ABERCROMBIE AND FITCH

Abercrombie and Fitch

Abercrombie and Fitch

Introduction

Abercrombie and Fitch is one of the oldest clothing and retail organizations in the world today. It started in 1892 and its founder was David Abercrombie in the United States. Eight years later, the owner of this company joined Ezra Fitch to become Abercrombie and Fitch. It continued its operations throughout the first half of the twentieth century. However, in the early nineteen sixties, the company underwent financial challenges thus necessitating a change in strategy. It was purchased by "The Limited" and repositioned itself as a supplier of youth. The company began specializing in the provision of outerwear. In 1988, the company decided to change its image to that of a fashion brand of luxury living.

This research paper studies the concepts of consumer experiences and experiential marketing with respect to Abercrombie & Fitch. The literature review explores the concepts of consumer experiences; experiential marketing and marketing production experience and then proposes methods for evaluating these experiences. Abercrombie & Fitch brand is chosen to study the relevance of experiential marketing strategies in the current context of economic crisis. Consumer behaviour is changing rapidly and this work is intended as a state of the ability of brands to satisfy their customers. The ability to evolve and improve the content according to testimony experiential consumer reports makes the difference to competitors and can adapt to the situation.

Problem

The challenges that would be faced by A&F in the future were to maintain its competitive advantage in which new entrant from US and abroad intent to imitate A&F strategies. As our group has concluded that the main competitive strength of A&F are their ability in extracting the values which their consumer can relate to, and reflecting this value through their product and marketing communication.

A&F suffers some competitive disadvantages compared to Urban Outfitters, which has been able to drive earnings before interest and tax (EBIT) growth even in the mature UK market. Urban Outfitters benefits from supplier power and state-of-the-art IT, supply chain and systems compared with A&F legacy systems. The supermarket retailer has been able to break up the demand curve with metro, express and big box store formats out of town and on the high street. Moreover, Urban Outfitters stores have been carefully designed with consistent store layouts in order to facilitate store navigation. Extra back room store space has also been allocated to allow for smooth execution of its picking and distribution model.

Urban Outfitters sells both own label and branded goods (food and non-food) in a bid to drive up footfall and sales conversion. A&F legacy stores are inconsistent in terms of layout. Store size tends to dictate product availability, while a lack of back room store space does not facilitate the same style supermarket pick and delivery model. The legacy systems and stores of A&F are constraining effective servicing of customer demands on a consistent basis. This is placing the company at a clear competitive disadvantage compared to a formidable opponent, Urban ...