Demographic segmentation -Age: American Apparel mainly targets young adults of 20-35. They steer away from the under-18 age. They also choose not to go after the popular 35-45 age bracket and people over the age of 45. -Gender: female and male -Income: related to the age of the target, the company knows many of this target market have entry-level jobs which means they are not making six-digit figures, but they are making less than $100,000 a year. Others are still in school and some may have started living their own lives . -Family Life Cycle: American Apparel targets people who are young single and young married or divorced with or without children. They focus on “young” adults because they are tend to invest in fashion.
3. Psychographic segmentation -Personality: American Apparel targets young adults who see themselves as unique. They love to show their personality through fashion. They love to mix and match things to express their uniqueness. So American Apparel’s products which are basic but unique at the same time in order to be appealing.-Motives: as American Apparel’ is known for “Made in USA”, the company targets customers with motives that when they buy American Apparel’s product, they not only buy a hip clothing but also support to create jobs in USA. -Lifestyles: since the company focuses on young metropolitan adults as their target market, American Apparel produces comfortable and also fashionable items in reasonable prices. They have wide range of t-shirt lines for young adults who don’t dress up so much.
American Eagle Outfitters (AEO) differentiates from its competitors because it’s a leading global specialty retailer offering latest trends that are high-quality and affordable. The source of competitive advantage is the quality of their clothes and their environmentally friendly fabrics. American Eagle Outfitters is a high-quality and inexpensive brand of their two competitors Aéropostal and Abercrombie and Fitch. AEO centers in every category of purchaser such as kids, tweens, teens, and adults. American Eagle Outfitters has further stores open globally and their product line is more assorted than its competitors and its name brand and logo is known world-wide.
lululemon athletica’s target market is niched down to people who can afford expensive workout gear but also targets the “yoga mom” and “college girl” stereotype. lululemon athletica tends to have that “yoga mom” look to it because of the style of their clothing and the women who tend to shop at lululemon athletica since it’s a higher end brand of workout gear. At the same time, they target the “college girl” because many girls in college like to stay up with the latest trends and like being able to dress comfortable to class. Men who like working out, meditating by doing yoga, or like lounging in comfortable clothing are also a part of their target market. lululemon athletica also does not have many items with crazy colors and sayings written on their apparel, which would most likely appeal to tweens and teens, because those are not the people they are trying
A newspaper article entitled” Retailers ask: Where Did the teenagers go?” focused on one of the issues. Elizabeth Harris from the New York Times interviewed teenagers who used to shop at A&F and asked them what they think about when it comes to shopping at Abercrombie. One teenager replied” when I think of who is shopping at Abercrombie, I think it’s more of people’s parents shopping for them” (Harris). This raised red flags for me because when I was about 14 or 15, if you didn’t wear a Abercrombie shirt or a pair of pants from the company, you weren’t considered “cool”. It’s like everyone in high school had an Abercrombie, Hollister, or Gilly Hicks shirt on; so to hear a teenager say this shows that once luring traditional teenager store is obviously experiencing some tough
The SWOT analysis: The study of the firm's Strengths, Weaknesses, Opportunities and Threats called SWOT analysis, a key step in flushing out known performance issues that are important to the growth of the organization addressed in the corporation strategic plan. The issues identified in the SWOT analysis help leadership to come up with a plan and strategy to achieve the overall mission of the company (Strategic Planning, n, d). Target Corporation is one of the largest public retailing company in the US having more than 1700 stores serving guests nationwide. Target group and its brand position are evaluated in the market using SWOT analysis.--
The intended audience is a middle class group because T-shirts rangefrom twenty dollars and up and jeans costs starting at sixty dollars, which
Target exploits this segment buy offering styles of cloths in a variety of colors, sizes while including different designs to relate to different ages. For example a person in their 70’s might like a color scheme of socks, but a younger person might want a more modern color, with designs. This allows Target to advertise, market and sell one clothing line but with different styles meeting the wants and needs of a segment that hold a large number of their consumers. Target marketing strategy is currently based off its brand imagine for their customers to “expect more, pay less”. This and the age related segment allows for target to remain firm with their image while also allowing them to be able to sell a single clothing line to all ages simply by changing the color. Their approach take advantage of this segment, why allowing them to make consistent product changes at a low
Hobby Lobby Stores, Inc., formerly called Hobby Lobby Creative Centers and is a private for-profit, closely held corporation which owns a chain of American arts and craft stores that are managed by corporate employees. The company headquarters is in Oklahoma City, Oklahoma.
