The document provides an overview of marketing concepts specific to fashion, emphasizing the importance for designers to understand marketing theories and practices to effectively collaborate with marketing professionals. It details key marketing strategies like consumer-driven approaches, market segmentation, and brand management, as well as the role of technology in modern marketing. Ultimately, the lecture aims to prepare designers to align their products with consumer needs and work synergistically within the marketing framework.

1. Marketing Concepts
VDIS10047 Fashion Marketing by Ron Newman

2. Welcome to the Marketing Concepts lecture of VDIS10047
Marketing Fashion. This lecture will examine Marketing
theories as they apply to fashion designers. It is important that
designers understand these theories and practices because in
the most part designers are working directly with or for
marketing professionals.
Marketing is the process of communicating the value of a
product or service to customers. It is a critical business function
for attracting customers. From a societal point of view,
marketing is the link between a society’s material requirements
and its economic patterns of response.

3. Marketing satisfies these needs and wants through exchange
processes and building long term relationships. The process of
communicating the value of a product or service through
positioning to customers. Marketing can be looked at as an
organisational function and a set of processes for creating,
delivering and communicating value to customers, and
managing customer relationships in ways that benefit the
organisation, its stakeholders and its shareholders.
Marketing chooses target markets through market analysis and
market segmentation, understanding consumer buying
behaviour and providing customer value.

4. There are five competing concepts under which organisations
can choose to operate their business; the production concept,
the product concept, the selling concept, the marketing concept,
and the holistic marketing concept. Take some time to research
them yourself.
Successful marketing management includes, capturing
marketing insights, connecting with customers, building strong
brands, shaping the market offerings, delivering and
communicating value, creating long-term growth, and
developing marketing strategies and plans.

5. Customer Orientation: An organisation in the market
economy survives by producing goods and services that
customers are willing and able to buy.
Consequently, ascertaining consumer demand is vital for future
viability and even existence of any organisation as a going
concern. Many organisations today have a customer focus (or
market orientation). They focus their activities and products on
consumer demands with designers involved. There are three
key approaches to doing this; ie: consumer-driven, market
change identification and/or product innovation.

6. In the consumer-driven approach, consumer wants are the
drivers of all strategic marketing decisions. No strategy is
pursued until it passes the test of consumer research. Every
aspect of a market offering, including the nature of the product
itself, is driven by the needs of potential consumers.
The starting point is always the consumer. The rationale for this
approach is that there is no reason to spend on Research and
Development and design developing fashion products that
people will not buy. History attests to many products that were
commercial failures in spite of being technological or stylistic
breakthroughs.

7. Market change identification is an important task to undertake
constantly through consumer research, as discussed in our
lecture; A Designers Guide to Research. Every aspect of a
market offering, can change regularly including the nature of
the product and/or service required. This is always driven by
the needs and desires of potential consumers.

8. The Four Ps: A formal approach to this customer-focused
marketing is known as SIVA (Solution, Information, Value,
Access). This system is basically the four Ps renamed and
reworded to provide a customer focus. The SIVA Model
provides a demand/customer-centric alternative to the well-
known 4 four Ps supply side model (product, promotion, price,
placement) of marketing management.
Product Promotion Price Place (Distribution)
→ → → →
Solution Information Value Access

9. If any of the four Ps become problematic for an organisation or
are not a marketing factor of the business, the business could
find itself in trouble with competitors appearing in the market
place, and its consumer demand on this product decreasing.
In recent years service marketing has widened the domains to
be considered by marketers, increasing us to the seven P's of
marketing. The proposed additional three P's of service
marketing are: process, physical environment and people.
Some consider there to simply be a fifth "P": Positioning.

10. Organisational orientation: An organisation's marketing
department is often seen as of prime importance within the
functional level of that organisation. Information from an
organisation's marketing department would be used to guide
the actions of other departments. As an example, a marketing
department could ascertain (via market research) that
consumers desired a new type of product, or a new usage for
an existing product. With this in mind, the marketing
department would brief the Research and Development (R&D)
department and designers to create a design of a product or
service based on the consumers' new desires.

