The Louis Vuitton Market Strategy - Case Study Example

Manju George George Thomas Louis Vuitton's market strategy Essay -V01 22 March 2009 Louis Vuitton - The Global Luxury Niche Player Key factor is 'growth balanced between internalised and partnership strategies' INTRODUCTION Louis Vuitton Malletier, universally referred as Louis Vuitton, shortened to LV, is a French luxury fashion company founded in 1854 is also renowned as one of the oldest fashion houses in the world. Louis Vuitton brand is about reliability, quality, style, innovation and authenticity. The LV brand symbol sharply defines the brand identity by mining the company history and designed to express that. Their mission statement is "Louis Vuitton must continue to be synonymous with both elegance and creativity. The products, and the cultural values they embody, blend tradition and innovation, and kindle dream and fantasy." Five priorities that reveal the primary ethics of the company are: Be creative and innovative Aim for product excellence Boost the image of the brands with passionate determination Work as entrepreneurs Strive to be the best in all we do Company's efficiency of a finely tuned machine, fueled by ever-increasing productivity in design and manufacturing as Vuitton grows ever-bigger, the ability to step up advertising and global expansion without denting the bottom line. According to competitors who tried to surpass Vuitton stated that their operating metrics are second to none. The fine equilibrium between tradition and innovation reflects in the products of Louis Vuitton. The company has consistently pursued a luxury pricing strategy, which means high markups, limited availability, and few if any markdowns. Louis Vuitton sells its products only through a global network of company-owned stores. This keeps margins high and allows the company to maintain control of its products through every step in the channel. Louis Vuitton uses demographic targeting strategy to target their customers, men as well as women of various age ranges. The financial crisis going on would not disturb world's luxury brands as the luxury goods consumers are well-positioned enough that they just are not at risk to face such factors. Louis Vuitton opened its first store in China at Palace Hotel in Beijing in 1992. Company has the realization that the Chinese were sophisticated and soon they will be the biggest superpower. Chinese thinks that luxury fashion means the eminent elegance, high quality, taste, and expansive which in turn direct the destination of the trend in the region of China. Louis Vuitton has pursued a consistent approach to develop the market in China, never compromising in the face of difficult operational obstacles, and, as always, controlling every aspect of the business. This unique approach has powered Louis Vuitton to its current position as the most successful luxury brand in China. "Mythologizing Louis Vuitton's service" means, to identify and achieve the objectives and the challenges faced for improving the quality of customer service at each store to enhance customer satisfaction. This recognition of each customer's satisfaction positively affects the brand's reputation, which in turn determines the brand's value. METHODOLOGY Interbrand's methodology is a vital action that evaluates brand value on the basis of how much it is likely to earn for the company in the future. Interbrand uses a combination of analysts' projections, company financial documents, and it's own qualitative and quantitative analysis to arrive at a net present value of those earnings. The research methodology and design process would involve primary as well as secondary sources for bringing about substantial studies that are literature based and theoretically inclined for which such research methods utilized may truly serve its first hand purpose for this study. Mostly, research plan spells out the nature of the research to be conducted and includes an explanation of such things as the sample design, measures, and analysis techniques to be used. Three critical issues that influence the research plan are: Whether primary or secondary data are needed Whether qualitative or quantitative research is needed and Whether the company will do its own research or contract with a marketing research specialist. Primary versus Secondary Data According to the information needed and budget constraints required by the company, a decision must be made as to whether primary data, secondary data, or some combination of the two is needed. Primary data are data collected specifically for the research problem under investigation. For example, if a company wanted to know why users of a competitive brand didn't prefer its brand, it may have to collect primary data to find out. The primary sources will have to represent original thinking as the core data for the research will have to be in case studies as well as survey questionnaires equipped with suitable statistical data and its measures as it can have direct observation to the research process as undergoing research should be handed in with empirical facets and crucial points gathered by the researcher. Secondary data are those that have previously been collected for other purposes but can be used for the problem at hand. On the other hand, if a company wanted to know the population size of key global markets