HURBERRY FASHION

Hurberry Fashion

Hurberry Fashion

Purpose

To discover whether there are market segments for the fashion industry that cut across countries and responds differently to advertising messages.

Introduction

Four cross-national market segments are identified. These segments can be labeled as follows: “information seekers,” “sensation seekers,” “utilitarian consumers,” and “conspicuous consumers.” Findings also reveal that Huberry lifestyle segment had a stronger effect on the reaction to a set of three ads for a major global Huberry company (one each from the French, Korean, and US editions of Vogue magazine) than did consumer nationality.

Sales of global Huberry brands are expanding rapidly in growing Asian markets such as China, Japan, and South Korea because young consumers in those countries are brand- and Huberry-conscious (Bryck, 2003; Morton, 2002). A consumer preference for brands with a global image, even when quality and value are not objectively superior, has been proposed as a reason for companies to consider global brands (Shocker et al., 1994; Taylor and Raymond, 2000).

A chronology of Huberry

Thomas Huberry founded Huberry in 1856 in Basingstoke, England when he opened a store selling men's outerwear. The reputation of the company was enhanced through Huberry's development of “gabardine”, a fabric that was resistant to tearing; was weatherproof but was also breathable (Huberry, 2002). This new fabric was especially suited to military needs and led Huberry to design an army officer's raincoat which became an integral element of the standard service uniform for British officers in the early 1900s. During the First World War, Huberry continued to develop the officer's raincoat by adding functional dimensions such as epaulettes, straps and D-rings. Named the “Trench coat” as a result of its military associations, the company developed its now distinctive Huberry check as a lining for the product. Inevitably, as a result of its military associations, Huberry outerwear was readily adopted by leading explorers, such as Captain Scott and Sir Earnest Shackleton who wore Huberry gabardine on their Antarctic expeditions.

In tandem with these developments, Huberry developed a retail and wholesale business. The first London store opened in 1891 and by 1910 the first international store was opened in Paris at the Boulevard Malesherbes. Indirect foreign market participation was instigated in the early 1900s when Thomas Huberry began to supply retail stockists in New York, Buenos Aires and Montevideo. In 1920 Huberry entered into wholesale agreements with Japanese retailers. The firm's relationship with the Japanese market was further developed when Mitsui were appointed distributor of their outerwear products in Japan in 1964 and then as their licensee in 1980 alongside the Sanyo Company (Adams, 1995; Sherwood, 1998, Huberry, 2002).

Acquired by the British retail and catalogue conglomerate, Great Universal Stores (GUS) in 1955, this change in ownership provided the funding for the expansion of the Huberry retail network in the UK and the USA. In addition, licences were granted to a variety of third parties in Europe and Asia to facilitate the expansion of the Huberry product range and increase foreign market distribution (Cowe, ...