Marketing Success of Clarks Footwear Fashion Business - Essay Example

An illustrated Critique of Clarks Footwear Fashion Business Marketing Success Insert (s) An illustrated Critique of the Marketing Success of Clarks Footwear Fashion Business Introduction C&J Clark International Ltd. (popularly known as Clarks), is currently one of the successful brands in the global fashion and design creative industry. According to (Clarks, 2014), the company manufactures and sells a wide range of fashion shoes products some of which include stylish work shoes, sandals, dress shoes, and is particularly best known for its famous, distinctive desert boot with crepe sole that normally made out of calf suede leather. Clarks is currently not only the best known brand on the UK high street, but the company is increasingly expanding its operations across several parts of the world included North America, India, Eastern and Western Europe and China thereby making it the forth biggest footwear manufacturer and retailer in the world(Clarks, 2014, p.1). Founded in 1825, the renowned British, international shoe manufacturer and retailer has sustained its growth over the years through its great brand marketing campaigns, more fashion focused products and management support to become the worlds largest footwear brand (Sutton, 2009, p.45). The history of the Clarks shoes business dates back to the 1820s when a British Tannery worker known as Cyrus Clark entered into a partnership with his Quaker cousin to begin a sheep skin rug business. Cyrus Clark was soon joined by his brother James who began making slippers from the sheepskin left over. The slippers were a great success. By 1833, James had been taken on as a full business partner and the business was renamed C & J Clark. In 1960s, Clarks also began building a reputation for its children shoe products not only in the United Kingdom but also in other parts of the world (Palmer, 2013, p.54). Currently, the company has established nearly 1000 branded stores selling more than 50 million pairs of shoes annually in over 35 countries across the globe. Despite experiencing difficulties during the middle of the 19th century, the company has managed to regain its growth and has expanded over the years by adopting techniques of mass production as well as enhancing its brand marketing campaigns to become a global giant shoe fashion designer and retailer. This paper presents an illustrated critique of the success of Clarks Footwear Fashion Business with particular focus to its marketing and brand positioning strategies. Fig 1: Vintage Advert of the Original Desert Boot Critique of Clarks Marketing and Brand Positioning Strategies Throughout its 200 years of existence, the Clarks has always enjoyed an impressive market success and sustained growth in nearly all its product segments (Sutton, 2009, p.78). According to experts, the Clarks current market success is largely attributed to a number of brand internalization and strategic positioning strategies that the company developed and adopted in order to meet its business growth objectives. From the contemporary shoe fashion looks to the stylish designs, the Clarks shoes are currently considered to be the world’s number one everyday footwear. According to Clarks (2014), the company currently designs, innovates and manufactures a wide variety of shoes in various parts of the world. A comprehensive marketing plan adopted by Clark’s footwear fashion business has majored on profitability as well as ensuring future success of the business. Footwear business is a highly competitive one with various businesses offering unprecedented selection of current footwear fashions. The Clark footwear; seemingly in relation to their strategic business plan has practically gotten ideas and good fashion models with variety of dozens of marketing plans (Palmer, 2013). The marketing summary of Clark’s footwear business additionally, captures good information regarding their market hence providing knowledge a great deal about the common attributed business facts of the most prized customers. Per se, Clark’s footwear has structurally leverage the customer relations information to a better understanding of who should be served, their specific needs and how Clarks business operators can overwhelmingly communicate with their customers better. Clarks Successful Marketing Strategy The success of the Clarks shoe business and its continued growth over its 200 year history is primarily attributed to the company’s effective marketing strategies and being open to new ideas. For example, since its beginning in 1825, as a company tanning sheepskin rugs, the increasing brand popularity of Clarks shoes show the company become one of the most popular footwear manufacturers in the United Kingdom. As the production flourished, the company focused on expanding its customer base and adopting modern mass production strategies and eventually began to focus on international expansion. This is particularly evidenced by the fact that the company has recently established nearly 1000 branded stores selling more than 50 million pairs of shoes annually in over 35 countries across the globe. One of the marketing strategies that have been employed by the Clarks is brand internalization. In the year 2000, the Clarks company sales topped £830 million and the company intensified its quest for international growth. For example, in one of its recent moves towards brand internalization, the company acquired a German children’s shoe company known as Elefanten in 2001 at a cost of £23 million. The Purchase particularly not only gave the Clarks an important strategic position in the Benelux and German markets, but also boosted the company’s presence in the United States. In