Fashion Marketing: Contemporary Issues, Second edition - Pr School

78 Fashion Marketing
empirical testing provides the only basis for ‘validating’ the segmentation
concept. It is clear that a challenge to the future success of the market segmentation
concept lies, paradoxically, in a broadening of the heterogeneity
that the approach was designed to handle (Dibb, 2001). It is also apparent that
context is important in representing contemporary social realities. Indeed,
as Baudrillard (1994, p.79) observes, ‘we live in a world where there is more
and more information and less and less meaning.’ The fashion retail sector
provides a relevant context in which to explore the segmentation paradox as
fashion markets are characterized by volatile demand where factors such as
age, personal disposable income, lifestyle and culture all appear to influence
a specific and increasingly fragmented market context (Hines, 2001). Retailers
can often be seen to target offers towards specific groups of customers (Bevan,
2002; McGoldrick, 2002), which should lead us to conclude that they are successful
by the criteria established within the marketing segmentation literature.
However, potential customers are not always easy to identify and this is evidenced
by perennial markdowns and unsold stock. Clearly there is much
disagreement as to what should or should not be acceptable as a segmentation
approach and the normative view – upon which most understandings
of the concept are based and communicated through in the marketing
literature – demonstrates that realist assumptions form the very basis of the normative
segmentation approach. However, because segmentation is essentially
dependent on the managers’ view of any particular socially mediated consumption
situation this suggests that it would be wise to accept a broadening
of the normative view to accept alternative perspectives. The question is: how?
When social worlds collide
‘As soon as you start to put numbers on people it starts to give a
spurious sense of robustness and accuracy. Instead of having product
range planning meetings there were people arguing about who
was the classic customer and who wasn’t. There was this temptation
to over use it just because it was numerical.’
(Head of Marketing and Research: Large UK Fashion Retailer)
Although market segmentation clearly has its exponents and its critics, the
nature of social identity has been largely overlooked in the debate so far.
Jenkins (1996) highlights two important reasons why the concept of identity
is important in the sociological literature: first, the identity of self, where we
may wish to affirm and communicate to ourselves, and second, the identity
of group, or social identity, where we communicate to others. These issues are
also central to any proposed segmentation of consumer markets. A number
of writers have addressed the notion of social identity with reference to the
postmodern condition (see Table 4.1 for a brief overview of postmodern conditions)
where consumption is a central activity in the facilitation and communication
of identity (Giddens, 1991, 2002; Gergen, 1999). However, as Gergen