Although the market for separates is certainly viable given promising growth in test markets, it is not a market that makes sense for Hart, Schaffner & Marx (HSM) to compete in. The trend certainly shows a divergence in how some customers view their needs with regards to semi-formal clothing, but the firm runs the risk of diluting not only the perceived quality of its clothing, but also alienating its current client base that is partial to the experience HSM offers in its stores. This experience includes personalized expertise on new fashions, custom tailoring, and the status associated with purchasing and wearing the company’s clothes. Although data is limited to a single years sales comparison in four different test markets, unit …show more content…
Current HSM customers tend to prefer a knowledgeable salesperson to help pick out clothes made of quality fabric. The status of the brand is also an important distinction. The HSM customer tends to wear suits often to work and to client meetings, and often view a perfectly tailored high quality suit as necessary to present a professional image. Custom tailoring is also important to the “professionalism” image the HSM client demands. A suit that doesn’t fit perfectly is fairly obvious to even a lay-person let alone a business executive that demands a similar status from his/her clothes. As a result, it is important to an HSM client that their clothes fit perfectly for them. As a result, HSM suit pants come unfinished on the bottom due to the assumption of guaranteed custom tailoring with the purchase. Also, this type of customer might also be busy during the day and significantly value the convenience of personalized service and expertise, and be willing to pay a slightly higher price for that convenience.
In contrast, the target customer for separates wears traditional suits far less often, and is far more price sensitive. The separates customer doesn’t mind shopping for awhile to find what they are looking for. They are also far less concerned with having status associated with their purchase. Such a customer might be looking for a cheaper suit to wear to a
Stagnant sales performance has caused Harrington Collection to explore new avenues for improved performance, including the launch of a new active-wear line. Recognizing an emerging trend of low price and rapid style turnover in the women’s apparel market, along with tremendous growth in the active-wear segment, Harrington needs to work strategically to capture this profitable market opportunity. After careful analysis, it was determined that Harrington should implement a new active-wear line.
For people who wants to buy clothing in Myer, they usually go shopping with friends or family, so they could get some suggestions from others. When people making decisions of buy new clothes, usually they have little knowledge of how the cloth will looks like on them, so they need to try them on, this process often take a long time. The influcences at the points of sales of these products will be whether customers like the style or not, the suggestions from friends, families and salesperson, and whether customers think the product worth the price (Rahman, Rahaman, Jensen, & Gällstedt 2008, p. 42-43).
This expansion demonstrates how the luxury industry is now run by massive corporations whose focus is only on growth, visibility, brand awareness, advertising, and most importantly, PROFITS! With growth and expansion, has come a decrease in quality and rarity. The luxury garments produced are mostly not handmade but are even outsourced to large factories in places such as China and Turkey. Also, to meet quarterly turnover projections, “designers churn(ed) out increasingly trendy collections of clothes, handbags, and shoes.” (Thomas, Pg. 246) With hundreds of new stores around the globe the surplus of designer labeled merchandise is immense hence, the proliferation of outlet malls.
For this growing population, we can track the merchandises and find out what kind of items the customers spend money on. We gather the data and analyze the pattern and what style the customer is looking for. We send e-mails to the customers when getting new items that fit the customer’s dress preference with style suggestions.
People indulge in clothes shopping every day and often do not consider the changes that occurred throughout time that led to the development of mass produced clothing for both men and women. As a result of the Civil War, the production of clothing shifted from homemade clothing to clothing mass produced in factories. After the Civil War, Urbanization along with new developments, such as advertising and the new, wealthy urban class, increased the demand for mass produced women’s clothing and clothing stores that made clothing readily available.
Of the hundreds of named brand clothing that form part of the retail and fashion industry I chose to compare, for my analysis, Abercrombie & Fitch, Forever 21, American Eagle, and H&M. These stores are prominent, well-known for selling apparel, shoes, and accessories by the means of offering sales and promotions to their customers. This is a clever strategy for attracting customers, allowing them to believe that they bought goods at affordable, convenient prices – and not to mention the prestigious name prescribed to the clothing brands. Using keyhole.co as my main source, I obtained relevant and valuable information regarding the status of these brands. My intentions were to compare a period of 14 days, however, due to the limited access that I received from my free trial, the program only allowed me to see fewer of the dates than I anticipated. I want to take this opportunity and mention ahead of time that due to the various and distinctive products that are sold from these stores, when looking for the “spending capacity” I decided to focus on shirts/ jeans for men and women and compare the prices among them since each of these retailers carry those items and as a way to make this report easier to contrast and comprehend. Also, when approaching the section of “setting”, I screen-shotted some of the images on Instagram and made them into a collage to separate the type of clothes and trends that each of these brands sell currently. In the following modules
The Civil War inadvertently brought ready-made clothing to us, and it is here to stay. The era of ready-to-wear clothing, though a revolution in itself, should also be viewed as a positive trend that continues to provide consumers with time-efficient and abundant choices through advancements in machinery and new distribution models. Though arguably the unforeseen outcome of a coincidence, the impacts of ready-made clothing have had huge implications on our everyday lives. Thank you for your
2. The traditional suit (TS) customer is different than the target customer for high-quality separates (HQS), as they have distinct preferences and exhibit different behavior. Firstly, the TS customer will require sales assistance, while the target customer for HQS will prefer to shop by
The Canadian Apparel Federation is facing numerous challenges as the apparel industry is very competitive and consumer tastes and preferences are constantly changing. Our study will present some of the major trends developing in the apparel industry and what companies can do to capitalize on the market and distinguish themselves from the competitors.
Garments are one the crucial needs of all humanity, and design dress are dependably on request all through the seasons. At an early stage when beginning a discount attire business, one ought to remember some vital particulars before beginning an online discount apparel exchange.
My interest began to grow, and I started shopping online with Ebay and Amazon, trying to find prices under retail. After getting so many pieces of clothing from Nike and Jordan, I began to get tired of the style and decided to move on to another brand, and change my style completely. That brand was Ralph Lauren, which I now own a shirt in almost every color from them. I then decided it was time to move on from him as well. This is when I started to find more and more sites and apps dedicated to selling and buying designer clothing. “But it was the slew of second-hand clothing startups that launched at the end of the 2012 that really made a point in 2013. From digital clothing swap Bib and Tuck to online consignment store TheRealReal, there
individuality, MatchWear is a fashion firm that has fueled our customers towards success since October 2015. Consumers spend endless hours rummaging through their wardrobes searching for the perfect outfit to the point where fashion becomes a burden. We at MatchWear create personalized and complete outfits for our customers to minimize the everyday morning hassle of picking clothes to wear. We familiarize ourselves with our customers through a ten part questionnaire to provide them with outfits that stay true to their style and create a more personalized experience on both our website and phone application. After taking the quiz, our users are matched with five
The company must realize that; there exist other stores such as Zara which are placed themselves in such a position that, it can change its products on display as fast as the Ross Dress for less company (Montogomery & Woodall, 2008). This aspect is a challenge to the company in its effort to implement internal concern to impact on quality, service, and uniqueness.
Case Study 1.2 “Geoffrey B. Small is Big on Quality, Customers, Community” is about a leading fashion designer that does not want his customers to think about the brand name, color, style or price of the fabrics they wear. Small’s wants his customers to be “thinking about the quality and origins of the fabrics you wear, their impact on the environment, and your own view of social responsibility as a customer.” Even if the customer cannot afford his clothing he wants them to understand his mission as a designer.
Question: what do you make of Karl Marx’s contributions to sociology? What perceptions of Marx have you been exposed to in your society, and how do those perceptions influence your views.