MARKETING THAT MATTERS

Marketing that Matters

Marketing that Matters

Introduction

In order to understand why the Virgin Group exists, it is inalienable to especially focus on one person, the founder and the core of the company Richard Branson.

His personality alone already legitimates the purpose of the company, playing the role of the every positive thinking entrepreneur, that is strongly drawing together stakeholders and employees by showing them that they can commit themselves to the business not only because of financial benefits. Branson`s and therefore Virgin's higher ideal just simply seems to be to have fun and find new challenges while doing business.

Strategy

Virgins core strategy seems to be to go into those markets were complacent industries have held high prices for years because of their monopolistic size. And they try to take an advantage of that complacence. The markets itself can not be defined exactly as the Virgin Group never had a "core business thing'. Thus the business where Virgin wants to be in is also hard to define, but there is an opportunity for Virgin wherever the monopolistic position of a competitor can be beaten.

Another basic strategy of the Virgin group is always to use its undoubtedly strong brand name which is one of the view that is elastic enough to bind together a "clutch of diverse products without snapping'. It is part of Bransons strategy that the Brand name is not so much a product that it stands for, rather it stands for values: youth, "iconoclasm, cheeky and perky informality'. This provides the Virgin Group with a flexibility that is almost unbeatable in terms of brand name. The key is to make sure that the Virgin name stays fresh and not to overuse it, and certainly the product has to have a certain quality.

The Target Market

Generally speaking Virgin should attack the "recession proof' 5 pocket style straight leg blue jeans market, thus competing against brands such as Levi's, Mustang, Pepe Jeans, Lee, Wrangler etc. ,therefore targeting the average consumer. The core target market will be those jeans that are mainly sold in the department stores and the discount chains. The target is the average customer whereas the most important component is the 5 to 24 year old customers which account for 60% of the total jeans market , especially for Virgin this is an interesting option as this is a similar target group as the customers of the Virgin Megastores this will be dealt with in more depth later on in this assignment. Expressed more precise referring to a lifestyle analysis the target segments are ranging from modern mainstream, traditional working class, traditional mainstream to upper conservative.

It has always been the core of the Virgin philosophy to target an entire already established and rather mature market, in which it is possible to gain a small market share with the high profile of the Virgin brand name. The "big market-small share' strategy can be found in most of the Virgin enterprises. A certain market share is not regarded feasible to exceed as this would ...