Fashion Marketing Textbook Notes
Chapter 1: Developing and Maintaining Profitable Customer Relationships
Marketing
 Marketing: an organizational function and a set of process for creating, communicating,
and delivering value to customers for managing customer relationships in ways that
benefit the organization and its stakeholders
o Constantly evolving
o Process of creating value for customers and building strong customer
relationships in order to capture value from customers in return
 Value is from product offering
o Three components:
 Creating
 Communicating
 Delivering
 Building and managing customer relationships
o Exchange: any activity, such as buying and selling, in which one party receives
something by voluntarily giving something in return
Fashion Marketing
 Fashion: any designed product that is currently popular, that is of the moment and
subject to change, and that people consider desirable and appropriate at a given time
 Fashion includes home furnishings etc.
 Fashion marketing: the application of marketing processes and activities to currently
popular designed products
o Creation and development of a fashion product
o Presentation and promotion to customers
o Purchase and support after the sale
 Fashion marketers have to address consumer desire for newness, stay ahead of fastmoving trends, and apply creative marketing to capture the attention and interest of fickle
and savvy customers
Fashion Marketing Process
Fashion Marketers’ Long-term Goal: Customer Loyalty
 Need: something a person cannot do without
 Want: something a person craves or desires, influenced by his or her personality, culture,
and society
 Need to know difference as marketer
Identifying Customers
 Market: the group of actual and potential customers who have both an interest in and the
ability to buy the company’s product
 Market segmentation: defining smaller, more homogeneous customer groups based on
similar characteristics
 Target market: the group of customers deemed most likely to purchase a given product
and on whom the company’s marketing efforts will be focused
Creating Fashion Products
 Product: any offering that marketers create and present to target markets
o Products include goods (tangible items such as coats and hats)
o Products also include services (helpful or professional activities provided to
another)
Building Customer Relationships
 Customer relationship management (CRM): the overall process of building and
maintaining profitable customer relationships through providing superior customer value
and satisfaction
 Deliver products with high perceived value (a customer’s internal calculation as to
whether or not a product is worth its cost)
o Both in money and in effort to obtain it
Developing a Fashion Marketing Strategy
 Value proposition: the sum of all benefits that marketers offer customers
Choosing a Marketing Point of View
 Five basic points of view (or marketing orientations)
o Production concept
 Customers want products that are inexpensive and readily available
 Distribution in order to keep volume high and costs low
o Product concept
 Customers want high-quality products that offer performance and
innovative features
o Selling concept
 Goods will not be purchased widely enough unless they are aggressively
sold and promoted
 Usually used with products that consumers are not actively seeking
o Marketing concept
 Widely followed
 Customer as the focus
 Determine what customers want and then supply it
o Societal marketing concept
 Beyond satisfying immediate consumer needs by questioning whether or
not a product is good for the general welfare of all of society
 Balance satisfying consumer wants and the company’s need for profits
with the long-term well-being of society as a whole
 Final two most common with fashion
Creating a Marketing Mix
 Marketing mix: combination of marketing tools that a firm uses to offer its customers
value and to purse its own sales and profitability goals
 Four basic elements
o Product
o Price
o Place
o Promotion
Ethics and Social Responsibility
 Stakeholders: those people and organizations that have an investment or other interest in
the business
o Customers, employees, stockholders, suppliers, and government
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Green marketing: a business approach that protects the environment throughout the
development and marketing of a company’s products
Chapter 2: Participating in the Global Fashion Marketplace
Fashion Marketing Environment

Marketing environment: fashion companies interact with a variety of entities and face
diverse forces that can affect the way it reaches its marketing goals
o Must plan marketing mix based on factors in its marketing environment that it can
control (with knowledge of those they can’t)
Microenvironment
 Microenvironment: the set of forces close to an organization that have direct impact on
its ability to serve its customers
o Includes the company itself, as well as its suppliers and intermediaries
(customers, competitors, and various publics)
 Almost all companies use electronic data interchange (EDI) which they are able to
share real-time information with their suppliers that can help in production planning and
ensure timely delivery of needed goods
o Similar to Quick Response (QR)
