How Luxury Fashion Brands Centralize Public Relations Across Multiple Consumer Touch Points

The objectives and scopes of the research are also defined. This chapter also describes the methodology to carry out and accomplish the objectives.

All the activities and strategies involved in getting the desired clothing and fashion industry marketing messages to the intended target markets are possible through communications. The global clothing industry has been handling a tough consumer market following the presence of established and competitive fashion rivalry (Smith and Taylor 2004, p. 7). Harvey Nichols has tried to cope with the changing consumer tides through introducing efficient marketing strategies to draw the attention of its consumers.

The author who inspired the topic of this thesis is Dana Thomas. As a fashion writer, Dana Thomas, has analyzed the changes in luxury fashion business. Thomas has been writing about fashion for the past twenty-five years in various journals such as Newsweek, The New York Times Magazine, New Yorker, Harper’s Bazaar, Vogue, Financial Times, and more. Dana Thomas’ two books, Deluxe and Gods and Kings, are the inspiration for this thesis. Deluxe: How Luxury Lost Its Lustre goes into great detail the secrets of the leading luxury industry brands, namely Prada, Gucci and Burberry, to showcase the “New Luxury” of today and how “luxury lost its luster” by featuring the manufacturing and logistical processes. Thomas exposes that many luxury brands use the same Asian factories that mass-market retailers employ, which raises questions concerning quality and craftsmanship for luxury brands.

In “Marketing to the Millennials”, Suzy Menkes addresses the importance of every luxury fashion brands to shift their marketing tactics within technology, particularly to market to the Millennials. Menkes asserts a concern to these luxury brand that they will be unrecognized to the Millennials if they do not advertise in a way that allures them. Millennials is the generation that has been actively interacting with the immense increase of technology. She recommends if these companies want to stay a popular functional company they will have to adjust to a different kind of marketing, which targets Millennials. While the increase of technology has had an increasing impact to the recent generations, companies should market to all generations instead of Menkes suggested targeted consumers, which is misdirected.

Experiences the customers perceive from their products are evident. Customers using Michael Kors products gain the feeling of belongingness to the community. Another experiences gained by customers while dressing according to the last trends of fashion are satisfaction and self-confidence. However, the dilemma between middle, upper-middle class and luxury class exists, such as people from luxury class want to differentiate and the accessibility of different collection from the same designer can distort their

Methodology and methods- This section includes a clear justification for the chosen methodology and research method. The length and depth of the research depends on the objective of the researcher and the information he or she is trying to convey to the readers.

This expansion demonstrates how the luxury industry is now run by massive corporations whose focus is only on growth, visibility, brand awareness, advertising, and most importantly, PROFITS! With growth and expansion, has come a decrease in quality and rarity. The luxury garments produced are mostly not handmade but are even outsourced to large factories in places such as China and Turkey. Also, to meet quarterly turnover projections, “designers churn(ed) out increasingly trendy collections of clothes, handbags, and shoes.” (Thomas, Pg. 246) With hundreds of new stores around the globe the surplus of designer labeled merchandise is immense hence, the proliferation of outlet malls.

This chapter discusses the methods used in the study. It consists of research design, data and data source, data collection and data analysis.

Context: TFC has been growing quickly within the fashion network industry for past decade (1996-2006). However, emergence of stiff competition in its field has resulted in TFC to rethink its strategy. Therefore, an appropriate marketing strategy needs to be selected in order to maintain TFC’s position in addition to boosting its viewership ratings and revenues.

This section provides an introduction to the different types of research paradigms and methods before concluding on the approach that this study will undertake.

After showing the segmentation and target market that Vogue is focused on, we will study the positioning strategy that Vogue use. Positioning is defined as"the relative perceptul position of one brand usually compared with competing brands altough arrange of positioning approaches are possible to achieve" (Pickton and Broderick, 2005). Vogue has its own identity; its brand sets it apart from other magazines. It is the most valuable high fashion magazine, continuing to position itself as both unique and authentic. They have developed relationship marketing, defined as "Marketing with the conscious aim to develop and manage long-term and/or trusting relationsips with customers, distributors, suppliers, or other parties in the marketing environment". It focuses on the best designers, fashion photographers and models in order to retain its core customer- stylist women. Vogue tries to provide added value,so the brand has prices that are not cheap, investing in creativity and focusing on quality. They try to create a consitent marketing mix rto have a long-term relationship with the target market, and they try to crea

In luxury marketing, there is a delicate relationship between 4 factors that most strongly influence the purchase of the luxury consumer. They are the exclusiveness of the brand, the reputation of the brand, forms of distribution and price/value affiliation. Exclusivity cannot always be ensured due to immense competition. But by consequence, it is not the key requirement of a luxury consumer. The consumer bases their

1.1 The importance of brand image on fashion clothing Clothing, as a matter of fact, is a kind of necessity that helps keep our bodies warm. Human beings cannot live without the protection from clothes in adverse conditions and this signifies how important clothing is for us. Nowadays, in addition to the basic functions, clothes can also serve as fashion items, which can tell how significant an individual is, express the status an individual has and what their personal image is like (O’Cass, 2000). Thus, clothing can help represent our personal identity.

Today we live in a world driven by relationships, first impressions and visual communication. As human beings we have a tendency to instinctively allow ourselves to react by what we see and feel at a specific moment, making such reaction unpredictable and capriciously volatile. Studying relationships is of extreme importance because when we understand why public and individuals react to stimuli in a certain way, we can try to manipulate the outcome. This is why Public Relations plays a crucial role in the fashion industry as it is a field of work that is driven by consumers needs and desires. By understanding the targeted audience, we can actually control commercial, marketing, and creative outcomes of a specific fashion organization. This piece of writing will explain and analyse the role and importance of public relations and Communication in the Fashion Industry.

In order to better visualize the realm of brand's position in the market, fashion managers should execute VALS Model. Through Values, Attitudes, and Lifestyles System for Maison Martin Margiela we are able to precisely measure company's target consumers and their buying motivation that stimulates consumer behavior. This system allows to deep into humans psychology and examines consumers' values, lifestyles, and attitudes. VALS is based on two dimensions: resources and self-orientation. It classifies people into eight groups: innovators, thinkers, achievers, experiencers, makers, believers, strivers and survivors. It is critical that fashion managers analyze population shifts, market size, age groups, gender, family status, social classes, income, education, attitudes, lifestyles and nationalities in order to collect an appropriate information to enter inside their potential markets. While conducting research, it is obvious that in fashion industry innovators, achievers, experiencers and strivers are the most important groups that fashion managers have to consider and attract their attention. Each of these group willingly spend money on products that are beyond their needs, but satisfy their egos. These four groups that MMM should focus on, as they are striving to achieve prestige, status, excitement, and they are giving a huge credit for their appealing. These types of consumers' who are successful, wealthy and aren't hesitate of the high prices on tag so that they can be socially accepted as the image is an important aspect for them, and a prestige afforded them with such purchases. Interestingly, the Country of Origin and Manufacture plays a tremendous role in choosing a brand to satisfy their self-esteem as well. Obviously, France and Italy are known as the most