Nalinda Hansani Perera Submitted In Fulfillment Of The Requirement Of FA5001, Professional Practice Preparation, Component 2: Fashion Essay / Topic – Discuss the ways in which fashion retail environments become key parts of marketing communication and strategy.
2 INTRODUCTION
In this constantly developing world, “Retail Environment� is changing time to time. Retailers Have to think about selling products, but not only that, they must launch their own brand image in the consumers mind as a necessary and as a unique shopping destination. They must adapt with the changes, and those who are skilled to adjust with the time are more likely to be successful. As a marketing communication strategy, building up a strong fashion retail environment is a good interactive way to reach out the brand or any individual’s target consumer. Visual merchandising is a part of this retail environment & It is a presentation of products within a retail store along with how the retailer reflects their brand identity throughout the store. The first section of this thesis will implement the evaluation of fashion retail environment throughout the past years and detailed elements of visual merchandising. Alongside in the next section, How retail environment plays a key part of this Marketing communication strategy or in this Public relations strategy. Furthermore, how brand or the retailers focusing on timely topics & how technological initiatives such as mobile commerce, Digital visualization online and in store and self-service technologies supporting the progression and expansion of fashion retailing. The essay concludes with the facts that are threatening and driving growth, several impacts and opportunities of the PR strategies in Fashion retailing and points to increase the depth of knowledge and understanding the ways fashion retail environment communicates in Marketing communication strategy.
3 EVALUATION OF FASHION RETAIL ENVIRONMENT
In the past retail store environment was not there, People were gathering into one place in a middle of a village and they are sharing & Bartering consumer resources. And after several years they started using money and started “Selling” Process. At that time in the clothing industry, tailors were manufacturing clothes per customers order. After that these tailors and the textile manufacturers started to manufacture their own readymade clothes for an affordable price line such as blouses, skirts, pants, dresses, shirts…etc. These ready-to-wear garments were a hit at the time and the market was flooded with ready-made clothing. Marketing do both wholesale and retail levels. Companies can sell their own products at their retail space or they can sell their own products to a wholesale price to a retailer, such as department stores, flagship stores, boutiques, online companies…etc. Most of fashion companies have their own retail stores to sell their products. Although it is their choice to choose the best option to market goods to increase earnings.
4 In early 1700s-1800s its Mom and Pops, which refers to small family owned independent business, small businesses appeal to a customer as a fulfilling of their desire for a personalization and enjoyable boutique experience, this combines the human connection and increases the market. It’s a good form of way to marketing communication. Since the shoppers demand grew high for ready made clothing around mid 1800s - early 1900s, manufacturers and shopkeepers started a new form of retailing “Department Stores” Business analists considered “ Le Bon Marche” as the first ever department store (Figure 2), It was estabilished by a Parisian retailer Aristede
Figure 1 - Mom & Pop Shop Model
Bouciaut. It showcased the newest fashion and fashion accessory inside a magnificent setting. Figure 2 - Le Bon Marché (World’s first department store).
After the major spread of department stores, Not just vending cloths or accessories, retailers offered demos, speeches and entainment experience in a store to attracts the consumers who’s looking to spend their income. Nowadays as well individuals looking for content and experiances as a element of their clothes shopping experiances that can support to improve and influence what they buy. Brands have to build a strong content and experience led commerce to success. Then in the 1950s-1970s many department stores closed for several economical and political reasons and substituted by Discount department stores, Shopping centers and Shopping Malls. This “Shopping Mall” concept is originated by that ancient bartering and selling way which that all merchants get together in one place and sell and bartered their goods according to their need. Malls are often attached with a huge department store with a group of other stores around it. These malls recognized as a social and cultural center not only as a shopping destination.