 Costumers are most important part of microenvironment
o Consumer markets: include individuals and others who buy fashion goods for
personal use or for the use of another (gift)
o Business markets: buy goods and services that will be used in the operation of
their enterprise
o Reseller markets: buy goods in order to resell them to others at a profit
o Government markets: include local, state, and national government agencies
that buy goods for their internal use or for use in providing public services
o International markets: a combination of the consumer, business, reseller, and
government markets, but in countries other than where the marketer is based
 Public: any group that has an actual or possible interest in or impact on the company’s
efforts to achieve its goals
o Government, financial publics, media publics, general public
Macroenvironment
 Macroenvironment: the collection of uncontrollable forces and conditions that face a
company
o Includes social technological, economic, political and legal, and natural forces
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Social forces = number of people in market, age and gender breakdown, ethnicity, and
other key statistics
o Demographics: the statistical analysis of a population
o Culture: the set of learned values, norms, and behaviors that are shared and
practiced by members of a group or society
o Masstige marketing: the process of designers creating goods specifically to be
made available to the public at lower prices and in more accessible locations than
their prestige lines
Technological forces – advanced production techniques
o Computer-aided design (CAD)
o Computer-aided manufacturing (CAM)
o Computer-integrated manufacturing (CIM)
Economic forces – consumer income
o Buying power: the amount of money consumers are willing and able to spend
o Disposable income: income left over after taxes
o Discretionary income: left after necessities are paid with disposable income, the
sum that consumers may spend or save as they wish
Steps in Deciding to Market Globally
1. Scanning the global fashion marketing environment
2. Determining the company’s ability to market globally
3. Deciding which global markets to enter
4. Evaluating how best to enter a chosen market
5. Creating a global fashion marketing program
Chapter 3: Understanding Fashion Consumer and Business Buyer Behavior
Consumer Behavior
 Consumer behavior: the decision-making processes and actions of buyers as they
recognize their desire or need for a product or service
 Impulse item: something purchased without previous thought
 Product
o Branding: to delve more deeply into meeting consumer product desires,
marketers create personalities for their products
 Carefully building and matching the personality of the product to the
characteristics of a specific target market
 Place
o Accessibility
 Price
o How customers view price
 Promotion
o Celebrity endorsements
 Integrated marketing system: all four elements of the marketing mix are planned,
coordinated, and targeted, and a marketing organization has continuous sharing of ideas
and strategies to reach customers
Buyer’s Level of Involvement
 Purchase involvement: the level of a customer’s interest in the process of buying a
product as seen in that person’s need for the product (temporary – ending with the
purchase decision and evaluation) (ex: purchasing shampoo = routine problem solving)
o Product involvement can be long-term
 Limited problem-solving: buying situations that call for some additional consideration
 Extended problem-solving: when heavy-duty purchasing occurs (buying a car), most
people engage in a lengthy and thorough process
The Buyer’s Decision-Making Process
 Recognizing a problem
 Seeking information
 Weighing alternatives
 Making a decision
 Evaluating the decision
o
The Buying Situation
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Business Fashion Buyer Behavior
 Four kinds of business-to-business (B2B) markets (companies and organizations that
buy from or sell to other businesses or organizations as opposed to consumers)
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o Producers
o Resellers
o Governments
o Institutions
The nature of business buying
o Buying center: when a company creates a permanent group of people who must
approve purchase orders
o Fashion goods buying is complex because:
 Must always keep customer in mind
 Buyer needs to be assured of the quality in relation to price
 Want to work with reliable and supportive suppliers
 Want long-term relationships with profitable suppliers
Buying methods
o High-priced designer imports  buyers inspect the goods at the designer’s
showroom before or after the seasonal runway showing
o Retail store buyers attend these shows and order goods on-site or after returning
home and conferring with the buying center members
Types of buying
o Straight rebuy: a reorder of the same merchandise in the same quantities and
colors as the original order (least complicated)
o Modified rebuy: the second order may call for a change in fabric, color, or size
distribution
o New task buying: the buyer is selecting new styles, dealing with a new vendor,
or offering a new classification of goods (ex: adding accessories to casual and
dress apparel) (most complicated)