Dolce & Gabbana
Content 1. Executive Summary 3. Macro Economic Analysis 5. Competitors 7. Product Selection 9. Marketing Mix 11. Bibliography
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E’xecutive Summary
Introduction to the Brand Dolce & Gabbana is a luxury brand that originated from Italy, also where the designers are from. The designers are Domenico Dolce and Stefano Gabbana. Their first runway was in 1985 in Milan and from there on always have had a brand. The brand offers a range of clothing for all, men, women and children and doesn’t offer just clothing or accessories such as bags and wallets but they also offer a range of fragrance. The brand also uses to have two different branch, D&G and Dolce & Gabbana which they have stopped previously to focus more on Dolce & Gabbana more than D&G.
D&G was essentially another clothing line but that was more eccentric and popping than the more classic Italian lines from Dolce & Gabbana. This brand is interesting to work with considering how long they have been around and how known they are. Looking at the main problems with the brand to answer the question why is the brand not at its best peak like it used to be, it was clearly seen that not only their style may need to be revisited a little but also to potentially work with the reputation of the brand has it had many dark moments. Problems that can easily be fixed or worked with.
Macro Economic Analysis
The main political problem there is with Dolce & Gabbana now has been the racial issue with China. After an ad for the brand with a Chinese model eating spaghetti with chopstick came out, a lot of the people found it offensive and complained; only to have the designers denied it was racist and ended up putting the whole of China against them and now have potentially lost the Chinese market (Yan, 2019). Economically, the brand is luxury therefor has high prices if you look from the point of view of an average middle-class consumer. The brands revenues have been both good and bad over the years, there has been years where they gain a lot of money and others where they lose a lot of money, in this moment in time the revenue is surprisingly not going down but up by 9% in 2017 (Muret, 2017). Socially speaking, there is room for improvement from the brand. Their social media platform such as Instagram, which is one of the most used social media platforms of today (Kallas, 2019). They use very little outside influencers and mainly put picture of their campaign or their runways, which isn’t a mistake but just doesn’t appeal to consumers as much as brand that do try to interact with people that aren’t models for the brand or famous celebrities that the brands may dress for an event. Another improvement they could look at would be to create an applicator for mobile phones to connect with their consumers more and offer them an easy and fast alternative to go shopping online. Another technology issues they could address is their website, the website is nice and clean, but they could modify it somehow and maybe change the color pattern or make it a bit more vibrant to attract and create somehow a in store experience for consumers that decide to buy their clothing or products online instead of in-store. On other terms, the brand doesn’t seem to be involved in much environmental issues. Dolce & Gabbana was noted an E (A being the highest grade) because they didn’t communicate concrete information about policies for environment carbon emissions/labor conditions in low wage country (How sustainable is Dolce & Gabbana?,no date). The brand should fix that issue and provide better information on these for the consumers to be aware of how productions and other are made and if the brand is helping the environment or not, which has become a very big issue. In 2010, the designers and creator of Dolce & Gabbana had been accused of tax evasion, creating legal problem and bad influence on the brand. They pledge innocent and fought for four years before finally being exculpate from the Italian justice court (Milligan) putting an end to an issue that has impacted the reputation of the well-known Italian brand.
The brands have many strengths, one of the beings that they have stayed true to themselves and their brand. The designers harsh and strict style is quite inspiring in some way, it shows how passionate they are about their roots and what they want to produce. They also are great designers and have worked hard in their life to get where they are. But the brand also has weaknesses. Their main weakness is the personality of the designers. Both have made quite a reputation for themselves and have had a lot of issue with the press. They also tend to be a bit too old school and not agreeing to change something in order to evolve as a brand, at least not anymore. The designs have also been quite similar over the years and haven't had much improvement. But all these weaknesses open to opportunities. They have quite a few opportunities they could use to get the brand back where it used to be;
swot they could do collaborations with other designers, they could either become more simplistic or become more street wear or even try focus on the consumer need and find out what the consumer want to see in their designs. Dolce Gabbana's mains threat, as any other brand, is its competition. The competition in this case is also doing better therefore being one of the main threats to the brand. Other threats could be potential group that are against the racial, environmental, and other issues they are haven't properly dealt with as a brand or as designers. These issues affect the brand because consumers don’t want to participate or support such accusation and it therefor affects the sales and marketing for the brand.
