Visual Merchandising and the Creation of Discernible Retail Brands

This research is written to explore the consumer behaviours associated with fashion purchasing and help the manager understand what drives consumers to buy fashion products so as to determine the campaign strategy. The study proposes to investigate the people perceive what is fashion or unfashion and discover the possible relationship between different factors and the consumers’ willingness toward fashion. These factors include the effects of brand, the influences of mass media and social network, various shopping places. Surprisingly, the different attitude between different genders toward fashion is considered as an essential factor for people to engage in fashion purchasing.

For this assignment, I decided to visit Target while I was in New Braunfels to examine how they use adjacencies within both their women’s and men’s clothing section. As well as, seeing the career wear section for both sexes and how it is merchandised for the shopper. The retail industry is the kind of business that has a very high level of competition. Knowing this, retailers realize the importance of these attributes and why they are needed in order to create an ambience that will attract the market they are targeting. Merchandisers have strategically placed items together in hopes that shoppers will choose to grab that cardigan because it would go perfectly with the lace top that is placed next to it or that pair of leggings because it

Many people know that Nordstrom 's is a fashion bazaar. What multitudinous amounts of people do not grasp is that Nordstrom 's positioned itself as a retailer of high end clothing and extravagant goods. This is how Nordstrom 's distinguished itself from other retailers. Numerous people associate Nordstrom’s with other ubiquitous department stores, such as Macy 's and JC Penney. Interestingly, these stores are not Nordstroms ' predominant competitors. Because Nordstrom 's caters to a more expensive partiality, its main competitors include upscale department stores such as Bloomingdale 's and Saks Fifth Avenue. Within Nordstrom’s marketing strategy, the emporium must strategize ways to discern itself from both the mid-scale department stores as well as the high-end ones. Nordstrom’s is able to accomplish this through its determination of which products to vend, its customer service policies, and the schematics of typical Nordstrom 's store design.

For this assignment I have been asked to describe how visual merchandising is applied to the three selected retail outlets to an identified range of goods.

Since its foundation dating back in 1950s, the concept of brand image has become the crucial factor which decides the buying behaviour of consumers. Further with the emergence of fashion industry and globalisation brands have travelled across the countries border , companies are constantly working in providing good quality of goods and services in order to build a strong brand image which will guarantee them the consumer confidence and hence results in profit maximisation. So it is necessary to examine the ways in which consumers are influence by brand image which guides their buying behaviour. In this research, influence of brand image will be analysed in accordance with the

This academic essay will be discussing the affects of fashion advertising, especially subliminal advertising within the affects this causes the consumer market and women to have on their identity. The Subconscious mind plays an major role within advertising as it is the key to provoke thoughts of consumerism. I will begin by briefly outlining what the definition of fashion advertising, followed by a insight into how we understand the subconscious mind to work and how this has an affect on advertising.

Visual merchandising is the art of presentation, which put the merchandise in focus. It educates the customer and create desire to buy and the store presentation should be appealing and attractive to the customers. In Tappoo’s their presentation of store and layout matters. The objective of a store sale promotion plan and layout should be comfortable and spacious to move around for the customers. In Tappoo’s a team involved- the senior management, architects, merchandising mangers, buyers, the visual merchandising director, industrial-designers, and staff is needed to accomplish the end result for the display. I had discussion with store supervisor Deepak Rayman at Tappoo’s and told me the information how they work as stated

Style industry is for the most part a configuration-overwhelmed industry yet the most fruitful brands are additionally socially mindful and fit for actualizing advertising methodologies which speak to the brand as well as cross the patterns and investment of the intended interest group.

