Over the years, marketing has changed in profound ways. However, customers want to expect the same experience across retail channels. Now a days, in order to target new customers and boost brand image without spending millions of dollars, Integrated Marketing Communications (IMC) is achieved by using social media, online advertising, public relations and viral marketing. This helps consumers understand the message intended and are more inclined to make a purchase. Effective marketing management is crucial in every industry as innovative marketing increases a company’s brand awareness.
The rapid advancement of recent technology is revolutionizing how the consumer shops. Online shopping has become vastly popular and consumers are utilizing this technology with the increasing practicality of the Internet and mobile devices. The apparel industry is cutthroat competitive in the global market. Retailers without a substantial competitive advantage do not stand a fighting chance. Now more than ever, competition amongst companies such as GUESS? Inc. and Gap Inc as well as other leading brands has become fierce. Internet marketers are pulling customers from stores. Smartphones have become the new phenomenon and have increased online shopping. Consumers are more aware of prices and have become better shoppers trying to purchases clothing with deep discounts. As a result, stores are forced to put special offers on items on a frequent basis knowing that consumers can buy that cheaper somewhere else. For this reason, GUESS? Inc.’s prices have declined over the years. Even companies like Gap Inc, known for selling products at reasonable prices, have changed strategy to keep up in the retail market. One factor boosting online shopping is ret...
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...a consistent message, tone, look, and feel across offline and online channels.
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As mentioned in our presentation, a small survey we conducted showed us that the main reason why people do not buy clothing online is because they are unsure of the size and quality. This showed us that the probability of someone ordering a good will increase by a significant amount, significant enough to cause a large sales increase.
Being a multi-billion dollar retailer comes with its perks. JCPenney’s dominance over catalog merchandising has now extended into the cyber world at www.jcpenney.com. This website is multi-functional and easy to navigate, but how would JCPenney’s new e-commerce site stack up against its toughest competitor, Kohl’s, on the web? The answer may surprise you. This is an intriguing look at how varied retail comparisons can be. While JCPenney is struggling with sales on the retail floor, Kohl’s continues to exceed expectations in their stores. Online though, it is a completely different story.
“Advertising Age.” Advertising age 75 years of ideas RSS. AdAge, 2005. Web. 3 Jan. 2014
In the 1997 article Listening to Khakis, published in the New Yorker, Malcolm Gladwell effectively paints a vivid picture of the thought and science that goes into advertising campaigns. Gladwell begins his paper by focusing on the Dockers’ advertising campaign for their line of adult male khaki pants, which he labels as extremely successful. This campaign was the first line of successful fashion advertisements aimed directly toward adult males (Gladwell, 1997). This campaign was cunningly simple and showed only males wearing the pants being advertised with the background noise filled with men having a casual conversation (Gladwell, 1997). This tactic was used because studies showed that Dockers’ target market felt an absence in adult male friendships. (Gladwell, 1997). The simplicity of the advertisements was accentuated as to not to deter possible customers by creating a fashion based ad because, based on Gladwell’s multiple interviews of advertising experts, males shy away from being viewed as fashion forward or “trying to hard” (Gladwell, 1997).
Successful marketing strategies are very important as it determines whether the organizations can materialize the benefits and strengths of their products and improve their revenue and profitability. Marketing strategies are heavily impacted by the external opportunities and weaknesses, as well as the internal strengths and weaknesses of the organization. Based on this information, companies have to segment the big market into small segments and divide their products into homogeneous batches to target each segment separately. Furthermore, the organizations have to design important marketing mix, including product, price, place, and promotion to make sure that their products are well received by the customers. All of these aspects are very important for organizations realize the potential from their products and achieve the competitive advantages in the competitive market.
Marketing In this day and age is vital for a company to perform at its possible best. Marketing’s main focus is to give great satisfaction to a customer. There are many aspect of marketing, these aspects give marketer’s the tools to help strive for the best possible success they can achieve. They hope that they can create exposure for their brand, product or service.
As a response to the rough economic climate, it expanded its range of prices. For example, the company introduced an exclusive line of Elie Tahari professional women’s clothing, priced thirty percent lower than Elie Tahari’s main collection. The pricing strategy of offering customers a variety of quality and price points has greatly allowed Nordstrom to remain prominent to its customers throughout different economic cycles. Nordstrom has the ability to consistently be essential to customers rather than only offer a single price and quality point. As a result of this price strategy, customers were able to find attractive products at a price that fit their newly restricted budget better at Nordstrom than at their competitors. Nordstrom fits consumers’ needs that increase customer loyalty and programs such as the Nordstrom Credit card, and Mod card that help keep shoppers during and after the economic
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Guess ? uses historical trends within the market to develop a sales plan for designs and as a guide to the number of sales per garmet. With the sales plan in mind they seek out the best quality product at the best possible price. Once the materials are gathered the cost of the item is determined. Including manufacturing labor, fabric, trims, and various other details included in the production of the clothing a rough cost is agreed upon. After the cost is found Guess ? then determines on a style merchandising cost, which is based on raising or lowering prices to maximize sales and profits. As of today Guess ? has product licenses all over the world. Also it has distributors in North America, South America, Europe, Asia, Africa, and Australia. Guess ? can be found in many department, retail, specialty, and factory stores and as of January 1995 online.
Once the target market has been identified it is important to develop a marketing strategy. In today's fast paced, information overloaded society; conveying a message about a product seems to be more difficult than ever. The consumer is bombarded with advertising everywhere they look. Today advertising not only exists on television, radio, magazines, and newspapers, it can be found on billboards, park benches, in our mailboxes, on buses, taxis, at sporting events, and on clothing.
The key strategic marketing concepts which would be important for the implementation in this project are various. From the effective Clarification of business objectives to customers to greater a market segmentation. The ability to create viral marketing with lateral communication could increase market opportunities.
Given the changing market environment, the need for more efficient and cost effective marketing strategies has induced changes to the way marketers conduct their marketing activities and led to the adoption of more integrated approaches (Dewhirst & Davis, 2005). The consequence has been the adoption of a more holistic customer oriented approach to conducting marketing communication activities, a process often known as Integrated Marketing Communications (IMC) (Dewhirst & Davis, 2005).
The global fashion and apparel industry is a giant with annual turnover of approx. $1.7 trillion and provides employment to approx. 75 million people. With globalization and increasing competition amongst manufacturers, coupled with lower production rates in the developing countries, buying clothes has become way inexpensive than before. Add to it the fiercely growing internet penetration and fast catching up ecommerce industry, clothes are more or
The first advantage of using social media in business is increasing brand awareness. Social media can help business to build their brand awareness by increasing interactions with a business brand. Brand awareness means the total percent of a target people who know the company exists and what the company offers of products or services. When the brand awareness is increased, the possibility of buying is increased. Thus, efforts should be made to make the brand a part of the consciousness of customers. For example, Coca- Cola is one of the best companies that enjoy unusual...
Today’s business environment is highly dynamic and competitive. In order to become successful, companies must use advanced marketing techniques and branding strategies. The significance of Integrated Marketing Communication (IMC) is therefore, very critical. IMC sends out a single message through different media vehicles, which helps the company to target a wide variety of audience. According to Gerber (2008), Integrated Marketing Communication is the process of using a combination of different types of marketing communication to send the same message to consumers. The following report lays an IMC plan for N...