Marketing is the key to attract the target customers successfully by creating a unique image in the eye of the customers. The sales of the fashion industry greatly rely on how the business organizations market their product and distinguish them from the potential competitors in the market. Therefore, it is essential for the business organizations in the fashion industry to be aware of their strength and weakness along with having a deep understanding of the competitors and their business strategy.
This report highlights the market environment analysis of high-street fashion, Top shop along with consumer analysis, competitor analysis and the 7 Ps of the marketing mix.
Topshop is a British multinational fashion retailer that includes clothing, makeup, accessories, and shoes. The company has more than 500 stores around the world out of which approximately 300 stores are present in the UK. The company also operates online thereby, providing convenience shopping for the target customers. The company was established in 1960 in Oxford Street, London that later gained worldwide recognition due to the fashionable products and accessories. The company majorly deals with women clothing and accessories that are highly appreciated by the women. The products of the company are highly priced thereby, limiting the target customers on their income. The company sells products from various well-known designers such as Jourdan Dunn, Clements Ribeiro, Trsitan Webber and Tracey Boyd. The clothing and accessories of the company have been featured in the various fashion weeks such as London Fashion Week. The company operates on franchise business venture and operates across 37 countries through online operations. However, in 2012 around 25% stake was sold to a US-based private equity group named Leonard Green and Partners with the aim of speeding up international business expansion in the US (Topshop.com, 2017).
SWOT Analysis of Topshop
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Strength · Expansive number of stores globally · Very involved with young people and young design · Tall and petite sections · Supports lots of charities · Associated with top class celebrities and designers |
Weakness · Limited size range from 6-16 only · Limited television and video advertisement that needs improvement · Large number of stores in Oxford Street, London · Some of the features are only available in the outlet of Oxford Street, London |
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Opportunities · To carter more for different body shapes, that is, pair shape or apple shape · Personalized gifts available · Clothing for pets and children available · Oxford Street store features should be made available to other stores · Opportunities to involve fresh graduates and promote new designers |
Threats · Top competitors such as River Island, Zara and Urban Outfitters · Presence of cheaper stores around such as Primark, New Look, and H & M · Low brand awareness in the US in comparison to Zara and H & M · Handmade merchandise is on trend |
Strength: The brand is associated with a number of top celebrities and designers such as Louise Grey and Emma Cook that helps in setting and launching new trends thereby, attracting the target customers. The brand has several stores on a global platform with clothing range for both tall and petite customers. The brand also supports many charities that have helped in gaining global recognition and making a mark in the eye of the customers (Sevkli et al. 2012).
Weakness: Limited size range is a drawback for the brand thereby, narrowing down the customers within the size of 6-16. In the age of technology, the brand has underdeveloped television and video advertisement thereby, restricting the brand in reaching out the customer in every niche of the country. The Oxford Street is having the majority of the stores with special features that eventually limits the accessibility for all the target customers (Blundell 2013).
Opportunities: The brand needs to make clothing line various body shapes that will help in widening their customer base. The option of personalized gifts along with clothing line for children and pets will help in gaining the competitive advantage over the competitors. The brand can also involve fresh graduate designers as this will help in understanding the demands and expectations of the youth and design clothing line accordingly (Thompson and McLarney 2017).
Threats: The top competitors and availability of cheaper stores are a major threat to the brand. Additionally, the brand lacks enough recognition in the US that hampers their business (Quix and Van Der Kind 2016).
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Political · Political environment includes the laws, government agencies, and pressure groups that either influences or limits the business capacity of the organizations |
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Economical · The economic factors include the method used by the companies for doing business and earning profit such as economic growth, interest rate. |
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Social · The social structure and demographics can influence the level and types of fashion consumption in terms of age, gender and income of the target customers. |
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Technological · The technological factor influences the creation of new market opportunities and new products. |
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Legal · The legal factors include the consumer protection right, employment law and health and safety regulation specific to the fashion industry. |
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Environmental · The environmental factors emphasize the ethical and sustainable business approach. |
Political: According to the “Advertising Code” of the Advertising Standards Authority, Topshop should be responsible for the advertisement they show and ensuring that the advertisement should not mislead the mass. Topshop withdrew the advertisement of the skinny model in 2011 due to complaints from the pressure group (Roberts et al. 2012).
Economic: The brand offers 10% discount for the students in order to influence the consumer buying decision along with offering Topshop card that provides benefit for the target consumer market (Utami and Lantu 2014).
Social: The brand aim towards appealing the target market psychologically by describing the type of customer.
Technological: iPad and mobile phone applications of the brand can be downloaded directly to the customer’s device thereby, providing them easy access.
Legal: The brand provides an opportunity for the customers to cancel their order any time before the expiry period along with full refund upon returning the item.
Environmental: The brand has pledged to support the Carbon Reduction Commitment by investing in better energy management and transport. The company has successfully reduced 5.4% carbon emission in 2011 along with introducing reusable packaging materials (Zhang and Zhao 2012).
