Introduction
According to Keyton, organizational culture is "the set of artifacts, values, and assumptions that emerges from the interactions of organizational members" (Keyton, 2014, p. 550). Over the past few years, past and potential employees of the clothing brand Abercrombie & Fitch (A&F) have taken to the media to explain the negative organizational culture that exists within the company. The management values and company policies that create this “image-obsessed culture” have led to multiple human rights lawsuits, which has damaged the reputation of Abercrombie & Fitch globally (Benson, 2013).
Statement of the Problem
Abercrombie & Fitch’s corporate leaders have designed policies to mandate personal appearance, manifesting into a
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Jefferies was successful in his pursuit and as a result, his exclusionary sentiment permeated the workplace culture of the organization at every level; from the sprawling 300-acre headquarters in the woods of Ohio to each individual retail outlet. At the heart of this culture was the “Looks Policy”, an unforgiving guide to how employees should present themselves at work. This policy governed every aspect of an employee’s appearance from the number of times they rolled the cuffs of their jeans to the tone of their skin, which was preferably ‘sun kissed’. Not only did this policy contribute to a negative work environment where employees felt they were constantly being evaluated on the basis of their physical attributes alone, but it also led to human rights violations wherein job applicants were denied employment on the basis of their race and/or religion. In a 2004 class action lawsuit filed against the retail giant, several thousands of former A&F employees alleged the company discriminated against African-Americans, Latinos, and Asian Americans in its hiring practices as well as its advertisements. The claimants also purported that non-white employees were frequently relegated to the back-of-store tasks where they would not be visible to store patrons. A&F settled the lawsuit out of
Abercrombie & Fitch (A&F), an American retailer that concentrates on upscale casual wear for young consumers, which was founded in Manhattan, New York City in June 4, 1892 by two young minds of David T. Abercrombie and Ezra Fitch. Beginning with a rough journey of selling sporting outfits and excursion goods such as fishing and hunting equipment, A&F had to file bankruptcy in 1977. Soon thereafter, the company was revived after Jake Oshman, owner of Oshman Sporting Goods, bought A&F in 1978. A&F was relaunched as a mail-retailer company specializing in hunting wear and novelty items, but was bought by The Limited ten years after its revival. The gradual shift to focusing on apparels for young consumers began when A&F was a subsidiary of Limited Brands, and since then, A&F has grown to become one of the largest apparel firms in the United States. In 1998, A&F launched Abercrombie Kids, targeting consumers from age 7-14, which further increases its revenue. In 1999 to early 2000s, A&F’s sales skyrocketed as it hit its zenith, by portraying A&F clothing as the “coolest thing” through billboard-winning song that compliments A&F in the lyrics, as well as other advertisements. Furthermore, A&F launched a subsidiary called Hollister to tackle similar age group of target audience but with lower income. This expansion to dominate the market of teenagers through consideration of other demographic factor, namely income, was exceptional for A&F’s revenue. Presently, A&F focused on
In the case of Equal Employment Opportunity Commission v Abercrombie & Fitch, a teenager Samantha Elauf filed against Abercrombie and Fitch’s company after she was denied employment at a store for “failing to accommodate” because she wore a hijab for religious practice. The incident first began in 2008 after Samantha’s interview with an employer at a store in Oklahoma. After she was informed of the reason why she wasn't hired, she filed a court case against the company for religious discrimination. In the District Court of Oklahoma, the court decided that Abercrombie’s “look policy” stating that employees must abide by dress code rules was perfectly reasonable. They agreed with the employer that Samantha must take off her hijab for work regardless
JC Penney’s market share is currently at an all-time low. On December 8 of 2016, the company’s share’s market value was $10.56 and currently, the share’s market value is $2.66.
- Power of Rivalry: The rivalry in this sector is intense and forces Abercrombie to continuously work on innovating and merger from the others, in order to maintain its status. The main competitors are:
Abercrombie & Fitch ANALYSIS REPORT Fundamentals Of Retail Design Group 03 Erik, Herr | I-Chu, Liao | Karan, Shah Kuan-Ling, Tseng | Chen-Hua, Wang ABSTRACT This report intends to analyze the unique brand values, the distinct marketing strategies and the compelling competitive dynamics of Abercrombie & Fitch (A&F), the noted American retailer of casual luxury wear. The purpose of this analysis being to understand the context and motives that drive brand A&F; to draw insights from it‘s past and current strategies and use these to launch a, new sneaker offer‘ within it‘s existing product ensemble. For doing this, we‘ve researched the story of the brand; it‘s original and potential target market, it‘s financial
Abercrombie and Fitch are a company that strongly targets a set group of people. With the goal of reaching this particular group of people they have implemented a “Look Policy,” in which an employee is supposed to look and dress like in order to work for the company. The purpose of performance management is to, “ensure that employees’ activities and outputs contribute to the organization’s goals” (Hollenbeck, Gerhart, & Wright, 2011, p.225). Abercrombie believes failure to comply with this policy “would disrupt its careful branding efforts, resulting in customer confusion, because of the critical role that the Look Policy plays in supporting its brand image. Dkt. No. 95 at 12. Second, Abercrombie argues that allowing exceptions to the Look Policy would hurt store performance” (Norlander, 2013, para. 2).
