More handpicked essays just for you.
Key success factors for brand extensions
State the factors of brand extension
Recent literature review on brand extension
Don’t take our word for it - see why 10 million students trust us with their essay needs.
Gap was first founded and launched by Don Fischer and his wife Doris in San Francisco in 1969. The store was launched when Don a real estate developer, saw the increasing popularity of jeans and the need for a better range and offerings for people. He opened the first store with an age range of his clients going to be from 14 to 25 years old and this is where he took the name ‘generation gap’.
Fischer built the original store around one product, Levi Jeans, offering a larger selection of sizes and styles than the consumer could get anywhere else.
Gap was an immediate success and the Fischers began to expand to other locations and with over 204 stores it was a publicly traded company by 1975. The initial Gap store was built around supplying
…show more content…
By 1999 all the sites were rolled out with ecommerce capabilities. “Gap only launched a web property when all of the key business drivers were brought in-house.” (McIntyre and Perlman, …show more content…
bringing all of the business drivers in house before launch so they could control all the systems they implemented internally. This was evident when they refused to roll out the launch of Old Navy as it did not reach the high standard that Gap had come accustomed to, similar was the roll out of the international website. The website was designed with the intention of providing the consumer with a shopping experience allowing them to select and compare garments, add their preferences and other options. Shopping online offered the customer the same policies as in the retail store which included returns, alterations, trusted brands, but added to the service by being able to pre shop and also offering in-store promotions. This was of course beneficial to Gap as they were now able to collect customer information such as addresses, site access times, the length of there visit how regular they made purchases, product types and how much they spent. This valuable information was not available to Gap in the retail store. It allowed Gap to offer customer’s more incentives and discounts for them to spend money all the while increasing the market share of Gap.
On-line shopping was treated as a separate division and Gap developed specific warehouses and customer support services to operate this unit. “The development of the online unit saw the accompanying launch of the companies first 800 number and the build out of a full scale call center manned
Over the next few years, business skyrocketed for the Lawrence brothers with the opening of 6 more stores in San Diego County, while bringing in $12 million in 1984. From there on their brand grew bigger, moving into other states, and into heavily shopped malls attracting the the customers they wanted-young women.
Availability of online ordering facility presents the franchise with a competitive edge over its rivals.
23 years and the Company operated its women's fashion specialty retail stores in 33 states as of
The other problem people face with many other online clothing retailers is the inconvenience caused if they need to return a product. With our service, the customer does not pay the price for the product and has considerable amount of time to come to a decision as to whether or not to buy the product. This removes any remaining doubt in the customer’s mind and increases customer confidence levels.
J. Crew, also known as J. Crew Group Inc., is a private label company known for its preppy fashions that are fashionable yet costly. Essentially, the company was owned by the Cinader family for most of its history. Mitchell Cinader and Saul Charles founded the company in 1947. It was originally known as Popular Merchandise Inc. doing business as the Popular Club Plan, in which Mitchell’s son Arthur was the overseer. The company sold women’s clothing through in-home demonstrations. In the early 1980’s, Cinader and Charles observed catalog retailers such as Land’s End, Talbots and L.L. Bean reporting rising sales in revenue. With intentions to increase sales and duplicate success of these well known companies, Popular Club Plan began its own catalog (http://www.fundinguniverse.com/company-histories/j-crew-group-inc-history/).
Product differentiation – by offering different products, services, or product features, the company can charge higher prices, or appeal to different audiences. Use of IS have enabled new products and services, that increase the levels of convenience in using existing products and services. By acquiring PayPal, eBay greatly enhanced the ease with which customers can pay for their products. Google keeps an innovative approach towards search engines, by introducing Google Maps, Google Translate and others, which improves the ease of usage. Using online live chatting systems and social networks contributes to understanding of customers. It also adds value and improves customers’ stickiness to website (Booth, Roberts, and Sikes 2011)
Li & Fung is a global trading group sourcing and managing the supply chain for high volume, time sensitive consumer goods. The group is associated with strong brands such as The Limited, Gymboree, American Eagle, Warner Brothers, Bed, Bath & Beyond, Levi-Strauss. With the rise of the internet, and the thrive of the B2B intermediaries, this memo will discuss the Li & Fung's E-Commerce strategy and how to use internet to facilitate supply chain management.
In 1969, Don Fisher opened the first Gap store in direct response to frustrations he was feeling as an inconvenienced customer. His objective was to provide a classic line of clothing in a wide variety of fits and styles and make the shopping experience easy and convenient for the customer. (www.gapinc.com).
middle of paper ... ... He believes it is about creating integration and increasingly finding out about the company’s valuable customers. The online platform enables customers to shop online (Herrick: 2011).
the global leader in online retail. By taking advantage of the opportunities to capture the market
The period success of GAP had taken a turn since 2002. Profits and revenue continued to decline. From 2008-2010, just in U.S, 6000 retail stores had been closed because of the financial recession; during this period, Gap closed more than fifty of its 3251 stores. The annual income of GAP had also been successively overpassed by ZARA in 2008 and H&M in 2009, which dropped down to the third in fashion industry (Liu, 2013). And continually, the company’s net income declined to $833 million in 2011, which is 17% less than it earned in 2010 (Exhibit 1) (Ciasullo, Blauvelt, & Lambert, 2012). In U.S, the largest market for GAP, the elder generation who bought Gap products in 1990s had gradually left Gap for different requirements with the increasing age, and Gap was unable to keep its success with the younger generation. In addition, although Chinese market currently has been the second largest market for GAP Inc., they still operate the GAP brand as a follower without any distinct positioning str...
The story behind the birth of jeans emerges from an interesting collaboration between an innovative tailor and a bright businessman. In 1853, Levi Strauss established a whole dry goods business in San Francisco, selling clothing and many other products to small general stores all through the west of America. One of many regular costumers was Jacob Davis, a tailor in Reno Nevada, who used to purchase his work material from the whole sale house of Levi Strauss & Co. At some point, Davis invented the process to rivet the pocket corners on men’s pants to make them stronger. Having earned great success, Davis decides to write to Levi Strauss, suggesting that they jointly apply for a patent; and Levi agreed. Consequently, in 1873, Levi Strauss & Jacob Davis are granted a patent on the process of riveting pants by the U.S. Patent and Trademark Office on May 20. It is patent number 139,121 and this is the invention of the blue jeans.
"The long-term challenge is to accelerate the development of next-generation technologies in a way that avoids repeating the mistakes of the past" (Global Technology Initiative, 2003). Even with these challenges, e-commerce is changing the face of business worldwide every day. In mid 1999, General Motors announced a development, which simultaneously accelerated the process of globalization and e-business (Reynolds, 2000).
Online retail and shopping sales has been growing consistently every year, not just in the US but worldwide. Not only does online shopping give customers more convenience, more variety, and more discreetness but it also gives customers better prices. While it is quite true that Wal-Mart has product variety and cheap prices – things customers want – the physical stores do not really give the convenience and discreteness that online retail and shopping does.