that it might enter, it could find this information from secondary sources. There should also be the integration of secondary data as findings and assumption studies made by several researchers can be good option that supports any valid information. There are many sources of secondary data for use in marketing research. Research services such as many marketing research firms, advertising agencies, and consulting companies that do marketing research on a contract Source. The company also has a marketing research department that can perform a variety of types of research. Secondary information has the advantage of usually being cheaper than primary data, although it is not always available for strategy-specific research questions. Qualitative versus Quantitative Research Whether qualitative or quantitative research would be a better approach A qualitative exploration and quantitative measurements use of projective methods to collect consumers' hidden personal representations, repressed feelings, and non-expressed needs letting them use their own words creation of new quantitative indicators combining information resulting from qualitative and quantitative analysis Qualitative research typically involves face-to-face interviews with respondents designed to develop a better understanding of what they think and feel concerning a research topic, such as a brand name, a product, a package, or an advertisement. The two most common types of qualitative research in marketing are focus groups and long interviews. Focus groups: Involve discussions among a small number of individuals led by an interviewer; they are designed to generate insights and ideas. Long interviews: Conducted by an interviewer with a single respondent for several hours. They are designed to find out such things as the meanings various products or brands have for an individual or how a product influences a person's life. Quantitative research involves more systematic procedures designed to obtain and analyze numerical data. Four common types of quantitative research in marketing are observation, surveys, experiments, and mathematical modeling. Observational research involves watching people and recording relevant facts and behaviors. For example, retail stores may use observational research to determine what patterns customers use in walking through stores, how much time they spend in various parts of the store, and how many items of merchandise they examine. This information can be used to design store layouts more effectively. Similarly, many retail marketers do traffic counts at various intersections to help determine the best locations for stores. Survey research involves the collection of data by means of a questionnaire either by mail, phone, or in person. Surveys are commonly used in marketing research to investigate customer beliefs, attitudes, satisfaction, and many other issues. Mail surveys are useful for reaching widely dispersed markets but take more time to get responses than telephone surveys. Personal surveys involving structured questions are useful but expensive. Experimental research involves manipulating one variable and examining its impact on other variables. For example, the price of a product in one test store could be changed, while left the same in other stores. Comparing sales in the test store with those in other stores can provide evidence about the likely impact of a price change in the overall market. Experiments are useful for getting a better idea of the causal relationships among variables, but they are often difficult to design and administer effectively in natural settings. Thus, many marketing research experiments are conducted in laboratories or simulated stores to carefully control other variables that could impact results. Mathematical modeling research often involves secondary data, such as scanner data collected and stored in computer files from retail checkout counters. This approach involves the development of equations to model relationships among variables and uses econometric and statistical techniques to investigate the impact of various strategies and tactics on sales and brand choices. Math modeling is useful because it provides an efficient way to study problems with extremely large secondary data sets. Often, qualitative research is used in early stages of investigating a topic to get more information and insight about it. Then, quantitative approaches are used to investigate the degree to which the insights hold across larger sample focus groups through Telephone surveys, Mail surveys, Personal, (in-depth) interviews, Mall intercepts, Internet surveys, Projective techniques and Observation. Methodology In Detail With Survey The company has to take into consideration the factors that gear the rich males as well as females. LV has taken more care to target the women customers, as the researchers found that the difference in purchase is mainly based on the products. The questionnaire should contain the matters that the consumer prefers about the company and it should be very simple to evaluate and rate in a look itself. The face-to-face questionnaire filling up by the customer can be carried out while they were making payment for the purchases in the shops. Otherwise, in case of much busy customers, the shop can have a section where the sales persons can take the customer contact