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In 1990s with the beginning of the internet growth, it was easy to retailers to communicate with consumers more than ever. It significantly impacted the retail industry, as well as it changed how retailers and consumers see the links of product, place, price, and time. Nowadays all these consumers have access over innumerable varieties of products online to check, purchase & Compare prices of goods. They can easily get their buying decisions without any physical place or store hours. Its faster more than ever with this technological development. Likewise, the arrival of social media has made more ways to ecommerce, social media allows brands to do more cost-effective marketing, interact with their target Figure 3- Lotte World Mall, South Korea
audiences and to step into new consumer bases. It allows brands to create their
brand image. And these online shopping websites opening Popup stores to shop in person, to the customers who enjoys having a physical shop experience and to one who inquisitive to check their good’s quality, durability & many more needs by seeing it in a Retail store.
6 RETAIL ENVIRONMENT & MARKETING COMMUNICATION STRATEGY Marketing communication strategy is the tool to marketing a brand to interact with their consumer & to obtain the interest of their target audience. Retailers plan communication promotions to to update, motivate, develop a relationship and build interest from particular target customer. As how a fashion brand commnicates in a festival season or to a timely topic? How they changing their collections according to specific festival of their demographic. Example- Most of renowned retailers like Forever 21, Urban Outfitters tend to focus on Music festivels like “Coachella Valley Music and Arts Festival”, at the Empire Polo Club in Indio, California. (Coachella Valley Music and Arts Festival, 2020) than the runway trends in their Spring/Summer collections. Linda Chang (Merchandising Manager at Forever 21) once said,
“Festival Has Become Its Own Trend And Season” Furthermore, she stated that the top sellers of that season are Headbands, denim cut-offs, Boho tops and skirts, fringed jackets…etc. (How Music Festival Culture Has Shaped Spring Trends, 2020) Figure 4- Coachella Valley Music and Arts Festival
When communicating a message retailer should think that the message, they send will clearly communicate to their target like figure out the message what’s brands try to communicate through several ways. This must do through proper planning; they should consider when and how the message will received to the consumer and which channel will carry out the message. Merchants need to make sure once they convey messages that the target for the message has the chance to receive the message. This can be done by designing the message and careful preparation of when and how the message will be received and the channels that will transmit the message. Nowadays brands are focusing more on timely topics like Body positivity, Sustainable practices, Climate change, Feminist Movement and many more. As an example If the brands wants to focus on “Body Positivity”, They should consider what sort of product assortment they should
7 launch, what sizes to introduce, how the promotional campaigns happening like the talks, Short videos, Advertisements, Paper Articles or body positivity themed fashion shows and which media they will choose to promote this campaigns like on TV, Social Media, Online Websites, moreover how they going to do visual merchandising, in what way the store front will look like, how their retail space alteration according to the theme, like using plus size mannequins, Using different skin toned mannequins…etc.
American Eagle Outfitters’ lingerie brand “Aerie” has been promoting its lingerie and intimate apparel without using any post image productions like retouching from Photoshop or airbrushing their models since 2014. In the campaign they are using the hashtag #AerieReal and they are asking an important question from the consumer. Which is as follows,
“Why Retouch Beauty?”
Figure 6- Aerie ongoing promotions Figure 6-Aerie website
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Figure 7- Aerie Body Positivity Campaign
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As mentioned as before marketing communication strategy is a message a brand sends to its target audience to improve their growth and success their business. In retailing its helps to place the retailer as a “Brand” in the minds of a shopper and emphasize the products and the impact of branding in retailing. Retail spaces place a major part in Brand appearance, a real physical store enable a brand to staged into and unique style in marketing strategies. Retail environment is a non-verbel communication, it influences consumers to value the product. It’s a mix of customer services, ambient conditions, space/functions, signs and symbols, it can define as three environmental dimensions of Retail environment. (Jiang, Nagasawa and Watada, 2014) Consumer are not only concerned about the product that they are purchasing, they are concerned about how brand’s visual merchandising,like how all these promotional retail environment involves all the The Target (Consumer base they want to reach)
senses such as music,feel, aromas, colours, tastes… etc. Also the various types of signs are a tool to engage with the buyer in the experience of buying. (Surchi, 2011) All these visual merchandising or the retail environment includes the message what brand want to deliver to their customer, how they want to feel about the brand. And when deciding to do this
marketing
communication
strategies
thru
retail
environment retailer have to think about following points (Figure 8).