Market
Competitors
Gucci is one of Dolce Gabbana’s main competitor. They both have a similar style in the eccentric addition of glitters, busy patterns and different textured fabrics. They also both lay in the same price range, they are both considered luxury brands. Although they are both similar and they are both the same price range, Gucci is doing dramatically better than Dolce & Gabbana. The brand’s competitor is doing better as the style of the clothing is more up to date with both mid age range crowds and younger crowds. The brands reputation is also good, making the public more attracted to them. Over the years they have undergo multiple changes such as becoming fur free. These actions speak loud and clear to customer especially now that the vegan lifestyle is quite in trend ; it makes the consumers feel better about their choice and less cruel to the animal. Many other brands have also taken this in consideration and have moved to less cruelty alterity to fur. Dolce & Gabbana’s should consider changing some of their ways such as Gucci and many of its competitors as it could really help the brands reputation and help with sales.
Moodboard Current Brand Market Position and Competitors
Consumer
Dolce Gabbana have made their brand for a very specific type of person. Their brand is made for a mid-age 30-50yo Italian housewife with a good life style; as seen in the stores, the consumers buying products looked wealthy and after talking with the manager, she confirmed that most her clients in that shop where from upper class and came to the store for private shopping.
As seen before, it is a very Italian rooted brand. The owners are proud of their roots and it shows in their advertisement and campaign; which usually consist of Italian family dinner or party. The consumer demographic of Dolce Gabbana doesn’t entirely reflect the owner’s preferences but does fit in the same age and social class range on an average and considering the information given by the D&G manager of the Bangkok shop.
It was also shared that the stores main revenue came from personal private shopping. Meaning that most of the clients have a different lifestyle to other people that would probably go in store if not online. Of course, this data was taken from a different country with different cultures, but still works with our research.
Current consumer demographic
Product
Selection
D&G has a very wide range of clothing, shoes, bags, perfume, jeans, accessories and jewelry. They also offer clothing for all with a women, men and kids range and surprisingly they also offer baby range of clothing for newborns (dolcegabbana. com, 2019). Pricing starts at 115ÂŁ for a simple man marcel up to 7,300ÂŁ for a jacket. Prices are generally quite high but do vary from product to product. Going in the shop in Bangkok, the employee said the most sold products were the Pret-A-Porter, which came to surprise as it would expect to have better sales in the bag, purse or fragrance range.
The brand is on multiple social media platform such as Facebook, Instagram, and Twitter. The brand has brand ambassador, one of them being Emilia Clarke, a famous actress known due to her role in Games of Thrones, a famous series. Emilia represents the brand and is the only main ambassador seen so far for the brand. There had been past one, but now she is the face of the brand. On social media, such as Instagram, the brand isn’t putting the effort needed to make it work better. Instagram being very frequent and used in today’s people daily life, is one of the best platforms to promote, and sale your brand to consumers. Their Instagram page could easily be improved to be more in interaction with the consumers as it does appeal more to them and participate in the buying process. On Twitter, the brand as 5.25 Million followers which is a generous amount (Dolce Gabbana Twitter, 2019), yet their post doesn’t get shared much and the overall activity of the followers remains quite low. On Facebook, the brand has a page which quite a few followers but again not much interaction/activity from the consumers/followers. The brand, overall need to find a newer way to deal with the social media and interact more with the consumer through the multiple pages/platforms.
Social Media &
Marketing
Current Social Media/InfluencerMarketing/Marketing Mix
Marketing Mix
Dolce & Gabbana offers a large amount of product, they cover everything you need/ would want to wear. The brand offers multiple clothing, shoes, bags, perfumes, and so on; they also offer different categories, one for women, one for men, one for kids and even one for babies. The brand doesn’t have one key product that they created like its competitors. For example, Balenciaga have the triple sole shoes which is one of their products that is easily identified to be from the brand as soon as the consumers see it. Even though D&G doesn’t have a key product like most its competitors, it is still a luxury brand which indicated that the prices are high or what we can call luxury prices. The prices for women’s clothing categories can go from 115£ for a simple black cotton marcel to a 7,900£ for an embroidered jean jacket. In women’s accessories, it goes from 155£ for a simple card holder up to 5,750£ for a handbag (dolcegabbana. com, 2019). The brand is located worldwide, there is shops al around the world mostly in the large capitals. D&G knows not to put shop in places where it wouldn’t have much chances of selling considering their prices, so you can find the store in large metropolis such as London, Paris, New York and many more. But the brand has lost a large market spaces in China due to the racist advert incident. Dolce & Gabbana have few campaigns which all look similar in their style, they all are focused on being the closest to the typical authentic Italian family. The brand also uses social media such as Instagram to promote certain new products and to share the fashion shows, the behind the scene or even other celebrities or influencers that are wearing the brand in either shoots, galas or large events.