Lululemon Athletic Inc. (Lululemon) is a retail company that specializes in athletic yoga-inspired apparel for active men and woman. This company is headquartered in Canada and was founded in 1998 by Dennis Wilson. Wilson’s passion was technical athletics which resulted in him opening a studio to design yoga clothing in 2000 in Vancouver. To help pay his rent, Wilson held yoga classes at night when the design studio wasn’t being utilized. By 2011, Lululemon’s yoga apparel was being sold in over 130 stores located throughout Canada, United States and Australia. With much success expanding into a global market, Lululemon’s vision was to evaluate the world from mediocrity to greatness. To achieve this vision, a strategy was developed with
Today's young people are generally unresponsive to traditional brand marketing messages. Teens spent $12 billion dollars last year according to a recent study of Teen Marketing Trends. Teens not only use their money on small purchases such as music, clothes and food but also have the power to influence high-end purchases of their parents. Every year younger teens are being marketed because that they are the future teenagers and brand loyalty is an important thing to many companies. If you can get an older child hooked on a product, they’ll generally love it for life. These younger age demographics are being marketed to because more and more kids have increasing spending power and authority over what is purchased in their household.
American Eagle Outfitters is a fairly new company but they are doing extremely well because they have a clear grasp of who their target market is. They posses a fresh new hip look with great quality clothing at a reasonable price for consumers (http://www.prism.gatech.edu/~gte201w/aeostrat.html). This is one of the main reasons why teenagers and young adults are so attracted to the company. American Eagle is aiming to appeal not only to the targeted 20 year old but also consumers between the ages of 16 and 34 years old. This will widen the gap between their major competitors because they are trying to appeal to more segments than just one. American Eagle seeks to be assessable, fashion orientated, and has a strong value proposition, which has allowed the company to thrive and take shares from competitors over the past five years. Not only is their clothing line very comfortable, bold and fresh, the store layout and atmosphere is also major key factors in American Eagle’s success over the recent years. AE also has a strong competitive advantage because of their short lead times and their ability to position themselves in high-visibility, high-profile locations in key markets. American Eagle’s cycle time is about five months from design to delivery, versus about nine months for The Gap and six months for Abercrombie. AEOS minimizes lead times by maintaining sourcing relationships with a few key manufacturers and producing much of the merchandise in North America, versus 9% for The Gap and a minimal amount for Abercrombie. AEOS has the ability to quick-source some of its simpler product categories in order to react quickly to sales trends. (http...
Louis Vuitton, a French designer and entrepreneur quickly made a name for himself in the fashion industry by becoming Napoleon’s wife “personal box-maker and packer.” At the age of sixteen, Vuitton and his family started the legendary workshop by creating travel trunks and the famous unpickable locks in 1859 (Louis Vuitton, 2015). As the legendary brand continues to remarkably exceed both sales and expectations, Louis Vuitton as a brand strives for pure distinction and exclusivity.
Lululemon Athletica Inc. was founded in 1998 by Wilson. Lululemon is an upscale athletic apparel company based around the exercise of yoga. Wilson became interested in yoga after selling his previous company Westbeach Snowboard Ltd. In 1997. Yoga did not receive heavy attention until the 1990s, which made Lululemon one of the first companies to cater to this particular service in a fast growing industry. Wilson began the company by selling apparel and offering yoga classes. Wilson opened up Lululemon’s first real store in 2000 in the town of Kitsulano in Vancouver, Canada. Wilson gained much success with Lululemon, considering that the net revenue is more than $1 billion in 2012 and Wilson’s new worth is about $2.9 billion in 2013.
Selling through Lululemon’s own company network of retail stores as well as online and pop-up stores. Their products are mainly sold through three channels, including direct sales to consumers, retail stores owned by the company, and smaller channels such as wholesale and franchising. A retail store is a channel that keeps in touch with customers and remains active. It plays an important role in brand building and continuous development, and it can also better display its brand culture. In addition, Lululemon launched concept activities such as health clubs, fitness centers and yoga studios, and has enhanced its brand image through wholesalers and other channels.
Founded by James Cash Penney in 1902, J.C. Penney is one of the largest apparel, domestic retailers with approximately one hundred thousand employees in over one thousand retail locations in the United States (JCPenney, n.d.b). The company was established on the Golden Rule (also the name of its first store) to treat others as one would like to be treated (JCPenney, n.d.b). Although the organization was founded as a small business in Kemmerer, Wyoming, J.C. Penney is currently a thirteen billion dollars publicly-traded corporation that is headquartered in Plano, Texas (JCPenney, n.d.b). Therefore, to better understand its growth, J.C. Penney’s strategy, marketing, finance, human resources, and operations have to be evaluated.
Their goal is to reach people who are willing to spend more money on the brand’s commodities. They focus on young people who see Adidas as a possibility to demonstrate how cool they are: “Adidas uses differentiated targeting strategy to target young adults, adults as well as children who have passion for fitness and sports. Although it targets customers in the age group of 13-40 years but majority of its customers are of 15-30 years of age who hail from upper middle class or the luxury class of customers” (Bhasin “Marketing Strategy of Adidas”). The buyers express their position in the society by wearing fashionable