The way of communication (Which Channel/ Medium & the Content)
What message they want to deliver
Figure 8- Planning a Marketing C. S.
10 To keep up with the consumers fashion brands must adapt new clothing trends and require changing to match up way that shoppers buy, because buying style can change from a moment. Therefore retailers have to do marketing research about consumer insights, with the expansion of e-commerce and social media marketing its more easy than earlier days to research about consumer insights because mostly social media generates consumer insights automatically when a brand reach to its target consumer. Additionally, it is effortless to conduct online surveys from consumers to understand their interests. Consequently because of this online shopping and social media marketing retailers must keep that extra step to increase more in-store buying customers & new ideas and unique marketing strategies to keep up a good retail environment. (Jiang, Nagasawa and Watada, 2014) As an example: Zara has seen enormous success throughout these years with their unique strategies. The strategies as follows 1.
Adaptable short lead clothing range which is always fresh and always
have its unique looks 2.
Limited Supply but always lined up its new styles to release twice in a
week. 3.
Feedbacks from all Stores – Store managers are interacting with
customers daily to get their feedbacks on clothes, what style they require, what are the dislikes and the demand of shoppers. These details and Figure 9- Zara Store Front
data are instantly going to Zara’s designers; hence these insights give designers some help to plan next collection based on what customer
prefers most. 4. Very dynamic social media Platform – Customers are quick to like and give quick feedbacks on their favorite style or to react to each style, from that designers can design, and brand can provide more successful product line.
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Retailers need to think about “Marketing communication mix� when communicating their brand message or when they reaching their target customer. Marketing Communication mix as follows ;
Sales Promotions
Media
Public Relations
Personal selling
TARGET CONSUMER
Media
Advertising
Media
Direct Marketing
12 DIGITAL REVOLUTIONS IN RETAIL ENVIRONMENT & MARKETING COMMUNICATION STRATEGY In this technological revolution, retail environment transformed in many ways. These technologies improve to enhance the service that providing to customer and to enhance their experience as well as the internal operations of the brand. The in-store experience is a major part of customers buying process. Customers can use the omni-channel experience where they can check the product virtually, order and collect from the store. Customers will be more satisfied if the brand can provide an effortless service using these futuristic instore technology infusions like allowing free Wi-Fi in the shop, Self-Checkout, Augmented Reality, Digital Price Tags, Smart Shelves, Smart Displays…etc. e.g. - H&M has mounted a Voice interactive Mirror (Figure 10) at their New York flagship store. These mirrors on when somebody looks at it long enough and offers selfies, style suggestions…etc. Another example is “Smart Shelves”, these LED displays change with shopper’s nearness, when they are far away the display sparks logos and images to attract the consumers. And when the customer reaches the shelf, the display change to feature merchandise name.
Figure 10-Voice interactive mirrors in H&M
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AI for customer service is another tech innovation, this handles customer interactions without a human agent. This AI based program use a machine learning to talk with users by living on websites 24/7.
Figure 11- Smart Stores with robots
Another initiative is “Self-Checkout� Amazon is experimenting this with grab and go option. This program is based on AI and Cameras, Consumers can leave the store soon when they grab their product without staying in wait line to pay with cash or card, this program automatically charged by customers account.
