Fashion and Consumers - Essay Example

Introduction It is apparent that consumers' environment influences their decision making and behavior no matter what the product consist of evenin fashion "It is, therefore, not so much drastic change in styling that drives men's fashion today, but fabrics. After all, suits are basically a conservative medium of dress and haven't changed radically for decades and decades. As Anne Hollander has noted in her study, Sex and Suits: The Evolution of Modern Dress, "Advances in technology and economic organization during the past two centuries have in fact been bent on preserving the character of men's tailoring and spreading its availability." The rules were established at the end of the eighteenth century: coat, trousers and vest, designed and constructed to produce a uniformly ideal silhouette and image for any man. A slightly wider lapel here, a fractionally narrower trouser leg there, is as much as most of us are willing to tolerate" (Boyer). From there, consumers influences the market of fashion because of their interest and needs during a period of time. Discussion Culture is the situational factor has the most indirect impact on individual buying decisions because it is as set of symbols and artifacts created by a society and handed down from generation to generation. From there, customer segmentation is important understanding consumer behavior so that marketers can know what they need to appeal to each consumer's social class. Since customer segmentation is at the root of CRM, each business that performs CRM is ready to address the bigger question of deploying unique messages to the right customer at the right time. The booming CRM industry has provided the in-depth customer data that is vital for successful direct mail campaigns and integrated channel strategies focused on keeping and growing profitable customers. Data can become customer insight. Customer insight can become action. Action can grow the value of customer base and grow net income (Gaffney, and Dobrow 2007). Unlike women's hemlines, which seem to go from here to there in a blink, more than a half-inch taken or given anywhere in a man's wardrobe constitutes a revolution. The general thrust in menswear since the beginning of the twentieth century has been to make the basic suit more comfortable: lighter-weight fabrics and construction techniques have reduced stiffness, heaviness and constriction. Men's tailoring today is positively airy compared to what it was before mid-century (Boyer). Social classes From there, social classes are likely to respond differently to a sellers marketing program. However, there are other situational factors that encourages consumers to purchase organic food such as store location and personal preference. Due to this fact, marketers may need to design marketing programs tailored to specific social classes so that that they can be more successful in understanding their customers needs without making mistakes. Customers have the ability to make a choice about what they want to purchase. Customers want excellent service from the companies that they patron and they want competitive pricing. This may appear to them that the company is weakening or is inconsistent. By communicating goals and strategy early on, the organization pays respect to customers and employees, and deals openly with uncertainty and doubt. (Baron, A. p. 13, 2006). Customer trends Customer trends change and so does their choices, which means people are generally tired of the same brands that they had been using over the years. When they do not see the expected innovation they migrate to new brands. With that, maintaining the standards of such a huge chain becomes feasible. However, when there is lack of quality service in one store it affects the whole brand. In order to overcome the issues, marketers of organic food need to consider group thinking and conformity so that everyone can work together. Working on a team can be very rewarding and exciting, but also frustrating if some of the team member are not committed to the team. Building a high performance team requires time, collaboration and most importantly communication. According to Katzenbach and Smith (2004), a team is described as a small number of people with complementary skills who are committed to a common purpose and approach for which they hold themselves mutually accountable. Group thinking and conformity focuses on the interpersonal transaction between managers and employee. Leaders are seen as engaging in behaviors that maintain a quality interaction between themselves and followers. The company is lacking group thinking and conformity because no one is willing to work together. In order to be an effective company, they have to conform as one so that productivity can be increased to make high profits. This effective form of communication and teamwork allowed people in the park with no problems because the team was organized and knew the proper procedure. A successful team also requires active listening, empathy, and being truly committed. In order for fashion marketers to understand the situational factors surrounding consumers, they must research a program prior to implementation to ensure it will be successful, and to determine any potential failures. Companies realize a successful process at another company does not guarantee the program will work in every business model. Research is a diligent and systematic inquiry or investigation into a subject in order to discover or revise facts, theories or applications. Benchmarking is a way to compare how one company does business with another in the same industry. Benchmarking occurs when a company wishes to develop new plans and ideas and wishes to see how other like companies has been successful. Benchmarking requires many hours of research to determine the risks associated with implementing the processes and removes the stigma of "it has always been done this way" while allowing for a variation to problem solving. It uses a review of best practices and though costly, the benefits will outweigh the costs. By using benchmarking practices, companies can implement new and improved business practices and develop plans which will help them succeed. From there, it seems that fashion trends make the market in any era which can be seen from the following. The biggest news these past several seasons has been in the cloths known as "Supers." Super fine wools are a relatively new phenomenon that followed recent advances in technology. Supers are made from what is the world's finest wool: pure-bred merino sheep from Australia and New Zealand grow wool that is supremely soft, silky and fine. The diameter of a strand of Supers-quality merino is less than 20 microns (one millionth of a meter); the smaller the micron number in the designation, the finer the wool. Thus, the first generation of Supers were in the 80s and 90s range of fineness, about 19 microns; newer 110 and 120 Supers are in the range of 18 and 17 microns. What's most noticeable about these cloths is the atypical combination of a soft, buttery texture with great durability and drape (Boyer). Conclusion It is clear that if a manager cannot bring people on board with the company's vision then they will be required to take the necessary actions to ensure the company stays on track in the business transformation by involving the employees. "Customer Needs" refer to WHY the customer buys, not WHAT the customer buys. Customer needs are the internal conditions or motivating desires behind a customer's purchase or usage of a product or service. Customer needs are complex and involve many dimensions and nuances including beliefs, motivations, preferences, life stages, decision making styles and more. A good CRM strategy will employ customer segmentation at its root, and build off the understandings of customer behaviors within the different segments. With taking this idea, marketers have met the customers needs with this program because it gave them a new way to conduct their business, which in return makes more profits that benefits that benefit everyone. In the future, marketers of fashion will continue to create more new convenient and easy ways to shop that will make customers more incline to buy. Furthermore, from observing situational factors, they will make more improvements that customers can conduct their business smoothly. In order to overcome, future CRM issues, the company will investigate new improvements for this technology, so that they can continue to be updated with it. Along with that, it is necessary to have strong leadership when competition is intensified. Therefore, companies need strong leadership in order to understand situational factors that influences consumer behavior so that they have the ability to be innovative enough to set themselves apart from their competitors and maintain a successful and stable structure company, which benefits the company itself and customers Read More