Marketing
In the article ‘A Print Focus Returns in Lane Bryant Campaign’, Levere talks about Lane Bryant retailer, which deals with fashion for plus-size women. The retailer has embarked on a marketing campaign that will see its clothing and lingerie make relevance to prospective customers. The campaign will involve three things, which are print advertising, social media, and website advertising and not forgetting the in store and direct marketing strategies. The retailer will be seeking to target customers between ages of 30 to 45 wearing sizes ranging from 14 to 28 for it will provide them with a great fashion to fit their vibrant lifestyle and at the same time making, them feel sexy, self-assured, and contented. Even though, the retailer got a new buyer May 2012, it believes that the marketing strategy will be a success because they had already rolled out the strategy before the sale. It is evident that the retailer relates to plus-size women in a unique way such that they seek to satisfy them. The intuition behind this is that apart from the target population growing thus needing the clothes and the lingerie; they turn out to be the most undeserved part of the market (Levere). This follows the revelation that, in May the plus size apparel only made up 16% of the total sales of female apparel, which was a considerable decline from 2006 where the apparel made up a fifth of the sales of all female apparel.
This article has extreme relevance to the marketing field especially when it comes to marketing strategies. Marketing strategies enables a business to concentrate its resources on opportunities it feels it will enable them increase sales, and achieve a competitive advantage over other businesses. For instance, the retailer, Lane Bryant has decided to concentrate its resources on building plus-size women apparel. This is a strategic move for the retailer because after a careful marketing research they adopted a strategic decision. This helped them understand the market, and through the retailer’s current performance, they utilized the unexploited business opportunity to enable their growth. The retailer got the revelation that the existing market did not offer the plus size women what they deserved, and this may be because the women did not find the available apparel appealing to them or the available apparel was in shortage. This move will certainly gain them a competitive advantage over the rest of the retailers, who mainly, according to their research, invest in apparel for small sized women. The increase in the target population for the retailer means that the demand for the apparel will be high, and this is a sure indication of good things to come the retailer way. Meanwhile, the retailer seems to build its marketing strategy around profitable satisfaction of customer needs. This is a brilliant move for the retailer because the plus size Women apparel falls under moderately competitive markets when compared to small sized women apparel (Levere,). Therefore, to succeed in such markets, the retailer should make customer satisfaction a priority.
Lane Bryant has a feasible competitive strategy and its marketing initiatives are sure to bring positive results. This is because customer satisfaction as a foundation for a business success has always worked; for the markets have changed, where the customers bargaining power has become a priority. Quality of products and services go hand in hand with customer satisfaction and for a long time now, many who have treaded this path have achieved success.
Work cited
Levere, Jane. A print focus returns in Lane Bryant campaign. August 8, 2012. Web. 23 January
2012.
Available at:
< http://www.nytimes.com/2012/08/09/business/media/lane-bryant-introduces-new-advertising-and-marketing-campaign.html?_r=0>