Strategy
Dolce Gabbana is a great brand, developed by passionate Italian man, it grew to be one of the biggest luxury brands seen. Although this brand is well known it still has been suffering from time to time and have had ups and downs. Lately the brand has been going through a down phase; the brand has also undergone accusations that did not help with sales and the reputation of the brands as well as the reputation of the designers. For the brand to get back out there, there is multiple solutions that would benefit the brand and designer so that the brand doesn’t die out and carries on providing its style and heritage. One of the proposed solutions is to focus partially on the designer’s reputation. After the many issues the designers have had such as the racism, homophobic, tax evasion, it does impact the brand and its sales. Consumers tend to buy less from a brand that is accused of multiple sorts of discrimination. Asking people on Instagram through a poll, 215 voted that it would impact their decision if the brand as accused of homophobic and racism and 70 said no. Considering the results of that poll, it supports the idea to work on the designer’s reputation. This could easily be done by cutting out social media for the designers, keeping the brand’s account in order to promote and interact with the consumers, or having someone in charge of the designers account. Another proposed solution would be to focus on a style rather than try do everything. D&G has been around for a bit, they have had ups and down but it’s easy to see that a lot of their collections look like one another, things come back around fast and which tends to push the consumers away. Considering the consumer demographic talked about previously, the brand could also focus on having more traditional tailored clothing that could be more appealing to their current consumers. They could also ask what their consumers want and reply to their needs, creating a better interaction with consumers. Furthermore, the designers could focus on creating a key product for the brand. D&G competitors like Balenciaga, have a key product that is the triple shoes also known as “dad shoes”. Having a key product would dramatically help the brand improve and get back out there. Lastly, Dolce & Gabbana should revisit their campaigns as most of the them look quite similar. They all are Italian life style inspired which in some cases could appeal to the audience but in order to promote the brand better, there is a need of diversity and a non-repetitive style throughout their campaign. Those are all the recommendations found for the brand in order to make the brand more efficient and for D&G to improve their sales as well as their relationship with consumers.
Proposed Brand Market Positioning and Competitors
Proposed Consumer Demographic
Proposed Social Media/InfluencerMarketing/Marketing Mix
aphy - Account, D. &. (2019, February 25). Dolce & Gabbana (@dolcegabbana). Retrieved from https://twitter.com/dolcegabbana?ref_src=twsrc^google|twcamp^serp|twgr^author - Clothing for men & women | Dolce&Gabbana Online Store. (n.d.). Retrieved from https://store.dolcegabbana.com/en/ - How sustainable is Dolce & Gabbana ? (n.d.). Retrieved from https://rankabrand. org/sustainable-luxury-brands/Dolce & Gabbana - Kallas, P. (2018, August 02). Retrieved February 15, 2019, from https://www. dreamgrow.com/top-15-most-popular-social-networking-sites/ - Muret, D. (2017, October 16). Dolce & Gabbana net profit soars, revenues up 9% on strong Italy. Retrieved from https://uk.fashionnetwork.com/news/Dolce-Gabbananet-profit-soars-revenues-up-9-on-strong-Italy,879674.html#.XFMJm8_7TOQ - Yan, S. (2019, January 23). Chinese model in ‘racist’ Dolce & Gabbana controversy says ad campaign ruined her career. Retrieved from https://www.telegraph.co.uk/ news/2019/01/23/chinese-model-racist-dolce-gabbana-controversy-says-ad-campaign/
Sheffield Hallman University Fashion Managment & Communication CloĂŠ Vallejo