addition, Clarks has also attempted to use the acquisition as a springboard to further launch various Clarks branded children’s footwear across several European countries. Since the year 2002, Clarks has undertaken further repositioning and sales that continued to build up topping up to over £1 billion in the year 2002. This has enabled the company to successfully weather a number of challenges within the last decade and reemerge as strong and well positioned global brand name for the new century. For example, the Clarks has increasingly sought to expand its operations over the last decade across several parts of the world included North America, India, Eastern and Western Europe and China thereby making it the forth biggest footwear manufacturer and retailer in the world. Generally, Clarks understands that one of the most effective brand marketing techniques is normally based on the ability of a company to develop a comprehensive understanding of the customer behaviors and tastes. For example, a successful marketing often depends on the company knowing what particularly motivates the target demographics to buy and then aligning the products with the identified customer needs. In order to achieve this, the company has embarked on a number of strategies geared towards achieving robust customer insights such as by carrying out consumer surveys and developing appropriate structured customer service optimization strategies through partnerships with the relevant companies and institutions. On the other hand, Clarks Shoes Company has also taken advantage of the contemporary rapid growth of online shopping to help the company measure its consumer behavior, understand the customers and promote or market its products to potential consumers across various parts of the world. Generally, modern foot wear designers and manufacturers such as the Clarks are increasingly using online strategies such as smart multivariate testing strategies to enable them better understand the needs of their customers (Hill, 2005., p.56). Today, an increasing number of Clarks shoe sales are made online with the Clarks online store currently being considered to be one of potential key drivers in the future growth. The company’s recent decision to adopt a customer experience optimization strategy as part of its global brand awareness campaign has significantly enabled the company to improve its customer experience. Market analysis of Clark’s footwear business over the past years has been aggressive and aptly growing. The potential customers to this business premise include; professionals, housewives as well as various officially employed individuals. The targeted groups of esteemed customers by Clarks are globally situated. One of the marketing analysis attribute of Clark’s footwear business is regarding this business’s market demographics. The profile for Clark’s footwear business customer consists of the following geographic, behavioural and demographic factors; Geographic’s; the immediate geographic target is the global market. This implies that this company is faced with a perfect competition throughout its marketing structures. As per business operations, dominating the footwear market remains the ultimate goal of Clark’s footwear business which is seemingly forthcoming to this business; as Clarks footwear is a global label (Glynn and Woodside, 2009, p.22). Demographically, age range of the targeted customers by Clarks foot wear is unlimited. The young, middle-aged and old customers find comfort in Clark’s footwear. This has greatly uplifted the customer base of Clark’s footwear business. For example, behaviour factors are considered by this business in order to create a fashion conscious environment in relation to footwear. Sales promotion targets overly every individual customer in the globe with an intention of increasing sales and profit margins for this company. Market needs of Clarks footwear business; the Clark’s footwear business is highly committed business-wise to providing the fashion market with a wide range of fashionable shoes with an unprecedented selection. Currently, Clarks customers are fully enlightened regarding the Clark’s shoes logos; this is in order to increase loyalty of customers in relation to Clark’s footwear available to the fashion market. Clark’s footwear seeks to fulfil the following benefits that are purposefully important to their customers. Selection: The widest selection of Clark’s footwear business aims at reaching the global over populace. Customer service: The patron of this business is overly impressed with the degree of care and complements that they receive from their customers. Accessibility: The central location and wide range of Clark’s business’ hours are designed to accommodate all the customer needs. On the other hand, competitive pricing of all Clark’s footwear allows for a commendable customer base of these products as opposed to other designer footwear products in the fashion market. Market trends: The market trend for Clark’s footwear fashion is towards a wider selection of common design elements. The sigmoid marketing growth curve of Clark’s footwear business over the past few years; shows there has been a proliferation of several design variations from a base footwear design of this business. According to Grönroos(2006, p.88), a base design helps in the infiltration of footwear products in the market. Additionally, a base design is released into the market and then there emerges various indifferent spurs that have common elements but inclusive of a few distinctive characteristics. The market trends of Clark’s footwear business beyond any reasonable doubt show this business as one of the leading footwear businesses in the world. This is due to the