number for later questionnaire survey. The survey will be carried out equally between males and females, as the company needs to make enhancement in the product industry based on the gender preferences in the products quality as well as modernization. The questionnaire also provided an open answer asking the young people to write down their own personal definition of brand. Younger generation surveys can be better carried out through online survey also. That will benefit the company in a variety of ways in the production as well as distribution. Analysis In the table format The relevance (from 0% to 100%) of brand in LV luxury product evaluation and purchase decision (Do you buy because of the of the brand) Brand Name Vs Consumer Brand Priority:- Brand name Brand (Relevance % in 100) Louis Vuitton 72.69 Gender Vs Product Purchase Table:- Gender No: Product Relevance % Male 50 34 % Female 50 40% Age Span Vs Product Purchase Table:- Age Span No: Product Relevance % Under 20 yrs 50 5% 20 - 30 yrs 700 48% 30 - 40 yrs 300 26% 40 - 50 yrs 200 14% Over 50 yrs 150 11% RESULTS & ANALYSIS OF DATA The appropriate analysis techniques of collected data depend on the nature of the research question and the design of the research. Qualitative research data consist of interview records that are content analyzed for ideas or themes. Quantitative research data may be analyzed in a variety of ways depending on the objectives of the research. A critical part of this stage is interpreting and assessing the research results. It is a fact that clear-cut marketing research study results are totally unambiguous. Usually, relationships among variables or differences between groups and judgment and insight are needed to draw appropriate inferences and conclusions. Marketing researchers should always double-check their analysis and avoid overstating the strength of their findings. The implications for developing or changing a marketing strategy should be carefully thought out and tempered with judgment about the overall quality of the study. The secondary data will analyze and evaluate information that found in the primary sources and creates information more accessible to the readers and the parties involved as these were supported by good books, peer reviewed journals as well as articles and other publication types. The data to be gathered will be tallied by the researcher and will be encoded in the computer. Hard copy will be printed to ensure that files are kept including the questionnaire responses of the sample. Frequencies will be computed into percentages and will be presented through graphs, tables and textual arrangements. The research result is a complete statement of everything done in a research project and includes a write-up of each of the previous stages as well as the strategic recommendations from the research. The limitations of the research should be carefully noted. Research results should be clear and unambiguous with respect to what was done and what recommendations are made. Researchers should work closely with managers to ensure that the study and its limitations are fully understood. The analysis and results of the questionnaires provided during the company events measures the consumer value creation on the company products. This has been made on purpose to be able to bridge literature references and spontaneous empirical data which in turn made researchers able to collect research data in different languages associated to LV. The open-ended questions were able to combine deductive quantitative and inductive qualitative approach what allow researchers to analyze: Whether the free answers reflect the defined dimensions. This leads to a better validation of results. More empirical meanings to the abstract dimension of the model: to which adjectives do functional, symbolic, and affective dimensions refer. The transfer between event and brand directly from the analysis of "language connections" established at the level of free expressions. The data analysis is based on both quantitative and textual data analysis. With respect to quantitative analysis, researchers were able to check the structure of the core model, ie; to establish whether the relationship between functional, symbolic, affective and economic dimensions of consumer values are stable or different from one country to the other. On the other hand, the qualitative analysis was developed in order to reinforce the results previously obtained by the quantitative one. Ways that applied textual data analysis procedures like: 1. Analyze at the country level the frequencies of the adjectives used and the way they can be associated to the consumer values dimensions computed. 