Marketing management in a Globalizing World

Résumé du document

French Connection is a company founded in the United Kingdom in 1972 which produce and distributes branded fashion clothing for men and women to more than 30 countries around the world from their offices in London, New York, Hong Kong and Toronto. French Connection's company is a high street fashion retailer, initially on the fashion clothing range, also diversified in accessories, cosmetics and alcoholic drinks range.
After 5 years of success, last year, sales were down by over 18% for a quarter, the brand became as tired, they needed a new competitive advantage to stay in the fight with their competitors. French Connection's position in the market is increasingly competitive and highly a fragmented retail market.
To evaluate the nature of the competitive environment, Porter's five forces of industry competition is a good tool. The aim of this model is to identify the success key factors of the environment, in another view the strategic element which it is advisable to control and obtain a competitive advantage. For that, it is necessary to organize a hierarchy basis on the 5 forces (M. Porter, 1980), in order to determine which strategic actions must be carried out in priority.

Extraits

[...] That must allow requiring an additional charge. Or they can adopt a focus strategy, concentrate their efforts on a market segment. That resulted in also choosing in this range a strategy of domination by the costs or differentiation, to make sure a leadership of price and/or quantities on this segment. On the other hand, Porter's generic strategy was much criticized, qualified as narrow, rigid, limited and a lack of taking into account specific case. is characterized by an environmental determinism, and a linear Cartesian attitude towards complex problems that assumes that a business is merely the sum of its parts, as opposed to a complex, uncertain and ever- changing relationship amongst its parts.”( Omar Aktouf, Miloud Chenoufi, W. [...]

[...] The company has almost one hundred fifty stores worldwide including more than 30 in the US. The threat of substitute product is high, because substitutes product are lowered in price, for example counterfeit, imitation, false clothing, or emergence of discount fashion retailer like Delaveine in France (www.delaveine.com) They sell the same style of fashion clothing, but half of the price of Zara. However they are only localized in Paris, with 10 stores. Imitation is a real threat for fashion clothing industry, which implicate big loss of profits for firms. [...]

[...] Four, the uncertainty avoidance, it is the degree to which people in a country prefer structured than unstructured situation. And finally, the long-term is where values oriented towards the future, saving and persistence, and the short-term, where values oriented towards the past and present, respect for tradition and satisfying social obligations.(A. Rugman & Collinson, International Business, 2006) The Hofstede Model of Cultural Dimensions can be of great use when it comes to analyzing country's culture. There are however a few things are important to know: First, the averages of a country do not relate to individuals of that country. [...]

[...] key questions are: How are we different from our competitors? How do we do a better job of serving customers?” (David R. Drobis Competitive Thinking for Competitive Advantage Public Relations Quarterly 1991) French Connection's company is too diversified, they must choose a focus strategy, they have to choose a segment market, concentrate and invest their capacities to produce a good product quality and better answer to consumer's needs. They should stay on the fashion market, with clothing, accessories, toiletries and stop production cost for other product as drinks, radio, or cosmetics. [...]

[...] French Connection UK's portfolio contains different product types. At the beginning, they sold only clothes to the men's and women's market, as street fashion range. Nowadays the products range is hugely diversified; they sell also fashion accessories, make-up, toiletries, condoms and more recently alcoholic drinks. In 2001, the provocative British retailer launched condoms branded with the logo which come in matt black packaging, they are not the first to be branded by a retailer. Benetton has already launched a condom under its Colors brand. [...]