11. The production department would then start to manufacture the
product, while the marketing department would focus on the
marketing; promotion, distribution, pricing, etc. of the product.
Additionally, a organisation's finance department would be
consulted, with respect to securing appropriate funding for the
development, production and promotion of the product.
Often interdepartmental issues may arise: production may
oppose the installation, support and servicing of new capital
equipment and stock needed to manufacture a new product.
Finance may oppose the required capital expenditure, since it
could undermine the cash flow of the organisation.

12. Herd Behaviour: Herd behaviour in marketing is used to
explain the dependencies of customers' on mutual behaviour,
relying on marketing mechanisms to increase impulse buying
and get people to buy more by playing on the herd instinct.
People will buy more of products or services that are seen to
be popular, and several feedback mechanisms to understand
product popularity with consumers are known, including smart
card technology, social media activity, mobile device
connectivity and the use of radio frequency identification tags.
Online retailers often inform consumers of "which products are
popular with like-minded consumers” eg: Amazon, Ebay...

13. Market Research: As discussed in our lecture; A Designers
Guide to Research, market research, as a sub-set aspect of
marketing activities, can be divided into the following parts:
- Primary research (also known as field research), which
involves the conducting and compilation of research for a
specific purpose.
- Secondary research (also referred to as desk research),
initially conducted for one purpose, but often used to support
another purpose or end goal.

14. By these definitions, an example of primary research would be
market research conducted into health foods, which is used
solely to ascertain the needs/wants of the target market for
health foods. Secondary research in this case would be
research about health foods, but used by a firm wishing to
develop an unrelated product into a similar market area.
Primary research is often expensive to prepare, collect and
interpret from data to information. While secondary research is
relatively inexpensive, it often can become out-dated and out-
moded quickly, given that it is used for a purpose other than
the one for which it was intended.

15. Primary research can also be broken down into quantitative
research and qualitative research, which, as the terms suggest,
relate to the numerical and non-numerical research methods
and techniques used, respectively.
The appropriateness of each mode of research depends on
whether data can be quantified (quantitative research), or
whether subjective, non-numeric or abstract concepts are
required to be studied (qualitative research).

16. Other additional modes of marketing research are:
- Exploratory research, research that investigates assumptions.
- Descriptive research, which, as the term suggests, describes
"what is”
- Predictive research, meaning research conducted to predict a
future occurrence.
- Conclusive research, for the purpose of deriving a conclusion
via a research process.

17. Market Segmentation: Market segmentation is the division of
a market of consumers into persons with similar needs and
wants. For instance a shirt manufacturer would market to both
children and adults.
Similar products which are marketed to two distinct groups of
people, both with similar needs, traits, and wants. In another
example, Apple computers can use market segmentation to
classify its clients according to their promptness to adopt new
products. Market segmentation allows for a better allocation
of a firm's finite resources.

18. Any organisation only possesses finite resources and must
make choices (and incur the related costs) in servicing
specific segments of its consumers. In this way, the diversified
tastes of contemporary consumers can be served better.
With growing diversity in the tastes of modern consumers,
organisations are taking note of the benefit of servicing a
multiplicity of segmented new markets. Market segmentation
can be defined in terms of the STP acronym, meaning
Segment, Target and Position.

19. Marketing Strategy: Marketing strategy considers the total
marketing environment and its impacts on a company or
product or service. The emphasis is on "an in depth
understanding of the market environment, particularly the
competitors and customers.”
An organisation may offer numerous products or services
spanning numerous and sometimes wholly unrelated
marketplaces. A marketing plan is required in order to
effectively serve the strategy, including weighing up how to
utilise finite resources such a communications design,
advertising (traditional and online) and direct marketing.

