Louis Vuittons Marketing Strategy - Case Study Example

LOUIS VUITTON’S MARKETING GY al Affiliation) Luxury brand s in the fashion and design industry are nowadays perceived as unreasonable and overpriced. Despite this fact, majority of the famous luxury brands are performing well in their respective markets. The successes of these companies have largely contributed to both their local and global growth. The growth of these companies and the rise in demand of their products and services is largely attributed by the fact that individuals prefer superior goods to the normal and inferior goods for the sake of maintaining their egos. Introduction Louis Vuitton is a French fashion brand that has its roots in France but is well recognized all round the world. The famous French fashion designer Louis Vuitton founded it. The brand deals with a variety of products such as luxury trunks and pure leather goods such as bags, shoes, accessories, watches and sunglasses. The brand is among the most leading international fashion brands. The company sells their products in some of the most famous boutiques and high department stores in various countries in Europe and America. The company has a well-organized marketing team that is responsible to marketing their products. The excellent performance of the company in its industry is mainly attributable to its marketing department. Its marketing strategy is very efficient considering the fact that the nature of luxury brands is very different from that of essential commodities in the market. The marketing plan of this brand is very effective since it fills the vast gap of ordinary brands such as McDonald’s and Coca-Cola with its luxury brand. Discussion The brand uses the four Ps of marketing; Price, Product, Promotion and Place, to market its products. These principles of brand marketing that it implements slightly differ with the marketing of general commodities. They are the main reason of the brand name rising at an incremental rate over the years. These principles are channeled to reach out to the markets that these products are not popular and to attract more customers. The first marketing strategy that Louis Vuitton ensures is its product quality. As a luxury brand, the company ensures that its products have the best qualities in the market. For a general brand an average quality would be sufficient due to their cost saving measures but this never applies in luxury brands. Louis Vuitton does not compromise quality for costs. They pay attention to each detail to ensure that their products have distinguished qualities and they deserve to be treated luxurious commodities. This aspect of the brand attracts more customers while maintaining the brand’s loyal customers who are always satisfied. The brand incorporates several measures to ensure no infringement of its quality. The entity works very hard to eliminate its counterfeit products in the market. It does this by launching and holding enlightening campaigns all round the world. This action is essential to the level of sales that the brand makes. The campaigns sensitize the customers about the counterfeit products and therefore leave them at a better position to distinguish between a legit product and a counterfeit product. The brand also registers its products with the Registration of Trademarks and Designs. This prevents other companies from legally producing the brands counterfeit products. Lastly, in a bid to eliminate the brands counterfeit products from the market the brand distribute warning notices to the producers and suppliers of these counterfeit products. The elimination of counterfeit products increases the demand of the brands’ legit products. The brand maintains the high quality of its products by discouraging the appraisal of authenticity of its products. This is enforced by the prohibition of second hand stores. These stores encourage influence buyers to buy already used products thus reducing the demand of the new products that the company products. The Company goes ahead to prohibit the appraisal of authenticity in the mass media. This is the discouragement of customers from this practice through national television, radio and the internet. The company prohibits licensing of its brand to other companies. This is because these companies can produce products with lower quality and thus lowering the quality of the brand. In extreme levels, this can transform the Louis Vuitton brand from a luxury brand to a general brand. The brand discourages the entry of similar brands in the market. They monopolize the market or form cartels with other major players in the fashion industry to prohibit the entry of competing brands in the luxury fashion industry. This ensures that the brand maintains its share in the market and only focuses on increasing it. The company highly encourages the placing of special orders by customers. This improves the quality of the brand since the requested products are manufactured with the customer’s specifications and have the sole intention of getting customer satisfaction (Blogs.ubc.ca, 2012). The next principle of marketing that Louis Vuitton incorporates relate to pricing. General commodities in the markets focus at lowering their prices so as to increase their demand. They do this by reducing costs by measures such as shifting their production to Asia where the labor is relatively cheap. In luxury brands such as Louis Vuitton this is never the case. Their products always have high prices since they never focus on prices but value. The value that they concentrate in is absolute value and not relative value. The Company implements various to ensure that the brand’s products have high prices. First, it prohibits exorbitant pricing. Despite the fact that the brands’ products have high prices, these prices should not be unreasonable. These prices should always relate with the value that these prices exhibit. Charging of extremely high prices on the brands’ products without proper basis will discourage customers from the brand. The brand ensures proper pricing of its products. Extremely high pricing would have adverse effects as discussed above. Charging low prices on the brand’s products would also have negative effects on their marketing. They put the value and quality of the products into question. Most customers will not be willing to buy them since they will not consider them as luxury goods. The brand highly discourages the bargaining of its prices. General commodities give room for the bargaining of their prices since they are essential goods. Luxury brands do not entertain bargaining of prices from their customers since the products value is usually high and therefore there are no alternatives to their prices. Bargaining should be prohibited to discourage the fluctuation of the brand’s prices since it would discourage loyal customers from the brand. These customers are used to fixed prices of the commodities of their choice and the frequent change to these prices would discourage them from consuming the commodities. The brand should also maintain a prestige pricing system. The luxury brand of Louis Vuitton maintains a prestige price over their commodities to make their products belong to an upper social class. The prestige pricing maintains the image of the brand to be expensive and for high class in the society. The marketing strategy of Louis Vuitton takes its place of distribution with great emphasis in a bid to increase the sale of its products. The sale of general products in the market expands their distribution channels through the opening of more stores and selling through volume retailers and mail orders. Louis Vuitton as a luxury brand does not apply this technique in distributing its commodities. They ensure that their products are distributed in limited designated stores or through online stores. This works positively to increase their value as luxury commodities since the harder they are to get the more their demand. The practice of controlling the distribution of their commodities helps the company to eliminate the threat of counterfeits in the market. Lastly, Louis Vuitton implements promotion as a fundamental principle of marketing. Most general goods do mass advertisements to increase their sales volume and their market share. A large percentage of these advertisements include television commercials with aggressive advertisements. Louis Vuitton does not advertise its products on television commercials. On the contrary it does so in newspapers and fashion magazines through the use of image advertisements. The aggressive advertisements are done goods whose target is the public as compared to the more silent advertisements who are meant for a specific targeted group. The promotion strategies emphasizes on portraying the brand’s products as luxurious products in the public domain. Its main aim is usually to differentiate it with the general products in the market. The brand limits its advertisement to only the few targeted people. To promote the brand, Louis Vuitton creates up with the excuses of having supply shortages. This creates a perception that the brand only manufactures limited products for the selected few wealthy individuals. Conclusion In summary, it is evident that Louis Vuitton as a luxury brand has different marketing strategy with that of other general commodities in the market. The marketing of their products is designed to target the few individuals who can afford their high prices. Their marketing strategy is an efficient one for a luxury brand and it gives the explanation for the company’s success. Reference Blogs.ubc.ca, (2012). Louis Vuitton’s Marketing Strategy | http://blogs.ubc.ca/demidychua. [online] Available at: http://blogs.ubc.ca/demidychua/2012/11/08/louis-vuittons-marketing-strategy/ [Accessed 12 Apr. 2015]. Read More