favourably adopted social corporate responsibility of the Clark’s footwear business which understands the environment of operation of Clark’s footwear business. This has cordially increased the loyalty of customers on Clark’s footwear products. Market growth of Clark’s footwear business: The market for Clark’s footwear fashion is strong and steady growing market. The market mix of this fashion-based business in time immemorial has never been affected by economic downturns. Most loyal customers seem to consume Clark’s shoes regardless of the economic climate. In a popular mini-series of Clark’s footwear, women appeared to be at the top list of loyal customers. This gave rise to Clark’s footwear sales hence in return describing a woman habit of buying shoes as a release whenever they feel bad; a way to better their feeling, similar to eating chocolate. While this marketing stereotype may be inaccurate, women always boom footwear business and cannot seem to get enough of shoe wear fashion. SWOT analysis of Clark’s footwear business; The following SWOT analysis covers the key strengths and weaknesses within the Clarks business company. Additionally, the opportunities and threats facing the company are discussed in details below. Firstly, the strengths of Clark’s footwear business outstandingly show and extremely strong relationship with distributors. This business operation portrays excellent staffs that are customer attentive and trained accordingly. The company also gives great discounts on the footwear thus increasing job satisfaction. The retail stores owned by Clark’s footwear business are efficient, stylish and easily accessible by the customers. The weaknesses of this business on the other hand include; lack of a brand equality. This footwear business lacks the ability to provide an instant gratification by having all shoe sizes in stock. Additionally, forecasting fashion business is hectic but overly necessary to profitability. Opportunities of Clark’s footwear business; this industry seems to have been a force to reckon with in fashion industry, Clack’s footwear business seems immune to recessions. The Clark’s footwear business has the opportunistic ability to operate on lean overhead relative to its competitors. Lastly, marketing analysis on the threats of Clark’s footwear business settles on the misjudging nature in relation to where fashion is headed. There is often a constant delay globally in the shipment of Clark’s footwear products as well as the unavailability of many of the advertised designs. Marketing products offered by Clark’s footwear business. These products include; Loafers, stylish work shoes, dress shoes and sandals. Clark’s footwear strives to have the largest selection of shoes not only in Europe but globally. This mission is largely dependent on a business strategic plan which aims at having in stock one size of shoes per style as a demonstration model by this company. Additionally, for a strategic capture of the world’s footwear market, a special relationship with the wholesaler who are able to send out on demand on the right shoe size and style to be manufactured must be highly maintained by this company. Often a wholesaler will be passionately willing to ship out individual shoes all the time depending on the personal relationship they have with the manufacturers. Lastly, the contemporary marketing key to strategy of Clark’s footwear business is basically to meet the demand for an upscale shoe store targeting every individual. The shoe design must cordially target a wider customer based attention and selection. Adoption of an all-inclusive fashion design, fast customer delivery, selection and well-trained marketing employees should be some of the keys to success of the Clark’s footwear fashion business. For example, the contemporary marketing plan adopted by Clark’s footwear fashion business has majored on profitability as well as ensuring future success of the business. Theoretical Insights into the Clarks Success in Brand Marketing There are a number of theories that can effectively be used to explain the success of C&J Clark International Ltd. in using its brand awareness and internalization as a marketing strategy (Grönroos, 2006, p.67). For example, according to an integrative theory of marketing, brands normally plays a critically value adding role in the creation of the customer experience. This is particularly attributed to the fact that customers often develop relationships with the brand. Conclusion In conclusion, the continued success and growth of the Clarks shoe business and it’s throughout its 200 year history is widely believed to be as a result of the company’s effective marketing strategies and being open to new ideas. Despite experiencing significant recession and other difficulties during the middle of the 19th century, the company has managed to successfully regain its growth and has expanded over the years by adopting mass production techniques and enhancing its brand marketing campaigns to become a global giant shoe fashion designer and retailer. References C. & J. Clark International Ltd. 2014. Company Official Website. Available at ://uk.clarksjobs.com/headquarters/where_you_could_be_working/marketing/ Glynn, M. and Woodside, A. 2009. Business-to-business brand management, 1st ed. JAI Press, Bingley, UK. Grönroos, C. 2006. On Defining Marketing: Finding a New Roadmap. Marketing Theory 6(4): 395–417. Hill, W. (2005). International Business: Competing in the Global Marketplace. New York: McGraw-Hill Irwin. Palmer, M. 2013. Made to Last: The Story of Britains Best Known Shoe Firm. London: Profile Books. Sutton, G. B. 2009. A History of Shoe Making in Street, Somerset: C&J Clark, 1833-1903. London: William Sessions. Read More