Strategy Summary
Promoting a new brand product is not an easy task, since the process is associated with a range of risks. First and foremost, by putting numerous resources at stake, the company risks taking huge financial losses. In addition, deprived of proper financing, other departments of the organization may begin to malfunction. Therefore, the costs must be reduced to a minimum, which is why the promotion via social network seems a legitimate solution (O’Guinn, Allen, Semenik &Scheinbaum, 2014). By using social networks as the placement for its advertisements, Topshop will be able to attract a range of customers.
Value Proposition
The new brand product promoted by the company immediately catches the eye not only because of the unique design but also because of its properties, particularly, durability and comfort – the qualities that have become the trademark of the brand products of Topshop over the years of the company’s operations. Clients have been waiting for years that children will have an opportunity to enjoy the same combination of classiness and comfort that Topshop products provide, and now their dreams have come true – the modest colors, the comfortable experience, and the reasonable pricing strategy will help the buyers realize that Topshop’s new brand is the product that their children deserve.
Segmentation Strategy/Target Consumers
There is no need to stress that the new product designed by the company is targeted primarily at attracting the attention of parents and their children. Therefore, the segmentation process will involve age distribution (i.e., shoes for toddlers, product for young children (aged 3–5), shoes for children aged 5–7, products for children of 8–10 years, shoes for older children (10–12) and shoes for teenagers (13–16)). It would be wrong to claim that the specified categories have something to do with shoe size – instead, the target groups in question define the marketing principles that the product will be promoted with (i.e., the use of specific imagery attractive for the age groups in question, etc.).
Intended Positioning
The company positions the new brand product as the one that may not reinvent people’s perception of what shoes for children must be designed like, but clearly has a range of advantages to offer, such as complete comfort in wearing the shoes, outstanding quality that presupposes a very long shelf life and a high endurance threshold, and an adequate pricing strategy, which includes discounts for the buyers of the company’s other products, including the shoes for adults. In other words, Topshop positions the new brand as desirable and advantageous rather than indispensable.
Marketing Mix
Product
The company is going to launch a new line of footwear for children. This stands in sharp contrast to the fact that the goods previously created by the firm were shoes for adults.
Price
As it has been stressed above, the organization is going to implement the pricing strategy based on a set of rather lenient principles and allowing buyers to benefit extensively from purchasing the specified product from Topshop. To be more specific, the shoes in question will be sold at a price of $30.00, as the given price allows the company to retain its benefits and at the same time provides the customers an offer that is slightly more profitable than those in other stores. In addition, seasonal discounts and discounts for regular customers will be included in the pricing strategy. Thus, it will be possible to trick people into frequenting the stores; as a result, Topshop will gain a base of devoted clients within a relatively short amount of time (Lamb, 2011).
Place
The chain of Topshop stores is going to be the key place for the shoes to be sold at. Located in a range of cities across the United States and having a very reasonable pricing strategy, these shops are obviously the most reasonable choice for placing the product in. The fact that people from different social and ethnic backgrounds choose the specified chain of shops as the location for buying footwear is essential, as the company is going to market the shoes in question to the general audience without being specific concerning the lifestyle of the customers or the specifics of their culture – while the latter two approaches would have been reasonable for promoting footwear for adults, with children as the target audience, the aforementioned taxonomy will only make the promotion process more complicated.
Promotion
Despite the lack of focus on the ethnic background of the clientele, the company will focus on other characteristics of the customers to a great degree in order to market the products successfully. Seeing that, starting roughly from the age of seven, children begin to explore the social representation of their gender, it will be reasonable to put a stronger emphasis on drawing a very thick line between the products for boys and for girls in terms of color choices, imagery, etc.
The use of either copyrighted images with the permission of the owner or the mascots created by the company will also be utilized in order to attract more customers (e.g., the image of Dora the Explorer on the footwear for girls and the image of Batman on the shoes for boys, etc.). It is also suggested that a series of billboard posters along with banners for e-commerce (White, 2012) will be designed for a more successful promotion campaign.
Reference List
Lamb, C. W. (2011). Marketing. Stamford, CT: Cengage Learning.
O’Guinn, T., Allen, C., Semenik, R. &Scheinbaum, A. C. (2014). Advertising and integrated brand promotion. Stamford, CT: Cengage Learning.
White, G. (2012). Plings.com: online business expansion evaluation: marketing, customer relationship, management, e-commerce, and international business issues. New York, NY: GRIN Verlag.