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Suppliers |
Topshop in collaboration with Arcadia Group supplied their unique collection as the Group works with 700 suppliers that manufacture goods across 46 countries. |
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Publics |
The brand employs Press Officers within their Public Relations Department that is responsible to liaise press, magazines, and television along with organizing events and catwalk shows having media as audiences. |
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Intermediaries |
The brand includes both physical distribution firms such as Arcadia Group, Maersk, Allport Cargo Services. In accordance with financial intermediaries, the customers are able to purchase items with the Topshop card that can be redeemed. |
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Competition |
The main competitors include River Island, Zara, Oasis, Miss Selfridge, H & M Collection. |
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Customers |
The brand uses the customer-centric approach that highlights that no two customers are alike and offers the customers the facility of Personal Shopping Service for helping the customers. |
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Segmentation |
The brand implements demographic segmentation in order to predict the customers that will go the Topshop products. The customers divided based on age, gender, income, occupation, education, religion, race, generation, family size, family income and nationality (Wedel and Kamakura 2012). |
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Targeting |
The brand target customers based on: · Single or Married · Female · Student or in the early stages of their career · Aged between 10-35 years · Income around £12,000 per annum · Shops for style and design · Both a planned and impulse shopper · Shops often and enjoy sales |
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Positioning |
The brand portrays a unique brand identity to the customers declaring their collections as the only high street brand to show at London Fashion Week thereby, distinguishing them from the competitors in the market. |
The below graph shows the market position of Topshop along with its competitors such as River Island and Zara.
Figure 1: Market Position Map of Topshop, Zara, and River Island
(Source: Gremme 2014)
Figure 2: Product Perceptual Map of Topshop
(Source: Varela and Ares 2012)
Topshop sells products that are affordable to the customers with varied income group. The brand also sells products that are brought occasionally due to high price range but the clothing line is more on trend. The unique collection of Topshop is expensive but is considered as the most fashionable as it has been featured on the catwalk. However, on the contrary, the basic collection is extremely simple and cheap. Topshop also sells basic clothing but with added detail at prices are high such as the jeans.
Figure 3: Product Perceptual Map of Zara and River Island
(Source: Khan 2013)
Zara has products that are similar in price with Topshop. Zara has a basic clothing line at cheap prices called the TRF collection along with expensive clothing line at high prices. On the other hand, River Island is similar to Zara as the pricing of River Island is in similar price range. However, River Island does sell basic products at cheap rates such as tank tops and jegging along with expensive clothing line made up of expensive and high-quality clothing material.
The marketing mix for Topshop includes:
Product
Figure 4: Products of Topshop
(Source: Varela and Ares 2012)
Price
Figure 5: Price Range for Topshop products
(Source: Varela and Ares 2012)
Promotion
The company uses various types of promotional strategies such as the use of social media, advertising both above the line and below the line advertisement, sales promotions by offering discounts up to 10%, personal selling, and direct marketing.
Place
Figure 6: Places used by Topshop
(Source: Varela and Ares 2012)
The roles of the in-store employees include the sales advisor that will help in providing a consistent service, ensuring that the stock is replenished, advising the customers on their selection. The retail management includes the store managers, brand and deputy brand managers, operations manager and back of house managers. Additionally, personal shoppers by appointment are available at outlets in Leeds, Glasgow, London, Liverpool, Edinburgh, and Manchester.
The brand uses visual merchandise and music in order to create attractive environment or atmosphere for the customers. The methods include visual and audio representation along with loud and current music with the top hits that helps in attracting the young target markets.
The brand Personal Selling Service that provides an experienced staff to guide the customers thereby, influencing their purchasing decision. The brand also believes in after sales services by dropping messages of various promos and offers to the customers at regular interval. The brand completely refunds the money to the customers before the expiry period upon handing over the product.
Conclusion
In this report, it can be concluded that Topshop is a high street British fashion brand with more than 500 stores globally. The brand is highly facilitated by the customers that favor trendy, designer and stylish clothing accessories. The report highlights the conduction of SPICC analysis, SWOT analysis and PESTLE analysis thereby, confirming that Topshop’s collection is unique and competitive within the market. The marketing strategies implemented by the brand has helped in bringing together all the elements of marketing mix successfully and effectively in order to achieve the marketing objectives by fulfilling the needs of the target customers.
References
Blundell, L., 2013. Resurrection of a retail giant. Property Australia, 27(9), p.22.
Gremme, M., 2014. Zara. Global Fashion at Local Prices.
Khan, T., 2013. STP strategy for New Product Launch-a Work in Progress. International Journal of Business and Management Invention, 2(3), pp.56-65.
Quix, F. and van der Kind, R.P., 2016. Retail marketing. Routledge.
Roberts, M., Pettigrew, S., Chapman, K., Miller, C. and Quester, P., 2012. Compliance with children’s television food advertising regulations in Australia. BMC Public Health, 12(1), p.846.
Sevkli, M., Oztekin, A., Uysal, O., Torlak, G., Turkyilmaz, A. and Delen, D., 2012. Development of a fuzzy ANP based SWOT analysis for the airline industry in Turkey. Expert systems with Applications, 39(1), pp.14-24.
Thompson, J. and McLarney, C., 2017. What Effects will the Strategy Changes Undertaken by Next Plc Have on themselves and their Competition in the UK Clothing Retail Market?. Journal of Commerce and Management Thought, 8(2), p.234.
Topshop.com. (2017). Topshop – Women’s Clothing | Women’s Fashion & Trends. [online] Available at: https://www.topshop.com/?geoip=home [Accessed 14 Nov. 2017].
Utami, R.M. and Lantu, D.C., 2014. Development competitiveness model for small-medium enterprises among the creative industry in bandung. Procedia-Social and Behavioral Sciences, 115, pp.305-323.
Varela, P. and Ares, G., 2012. Sensory profiling, the blurred line between sensory and consumer science. A review of novel methods for product characterization. Food Research International, 48(2), pp.893-908.
Wedel, M. and Kamakura, W.A., 2012. Market segmentation: Conceptual and methodological foundations (Vol. 8). Springer Science & Business Media.
Zhang, G. and Zhao, Z., 2012. Green packaging management of logistics enterprises. Physics Procedia, 24, pp.900-905.
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