Figure 12- Amazon Cashier-less Store
14 Brands are spending massive amount of money to create a successful retail environment thru their marketing communication strategies. But sometimes it is challenging to any industry as an example during the COVID – 19 outbreaks, Even Though the fashion industry is one of world’s economies important part, the fall of the fashion industry will have serious impact in global economy. Millions of artists, designers, tailors faced unemployment status. Some retailers like GAP, Everlane and Ralph Lauren have closed some of their physical stores and asked employees to take unpaid leaves. Consequently, it is very important to keep up with strategies and manageable investments when doing promotional campaigns and when enhancing retail environment. But some studies have found that the brands who kept continuous promotions have pay off with more sales or did not decrease their sales. The current pandemic is impacting on the already fragile Brick And Mortar establishments. Occasionally online shopping sales will increase more than brick and mortar shops as people tend to stay home because of the virus outbreak. Therefore, the retailers must improve their digital technological side of retail environment and come up with new marketing communication strategies. Moreover, some of luxury fashion brands are stepping up to donate during this crisis like, • •
Prada – CEO and Chairperson have donated ICU and resuscitation units to three hospitals in Milan Giorgio Armani – Donated €1.25 million to Italian Hospitals
These kinds of initiatives will help to build up the brands image and indirectly it affects and impact to public relations strategies. Not only the luxury fashion brands, small scale fashion brands also started to donate or to give some help in smaller ways. To conclude, as mentioned as earlier using retail environment in marketing communication strategies is a very important part to a retailer, following new trends and exploring the new technologies to apply in retailing , building a strong and unique retail environment, keeping up with more real and timely topics when doing promotions and structuring a proper and a sustainable financial plan for retail environment to face any challenges will impact marketing communication strategies a lot in a fashion brand and it will drastically increase the sales and shapes up a extraordinary brand name in the customers mind.
15 REFERENCES Journals Kun-Huang Huarng and Professor Berlin Wu, P., Jiang, Z., Nagasawa, S. and Watada, J. (2014), "Luxury fashion brand image building: the role of store design in Bally and Tod's Japan", Management Decision, Vol. 52 No. 7, pp. 1288-1301. https://doi.org/10.1108/MD-112012-0809 Arrigo, E. (2015), "The role of the flagship store location in luxury branding. An international exploratory study", International Journal of Retail & Distribution Management, Vol. 43 No. 6, pp. 518-537. https://doi.org/10.1108/IJRDM-08-2013-0158 Manlow, V. and Nobbs, K. (2013), "Form and function of luxury flagships: An international exploratory study of the meaning of the flagship store for managers and customers", Journal of Fashion Marketing and Management, Vol. 17 No. 1, pp. 4964. https://doi.org/10.1108/13612021311305137 Arrigo, E., 2018. The flagship stores as sustainability communication channels for luxury fashion retailers. Journal of Retailing and Consumer Services, 44, pp.170-177. Surchi, M. (2011), "The temporary store: a new marketing tool for fashion brands", Journal of Fashion Marketing and Management, Vol. 15 No. 2, pp. 257-270. https://doi.org/10.1108/13612021111132672 Hanna Lee, Yingjiao Xu. (2020) Classification of virtual fitting room technologies in the fashion industry: from the perspective of consumer experience. International Journal of Fashion Design, Technology and Education 13:1, pages 1-10.
16 E-books & Websites OpenLearn. 2020. Retail Marketing. [online] Available at: <https://www.open.edu/openlearn/money-business/business-strategy-studies/retailmarketing/content-section-3.2> [Accessed 27 April 2020]. En.wikipedia.org. 2020. Coachella Valley Music And Arts Festival. [online] Available at: <https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Coachella_Valley_Music_and_Arts_Festival> [Accessed 27 April 2020]. OpenLearn. 2020. Retail Marketing. [online] Available at: <https://www.open.edu/openlearn/money-business/business-strategy-studies/retailmarketing/content-section-3.2> [Accessed 27 April 2020]. ELLE. 2020. How The Covid-19 Pandemic Is Affecting The Fashion Industry. [online] Available at: <https://www.elle.com/uk/fashion/g32015646/coronavirus-fashion-brands/> [Accessed 28 April 2020]. Business Insider. 2020. Luxury Fashion Brands Shift Budgets To Digital. [online] Available at: <https://www.businessinsider.com/luxury-fashionbrands-shift-budgets-to-digital-2017-6> [Accessed 28 April 2020]. Soti.net. 2020. [online] Available at: <https://soti.net/media/1167/ebook-shoppers-want-technology-in-retail.pdf> [Accessed 28 April 2020]. 2020. [online] Available at: <https://www.researchgate.net/publication/336458144_The_future_of_in-store_technology> [Accessed 28 April 2020].