Market Positioning in a Famous Clothing Brand - Case Study Example

and Sur Due Marketing Theory and Practice - Positioning With the present trends in the market where competitionis cut throat, positioning acquires a significant stature in marketing. A product has to strike an immediate chord in the consumer’s mind and whenever the necessity for a certain item arises a particular brand should be immediately visualized by the buyer. Many companies involved in the manufacture and marketing of diverse consumer products are researching this aspect actively and striving to establish their brand name. The present access to a volatile media is so continuous and unabashed that to register a particular brand name it has to be played over and over till it establishes an indelible imprint on the target customer. The present day consumer is presented with an information overload by the continuous bombardment of particular products through television and internet which are the most visible media in this era. The human mind reacts by oversimplifying and generalizing until a specific notion is developed about a particular product. For example a person may relate cars to the Ford brand only despite the availability of numerous brands. This shows that the Ford brand has established in that person a concept or a notion, which is the ulterior and the desirable motive of positioning in modern marketing strategy. According to an extract from the famous book by Al Ries and Jack Trout on marketing, one of the famous marketing laws promoted by them states that “There are no facts. There are no best products. All that exists in the world of marketing are perceptions in the minds of the customers or the prospect. The perception is the reality. Everything else is an illusion.” (www.strategies.co.uk). Positioning of a product has been simply defined as “how the target market defines a product in relation to similar products from rival companies.” (www.determan.net). The uniqueness of a product and the acknowledgement by the market of this uniqueness as hard fact is the true aim of positioning. To present and position a brand new product in the market is a preposterous and difficult task in the present era where already most aspects of a consumer have been hogged by big brand names. The cost of launching a new consumer brand is prohibitive and has been estimated to be something around $ 150 million (Aaker & Keller, 1990). According to the authors two approaches are used to circumvent this high expenditure. One is ‘line extension’ or where an already popular brand name is used to position a newer product in its own category (e.g. Diet Coke- a new product using the ‘Coke’ brand name). The other approach is that of ‘brand extension’ where a popular name is used to launch and promote an entirely different product from the category the brand symbolizes (hypothetical example: the ‘Coke’ soft drinks company promoting sports wear). Brand extensions have therefore become the major process by which large companies enter newer products in a lateral manner during the last few decades (Aaker & Keller, 1990). Even if the newly launched product fails to capture the target market, the chances of success are much higher and the loss of failure to the company much less as compared to a purely fresh product launch initiative. Repositioning of an established brand is also essential in today’s fiercely competitive environment. Marketing experts continuously monitor their products and keep track of any rival products encroaching on their established market. In case such a threat is detected, repositioning of the product becomes essential which can be done using multifarious approaches. One such approach is the ‘Trinodal mapping of brand and advertisement images in association with consumer preference (Keon, 1983). The author suggests a single map plotting of the latest consumer ideals, whether the advertisement campaign is consistent with those ideals and the brand product is up to the expected standards or not (Keon, 1983). The product repositioning should be done based on the analysis of these three factors. However in the modern era major brand names are marketed aggressively online and the repositioning has to be done according to that as more eyeballs are on the net as compared to other media. Positioning in a Famous Clothing Brand The product and the brand I have chosen as a good example of positioning is the “Fred Perry” brand of sporting apparel named after the legendry tennis player from Britain. The enigma and grandeur associated with this tennis player was so great that the use of his name alone as a brand was enough to sell thousands of “Fred Perry” shirts the world over. Fred Perry’s fans blindly bought anything associated with the company and it followed it up by offering them excellent products. The brand name has so enamoured the youth ever since its launch that they have incorporated it into a lifestyle which has been developed into sub cultures which involve activities beyond sports. For example a Fred Perry music initiative sub culture exists which promotes young talent in music who are also associated with the brand apparel in some way or the other (www.fredperrysubculture.com). The “Fred Perry” brand has now become an icon and is actively promoted as an ‘Icon Book’ online (www.fredperry.com) which symbolizes itself with the youth of today. According to the site it all began in the 1940s when the player was approached by an Austrian footballer Tibby Wegner to develop and market a wrist band which would prevent the sweat from flowing on to the racket handle (www.fredperry.com). The result was a modified one from the original wrist band, which was much more convenient to wear and thus the “Fred Perry” brand was launched. A unique logo was developed and popularized using media and as part of clothing of the majority of sportspersons during that era in the 1960-70s. The shirt became such a hit that it soon left the sports arena and became a popular street wear which could be worn overnight as well. British street fashion and music was popular the world over and soon the shirt became an international brand. The iconic rise of the brand had such a huge impact that even to this day the original Fred Perry shirt is made in England with the same raw material, design and processing which was used originally (www.fredperry.com). Despite competition from a number of the major sports apparel brands like Adidas, Nike, Reebok, etc. and availability of similar and maybe better products from these companies, the Fred Perry brand has persisted, survived and attained a unique position for itself in the five decades following its launch. The Fred Perry apparel brand emphasizes on style rather than fashion and built an aura of romance around it which persists till today. There is no hard selling by the company in the form of huge advertisements and hoardings but it relied more on its authenticity, discreetness and faithful following amongst the youth of successive generations (www.fredperry.com). The company’s marketing strategy has been a subtle one, with no attempts at seducing the customers outside the sports arena as the company managers could envisage beforehand that aggressive marketing into the street wear sector could damage the romance associated with the brand. The company silently watched and monitored the flow of its brand into the cultural activities of the youth of Britain as well as rest of the world. It has emerged as a brand with ‘substance and heritage’ which was unsurpassable by the newly promoted hep brands of clothing in both the sport wear and the casual wear sectors. It has therefore repositioned itself well with the other brands by stressing on style statement and keeping a consistent and exclusive product as its major offer to the consumers. References: Aaker David A. and Keller Kevin Lane,1990, Consumer Evaluations of Brand Extensions, Journal of Marketing, Vol. 54, No. 1 (Jan., 1990), pp. 27-41 Fred Perry Icon Book, Available online at: http://www.fredperry.com/heritage/heritage.asp?section=history Fred Perry Sub Culture, available online at: http://www.fredperrysubculture.com/ Keon John W., 1983,Product Positioning: TRINODAL Mapping of Brand Images, Ad Images, and Consumer Preference,Journal of Marketing Research, Vol. 20, No. 4 (Nov., 1983), pp. 380-392 Marketing and Market Positioning, Online article available at: http://www.strategies.co.uk/services/market-marketing-positioning.asp Marketing - Positioning Strategies, segmentation, niches, Online article available at: http://www.determan.net/Michele/mposition.htm Read More