2. Automatic content analysis to build semantic fields that define the set of words from different language that have a same meaning. This allows us to compare at a conceptual level the ideas expressed in different languages, and to build an inductive model of consumer values from empirical data that can be compared to the literature based one. The analysis of data can be through scaling interpretation for the survey questions that can be in support to any descriptive type of analysis basing from the responses of shoppers. The measurement for such analysis, must take such forms of non-comparative scales to be illustrated as qualitative approach can involve numeric value and on the other hand, be it in semantic way with complete scaling measurements as equipped to understand relevance's. There will be utilization of interval scaling as the researcher can justify the use of the arithmetic mean as measure of average. In the scale measurement, the degree of agreement as well as disagreement will be given desired numeric value wherein there can include such 2-5 interpretative points to be effective in calculation processes. The data to be presented will have to be in tabulation and due analysis through the use of deviations in median and percentage standardization. This study is based on a real time observation that aims at capturing consumer values toward sponsored event of the brand. Data collection describes the sample structure. Now the LV research results concerning the four different samples (Spanish, French, Italian, and German samples) will be commented to examine the proposed theoretical research in the different countries. Regarding the various sample, five significant relationships have been identified among the three dimensions of the Americas Cup (AC) consumer value and the four dimensions of the Louis Vuitton consumer value. In this sense, AC affective value positively affects the affective and functional value that consumers associate to LV. This means that the consumer that considers the AC event as an interesting, important, significant and well-organized competition will perceive Louis Vuitton as an attractive, pleasure and sensual brand. The AC functional value positively affects the LV affective value and also the AC symbolic value shows the highest relationship between both LV symbolic value and LV economic value. The research shows absence of relationship between the AC functional value and any of the scope of the LV customer value is because of not considering the functionality dimension of value neither in the AC event, nor in the LV brand. Each dimension of the AC consumer value fits with its corresponding dimension of the LV consumer value. The result also shows AC affective value positively correlates to the LV affective value and negatively to the LV economic value and the researchers explained that the negative relationship could be due to the uncertainty of this sporting event. Company researchers hypothesis could be partially accepted, as some of the dimensions of the event value are related with some of the dimensions of the sponsor brand value in the four countries but some differs in certain values made it possible to identify cross cultural context differences. LV BRAND DISCUSSION Louis Vuitton is the leading company in both sales and product sector and geographical coverage. As time passed, the LV Company made great successes in Europe, and was eventually turned into an international company. The first London store opened in 1885 followed by stores in New York, Washington, Alexandria and Buenos Aires in 1914. By the mid twentieth century, Louis Vuitton was a thriving company that, in 1978, opened its first store in Japan. Already a popular brand with Japanese tourists in France, the opening of a Japanese branch caused demand for LV goods to soar. Naturally the company reaped a heavy profit within days of opening in Japan. These profits have continued up through the present, which finds 45 Louis Vuitton stores in Japan alone. Japanese market annually makes up a large part of Louis Vuitton's sales. In the 21st century some 200 Louis Vuitton boutiques in the major cities of Europe, the U.S., and Far East supplied prestigious luggage, elegant apparel, and a wide range of accessories to its distinguished clients. Company is renowned for his marketing skills and tight control over how and where products are sold came out on top in a fierce battle to control Louis Vuitton. Louis Vuitton opened its first store at Palace Hotel in Beijing, China in 1992, 14 years after its first Asian push with stores in Tokyo and Osaka. The challenge that explores the predicament Louis Vuitton, one of the world's leading luxury products makers, faces with respect to brand management while expanding its operations in China. LV had conquered the luxury goods market successfully in Europe, the US and some parts of Asia with operations across the world with 1,500 retail stores in about 60 countries. In the early 1990s Louis Vuitton decided to expand its operations in China and South Korea and later, LV made its entry into India. In 2004, Asia accounted for about 40% of the sales of LV products. LV is determined to capture the growing Asian market. It however faces several challenges in its expansion plans in Asia. One of its major concerns is protecting its brand against dilution. Louis Vuitton, the leading luxury brand, has extended its UK retail store network from its Bond Street flagship to include stand-alone stores and major department stores. China, although a huge market, is also a place where fake branding is endemic. In addition, Louis Vuitton's expansion plans in Asia also opened up the issue of private ownership versus franchising with regards to the profitability of companies in the luxury goods industry. The main insights concentrate on brand protection and brand extension in foreign markets with minimum budgets and careful viral marketing activities among the target groups. For a brand like Vuitton, China is an important area of growth, with the