Abercrombie and Fitch is widely known for placing their stores in high traffic shopping channels such as popular malls and plazas. A typical consumer would most likely find one of the brand’s main stores, Abercrombie & Fitch or Hollister Co., located in their local malls. Locating the store and products are not issues for the average consumer, but it is when they step foot into an establishment, just pass by it, would be where the problems arise. With the brand’s peak in the early 2000’s, stores were designed for the trendy target market of the time. Creating a “cool,” environment with dim lighting, extravagant décor and store fronts, upbeat music, and wall displays that would draw in “worthy,” customers. While this may have worked well for luring consumers before the recession, things have quickly led to a downward spiral after controversies continued to pile against this once mighty brand. Through the ZMET research method, the consistent negative responses to provocative models on wall displays and advertisement. Many questioned if Abercrombie & Fitch was trying to promote their merchandise or solely on who and what is acceptable to the brand. What used to bring crowds into these stores have backfired due to society becoming more socially conscious and sensitive. This led to participants informing us that they felt only people who looked a certain way are allowed to enter and were intimidated instead of feeling welcomed. The environment of all of the stores under the brand

There Is a similar relation among the clothes. Several customers shop there based on the quality and prices as well as the features associated with the products. An advantage of the store is that it has a wide product mix and various offering in different categories and all these can be located at one place. This attracts a wide variety of customers. In line with their positioning of offering quality, trendy products, the brand is consistently updating its product line. The brand does not focus on innovation but rather on always leading trends. In relation to the product life cycle, clothing has a short life span from the first to last stage as tastes change easily. For this reason, it is important to constantly anticipate consumer tastes and preferences prior to launching a product so as to retain and possibly build customers loyalty. It is also necessary to develop a successful marketing strategy to display product offerings.

The purpose of this paper was to observe the consumers of a retail store of my choice; I chose to observe Victoria’s Secret and Targets consumers, because I myself am consumers of those stores quite often, then to analyze the behavior of the consumers of Victoria’s Secret and Target. Victoria’s Secret and Target consumers differ because of the difference in type of retail they offer and sell. Victoria’s Secret consumers know what they are going to be shopping for women and certain needs or wants they are looking to satisfy. Target consumers shop for any age and any gender,

(2012) This leads me to question if fashion apparel is competing with industry’s sportswear markets by compromising the performance enhancing qualities for garments that are simply just aesthetically pleasing. (Morganosky, 1984) elaborates on this stating that consumers are willing to pay higher prices for apparel with a high aesthetic value regardless of the low functional value. Ko et al. (2012) agrees consumers’ value fashion and quality however argues they are not willing to pay a high price for something new and innovative. (Dickson & Pollack, 2000) add to this statement in relation to sports garments with female consumers regarding aesthetic aspects such as style and brand characteristics to be more essential than the functional aspects such as comfort and other physical performance-enhancing features. Similarly (Eckma et al., 1990) reports on the evaluation of purchase behaviour in women’s apparel. Style was chosen as more important in determining rejection or adoption of the garments. A visual criterion seems to have the greatest impact on selection of apparel such as fashion-ability or popularity, aesthetic appeal, and self-expression (Eckma et al., 1990). Although it seems there is a divide in opinion when it comes to retail pricing the majority of research studies seems to suggest there is a major emphasis on the aesthetic appearance.

As a result, retail branding as a key differential competitive component of retail marketing strategy, has received significant attention in the retail literature (Kent, 2003;Ailawadi and Keller, 2004; Burt and Davies, 2010). Traditionally, branding within the field of retailing has been closely associated with private label brand produced by retailers (Burt and Davies, 2010), which enabled operating advantage for these firms in the form of superior profit margins, economies of scale, market segmentation and differentiation. Here, the products and services offered to define the retail brand, act as the core differentiator between the firm and competitors. As the role of private label brand development has become more strategically important, there has been increasing focus on mental models of the retail brand

Perceptual mapping is a graphical technique that helps marketers to get a visual display regarding perception of customers or potential customers. The position of a product or brand is displayed comparative to their competition. Perceptual maps are often used to help the organization to classify a positioning strategy.

During the information search stage of their decision-making process, the consumer stated that they constantly looked at online shops and magazines to improve their personal understanding of fashion. It was noted that the consumer’s awareness set consisted of ten different brands. However, the size of her