FASHION INDUSTRY

Fashion Industry

Table of Contents

Chapter # 13

Introduction3

Conceptual Framework and research question6

RQ1: What strategic brand management measures would a fashion retailer take, while entering and competing in an international world?7

RQ2: What affects does internationalisation have on the brand management of a fashion retailer?8

Chapter # 211

Literature Review11

Retail Internationalisation11

Motives to go international12

Fashion Retailing15

Brand Management17

Brand Premium/Added value18

Brand Positioning19

Corporate Identity22

Chapter # 324

Research Design24

Literature Search24

Keywords25

Time Scale25

References26

E-Business Technology: WTO Strategy & E-Commerce

Chapter # 1

Introduction

With the advent of the 21st century, and the new phenomenon of globalisation, the world markets have become closer and are shrinking in size and getting highly saturated yet volatile. This gives rise to competition and survival of the fittest makes the competition even more intense. This is the exact scenario at the current retail sector of the world. With the high street wars amongst the retail giants, the ever increasing competition not only gives rise to more options but much better presentation for a customer to choose from. Hence, the bigger retail giants make low budget retailers difficult for them to survive. Furthermore, in order to survive in this high paced and intensely competitive market place there is a need to design a marketing strategy with a clear differentiating stance.

Global retail sector has seen a tremendous growth in the last few decades. The global retailing industry group grew by 4.9 percent in 2003 to reach a value of $4.68 trillion. (Data Monitor - 2004). Historically retail operation has been limited to a national level, as every country had a distinct national retail system. However, due to expansion of markets and rise in accessibility, the scope of retailing operation is becoming more international. Cross country retail operations has been going on since long and as a result of international exposure, the Internationalisation of Retailing has become a known phenomenon. Although retail internationalisation has been in practice since a long time, the academic contribution towards this subject is somewhat limited.

There has been some quality research on retail internationalisation relating to its diversified fields such as the motivations to go international, the whole process of internationalisation, individual company experiences and the direction of a company towards internationalisation (Alexander 1990). There has been some literature on grocery retailing and brand images of retailers across borders (Myers et al, 1997), but one aspect of retail internationalisation that has remained relatively under researched has been the issue of brand management of international retailers.

While the internationalisation of retailing continues to be the source of much academic and practitioner attention (McGoldrick and Davies, 1995; Akehurst and Alexander, 1996; Sternquist, 1997; Vida and Fairhurst, 1998), the brand management of internationalised retailers remains an under developed subject.

The following research paper undertakes the subject of brand management of international retailers and explores different aspects of brand management and identifies the level of brand consistency towards the international markets. There has been little empirical research on 'exporting' the retail image to the international market whereby the issue of competitive positioning and strategic branding should be taken into ...