challenge that the region is difficult and expensive to break through. Great researchers proclaimed, "China will make a difference to Vuitton because its population is so large." The largest luxury store in a 900 sq. meter flagship shop in Shanghai opened in China, which has a 10-meter high glass facade etched with the brand's house symbol. This store is a confident and extravagant statement by the Louis Vuitton brand of its aspirations within the Chinese market. Its purpose is also to attract public attention and to generate interest, and hopefully sales, from Shanghai's brand aficionados. The use of both approaches, the emic and the ethic methodology, provides a good and quite complete understanding of different cultures. One hundred fifty years old, the luxury goods manufacturer Louis Vuitton, remains faithful to its founder's original principles of quality and design. When Louis Vuitton selected solutions from i2, it successfully combined modern technology with semi-manual production processes and a traditional respect for top quality and good service that supports the company's expansion. The company would have struggled to support this expansion with our previous systems. At the same time, Louis vuitton was experiencing an annual growth rate of double figures. It was gaining more and more international customers, attracted by the image of luxury and the product quality promise. Company comments that "Our customers are attracted to our products by their quality," and "We also have to offer them a quality service. This means ensuring that our products are available in our stores when our customers want them." In operational terms, it is the blueprint for management procedures, information technology processes and stock handling methods. Staffing and other human resource policies are typically developed and then extended to the stores. It's a bold move by a company looking to expand its footprint in fast-growing markets like China, although the ad will air worldwide. The company commonly uses print ads in magazines and billboards in cosmopolitan cities. Recently decided to enter the world of television and cinema. The commercial (90 seconds) is exploring the theme "Where will life take you" and is translated into 13 different languages. The company is calling it "the first ever on-screen corporate campaign by a luxury house." LV is one of a number of luxury brands fighting the spread of counterfeit items across the world. Despite the proliferation of piracy, the brands have enjoyed a few victories. LV takes a serious view of all counterfeiting, employing a team of lawyers and special investigation agencies, actively pursuing offenders through the courts worldwide, and allocating about half of its budget of communications to counteract piracy of its goods. Today, Vuitton products are primarily available at authentic Louis Vuitton boutiques, with a small number of exceptions. These boutiques are commonly found in upscale shopping districts or, less commonly, inside ultra high-end department stores. The boutiques within department stores operate independently from the department and have their own LV managers and employees. LV has recently launched an online store, through its main website, as an authorized channel to market its products. Research proves that Louis Vuitton has filed a $47 million lawsuit against online auction giant eBay for not "doing enough" to stop or stem the sale of counterfeit Vuitton goods on the auction site. LV official's claims "We always thought that counterfeit requires zero tolerance for several reasons. " It's a fraud economy that escapes all rules of normal labor and normal economic rules and taxations, so it's a bad thing for every state in the world. Secondly, it's bad for any kind of creativity, research and development, because if you don't protect intellectual property, why should people dedicate time and energy to create" CONCLUSION & REMOMMENDATIONS The purposes of this study were to compare the way in which consumers from different countries assign value to LV brand based on a combination of deductive quantitative and inductive qualitative approaches. The results have implications for both sponsorship research and practice as they revealed new insights in the customer's functional, affective, symbolic, and economic evaluation of sponsor-event association on a cross-national level. The brand values are based on data collected during the 12 months prior to evaluation month. It's focused everywhere that the Vuitton's unique identity of relentless focuses on quality and the in-built rigidly controlled distribution network. Future studies that could be of use by the researchers can be seen in the matter of how effective this particular research study to the society. This may reveal that the study of applied values and norms could be the useful indication of the studies to be discussed. This will also be kept as a digest in the future research studies that is more or less related to the presumed study. The study then, may possibly explain relevance of research approach and its affectivity to the served purpose respectively. The recession's consequences on LV will be limited, weak, or even non-existent. In fact, the client that the company is far less affected than the rest of the economy by these short-term economic swings. Company has high purchasing