20. For example, a start-up fashion firm would face little success
should it attempt to rival Louis Vuitton, Hermes, Burberry, or
any other large global fashion house. Such a scenario would
require a unique marketing strategy.
A marketing strategy differs from a marketing tactic in that a
strategy looks at the longer term view of the products, goods,
or services being marketed. A tactic refers to a shorter term
view. Mailing of a postcard or sales letter is a tactic, but a
campaign considering retail locations, regular postcards,
letters, internet advertising, editorial placement is a strategy.

21. Brand Management: Brand management is a communication
function that includes analysis and planning on how any given
brand is positioned in the market place, which segment of the
public the brand is targeted at, and maintaining a desired
reputation of the brand. Developing a good brand relationship
with a market is essential for brand management.
Tangible elements of brand include the product itself; the look
and feel, price, packaging. Intangible elements are experiences
that the consumer takes away from the brand, and also the
relationship that they have with the brand such as after sales
service. A brand manager would oversee all of these things.

22. B2C Buying Behaviour: This behaviour concerns consumers
and their purchase of a given product such as a pair of
sneakers, the desire for a pair of sneakers would be followed
by an information search on available types/brands. This may
include perusing media outlets, and the internet and commonly
information from family and friends. Purchase decision is made
the consumer buys the product through an outlet or online.
A post-purchase evaluation is often conducted. Whether the
product value is high or low repeat purchases may occur which
could develop consumer loyalty to the brand or organisation.

23. B2B Buying Behaviour: Relates to organisational/industrial
provider buying behaviour such as retail buyers. Business buy
either wholesale from other businesses or directly from the
manufacturer in contracts or agreements.
B2B marketing involves one business marketing a product or
service to another business and often the strategies and plans
have to same content but with different targeting.
B2C and B2B behaviour are not precise terms, as similarities
and differences exist between and within them.

24. Use of Technologies: Marketing relies on various
technologies. Computer-based information systems are
employed, aiding in better processing and storage of data.
Most common of these are Customer Relationship
Management systems (CRM), software for direct marketing,
data collection and subsequent research.
Marketing researchers within organisations use information
systems, hardware and software components, to collect raw
market data through enhanced data gathering methods. The
data from information technology improves an organisation's
marketing decision-making process.

25. Information technology has typically progressed at a fast rate,
leading to marketing managers needing to be aware of the
latest technological developments.
In recent years, the notebook/laptop personal computer has
gained significant market share, largely due to its more user-
friendly size and portability. Smartphones resulted from a
demand among consumers for more technologically
advanced portable (mobile) and convenient products.
An organisation can lose out to its competitors if it ignores
these types of innovations in its industry.

26. Technological advancements can lessen barriers between
countries and regions. Using the internet, organisations can
quickly dispatch information from one country to another
without restrictions. Prior to the mass usage of the Internet,
such transfers of information would have taken much longer.
More recently, there has been a large emphasis on data
analytics. Data can be mined from various sources such as
online forms, mobile phone applications, internet browsing
and more recently, social media activity.

27. Services Marketing: Services marketing is the marketing of
services, as opposed to tangible products. A service is typically
defined as a purchase which is used and consumed
simultaneously. It does not have material form, and therefore
requires a considered, different approach to its marketing.
The use of a service is inherently subjective, meaning that
several persons experiencing a service would each experience
it uniquely; ie: riding a train, viewing a movie or seeing a
consultant. Services can also be viewed as a spectrum; not
pure goods or pure services; ie: a restaurant, where a waiter's
service is intangible, but the food is tangible.

28. A Summary of Marketing Concepts: The purpose of this
lecture is for you as a designer to consider how you will work
with those in the marketing discipline and how your fashion
products will serve your customers as either the product itself
or even as the communication that promotes and positions the
product or service.
Fashion designers have a lead role to play in this business
continuum and it is only by understanding the responsibilities
and methodologies of your business colleagues that you will be
able to appreciate their skills and work with them as a team.

29. Marketing Concepts
VDIS10047 Fashion Marketing by Ron Newman