Despite Abercrombie & Fitch’s efforts to win back loyal consumers with their new rebranding initiative, the company continues to experience a decline in annual revenue and dismal growth coupled with a poor return on investment, making it a risky investment option for potential shareholders. According to the company’s annual report, Abercrombie & Fitch saw a decline in revenue from $4,116.90 billion in February 2014 to $3,744.03 billion in 2015 with fourth-quarter revenues falling nearly 14% to $1.12 billion (Abercrombie & Fitch 41). The company contributed its dismal report to a decrease in the number of operational stores at the end of Q4 fiscal 2014, weak consumer demand for both Hollister and Abercrombie & Fitch, slowing growth in
Abercrombie & Fitch is one of the leading clothing companies in the world. They manufacture
American Apparel (AA) is a well-known United States clothing brand that has gained recognition among the retail industry. American Apparel headquarters is located in Los Angles, California where it manufactures and distributes its clothing products. It is known in today’s society, to be sweatshop free and has a strong belief of workers’ rights. However, American Apparel has had a downfall in the retail industry losing revenue. This research of American Appeal will provide feasible reasons why the company should enter China international market to improve on sales revenue.
A considerable problem in today society is discrimination. Whether it’s based upon race, age, sexuality, or even looks, discrimination is a serious dilemma. Marshal Cohen, a senior industry analyst with the NPD Group, believes that hiring people who are “walking billboards” is critical and essential to a company’s success. The companies who hire based on looks, fail to realize that there are shoppers who do not care about the appearance of the store employees, just as long as they are receiving good customer service. People cannot completely control their appearance and brands like Abercrombie and Fitch, Hollister, and American Apparel should take notice to that.
American Apparel, is an American multi-national clothing manufacturer, distributor and retailer since 1988based in Los Angeles, California. Dov Charney, a Canadian business man was a founder and former CEO of the company. He was involved in nearly every part of the business process from design and manufacturing to marketing. The Ernst & Young named Charney Entrepreneur of the Year in 2004. He was also termed "Man of the Year" by various fashion
Our textbook provides us with the definition of organizational culture “as the set of shared, taken-for-granted implicit assumptions that a group holds and that determines how it perceives, thinks about, and reacts to its various environments” (Kinicki & Williams 227). The Publix Corporation formally states its commitment to its organizational culture in their published mission statement. One of the bullet points of the Publix mission dedication “to the dignity, value and employment security of our associates” ("Mission Statement & Guarantee").
Just as society has a culture, so has an organization. Organizational culture has been called ‘Corporate soul’ (Singh and Paul 1985). The spirit and the ethos that precolates all aspects of organizational behavior and like societal cultureit cannot be seen directly. It has to be inferred by peeling out the most external, tangible, and hence visible sheaths of an organization to the most central and invisible values, beliefs, and assumptions regarding how and why people work and relate with each other within an organization. Organizational culture consists of the following five layers (J.B.P Sinha 1990) :
Abercrombie & Fitch has become a well-known clothing store in many household homes in the last decade whether it’s from their various scandals or their over-sex ads, everyone is familiar with this clothing brand. However, Abercrombie was not always the teen clothing store, when it first opened in June of 1892, it targeted hunters and fishermen by selling hunting and fishing equipment and was originally called David T. Abercrombie Co. By 1904, the company officially got its name of Abercrombie & Fitch when a portion was bought by the high profile lawyer, Ezra Fitch. This company was once the “greatest sporting goods store in the world,” (source) bringing in customers such as Teddy Roosevelt. Despite its success, the company filed for
In this assignment, I have chosen to research Hollister to find out if they are discriminative to customers and in recruiting staff, and if they attract the target market. Hollister is an American brand found on July the 27th, 2000 by Abercrombie & Fitch. They welcomed their first store on July 27th in 2000, Columbus, Ohio.