power, located in a number of countries where the economic climate will be buoyant, even if there's a minor recession in the U.S. Despite economic conditions, LV reported growth of 8% in 2007 and say growth will continue in 2008 despite the challenging monetary environment and an uncertain economic climate at the beginning of this year. Increasing market share and the profitability of its leading brands as well as improving the results of its developing companies remain LV to top priorities. The screen campaign is a very clever move, in a way; Luxury is based on fixed cost. In business terms, the campaign is a way to create a gap between brands that can afford it and those that can't. Its 22nd store establishment in China has proved the advertising strategy of Louis Vuitton in China. It's leading advertising and branding strategy in the past and present excellent then also, improvement is always possible in the world. A research of the future advertising strategy and branding image construction and protection should be investigated for product promotion. The recommendation that needs to be well thought-out by the company is to consider the product shipping facilities in LV's upcoming markets including China, Europe and others Asian countries. Company should also take in to consideration on the manufacturing of products that cannot be easily counterfeited for establishing the brand value more powerful. The company can sustain full customer satisfaction by focusing the processes like orders, supply, demand and pricing in product marketing. Based on the researches, company officials should study the considerable variations in the purchasing aim throughout noticeable and not noticeable products as well as among individuals with different levels of social status. It is recommended that the company managers have to develop benificiary market subdivisions and market place strategies targeting young consumers in developing countries. It is recommended that continuous evolution in Louis Vuitton designs should bring new products exclusively to Louis Vuitton's 350 shops every six months. Company has to put forward inventory techniques in all fields of their expertise to compete with the marketers. As the world has transformed into a designer track, the company needs to design its products to satisfy the new generation consumers. Luxury fashion spending trend amongst the metropolitan residents will be reaching all time highs in the coming years. Online purchasing will lead to a revolutionized change in the future marketing. The company has designed to widen its worldwide markets to take advantage on the upcoming luxury product demands. The has taken up the decision to derive policies to pick up the accuracy of product sales anticipation as well as planning product delivering process to maintain the company's prestige. Verdict research published at the end of last year says that growth in regions including China will nearly increase in value by 2012. LV must be careful not to market its products to a wide market since shortage value seems to be one of its appealing factors that would certainly increase its sales. Beyond considering LV's history basis as the top brand, it has considered itself a quality & traditional luxury-goods company and has the belief to expand through innovation rather than through mass marketing. In Japan, an extensive marketing could be undertaken to expand the innovation ideas without devaluing the reputation of the brand. To move successfully into the future LV must remember that it has made it this far on reputation and an unwillingness to bend its values, and it must continue to market that way in order to maintain credibility. The fake-goods market is an insult to LV's credibility, and thus far the company has done its best to tackle the problem. To deal with the fake-goods market, at least in Japan, is to enforce the idea through advertising that it is mocking to buy such goods. All in all when looking at LV's current sales numbers, it is clear that despite previously mentioned problems, the company is doing very well. As has been stated many times, the LV brand is all about luxury and the company has its own values. To keep the company in top position, expanding the consumer-base of its products, such as through the introduction of famous stars as sales representative, eventually compromises its status as a luxury goods provider. Although LV can certainly improve its marketing techniques, it must maintain focused within its previous elite client. Expansion into new areas, such as North America, is of course good, but, the company in order to maintain its integrity and thus its selling power must continue to market its products to the smaller wealthier classes thus preserving its status as a top luxury good. Quotations 1. "The prestige of a luxury brand gets eroded once too many people own a specific luxury product." (Dubois and Paternault -1995, cited in Dall'Olmo Riley and Lacroix, 2003 ) 2. "Fashion communication is mostly a visual process rather than verbal, that the power of advertising is to quickly and effectively deliver messages to audiences throughout the world." (Solomon and Rabolt (2002)) Works Cited 1.Fashion Marketing: By Tony Hines, Margaret Bruce 2. Wikipedia 3. Business Week 4. Customer Think 5.Answers.com 6. Fashion Note Book 7. Survey Question Model Read More