feature was first unveiled on iOS devices on March 9, with full rollout completed by the end of March, and Amazon says that an Android version is also in the works.