Fashion Marketing: Contemporary Issues, Second edition - Pr School

Innovation management in creating new fashions 197
Units (SKUs), the need for constant change, and working on at least three
seasons and several lines at a time (Remaury, 1996). Development of new
apparel products suffers from low success rates and difficulty in compressing
time cycles. Currently, management focus is set on reducing the latter while
increasing the former. Compressing time cycles at this stage is crucial to meet
calendar deadlines and avoid losing market shares (AAMA, 1991).
Shah (1987) believes that ‘timing’, that is, getting new styles to the streets
at the precise moment the consumer is susceptible and ready for that design
message, is related more to market intelligence and understanding the consumer
than speed and technology. Though a combination of all three elements
really seems key to reaching perfect timing, we agree that design team efforts
should particularly focus on and build on this market intelligence. Forecasting
is considered critical in apparel and all fashion-related industries. McPherson
(1987) suggests that merchandise planning, which translates marketing objectives
into specific product lines, can help control potential losses and rapidly
take advantage of favourable sales trends.
Marketing and design
Marketing is a two-phase process, which consists of identifying market needs
and satisfying them (Carr and Pomeroy, 1992). To reach these objectives, companies
need to constantly interact with suppliers, competitors, industry analysts
and especially customers to avoid being ‘future shocked’ (Dammeyer,
1994). ‘Now we must invest in consumers . . . Figures alone are not enough:
we must understand attitudes, interests, and preferences’ (Robinson, 1987).
Identifying market needs
Identifying and understanding market needs is a complicated task, which still
needs to be mastered. Currently, most consumers are not satisfied with their
shopping experiences. According to Kurt Salmon Associates’ 1996 Annual
Consumer Pulse Survey, 68 per cent of the apparel shoppers know what they
are looking for but 49 per cent claim being unable to find it (KSA, 1996). They
seek instant gratification. Satisfying them has become retailers’ top concern.
Having pushed back in the pipeline some of their actions, they are increasing
their operation costs for developing systems to better understand and target
their customers, hence increasing responsiveness.
Retailers have shifted their focus from return on investment (ROI) to return
on customers (Tandem Corporation, 1997). Instead of trying to increase the
number of individual transactions, they now want to increase the value of
long-term customer relationships by supplying many ‘right’ products to one
customer rather than one average product to as many customers as possible.
The main idea is to increase loyalty, attract old customers back and target new
ones more efficiently.
To better focus on specific target consumers, companies develop market
segmentation approaches. Initially, market segments were based on product