Designing brand strategy in apparel industry - I

Dr K Abdul Waheed

Building Indian brands in global apparel market is necessary, because the marketers can increase the value of their products by branding. As we all know, there are very few apparel exporters who had attempted to create brands in the global market. Others, still supply to international buying houses or retail chains as per the specifications and designs provided by the buyers and most importantly the exporters put the label or brand name as stipulated by the buyer wherein the exporters voluntarily hide their identity in the global market.

Although, the apparel exporters do have the capability to produce as per the requirement of global market, their main lacuna is strategic thinking in creating their own brands. Let’s see the scenario of apparel branding in domestic market.

There is cut throat competition in the market, many brands enter the market and with a short run success they become obsolete.

This is because consumer tastes are changing fast due to the influence of cultural, psychological and global trends and hence they are less loyal. To put salt on the wound, many global brands are also entering the Indian market, making Indian brands clueless as to how to survive the competition. This situation necessitates the marketers to strengthen their brands for their stay in the market. This might be possible only when the marketers consider branding not as a set of activities, but as a strategic thinking.

To compete in domestic as well as global market place in the long run, the marketers must create and manage strong brands. The brand value will become a vital factor in creating loyal customers which would pose a formidable defence in the competitive market. For example consider the Polo Ralph Lauren brand, there are customers who would like to wear (Polo) horse on their shirt so that people around them know that they can afford to buy a Polo Ralph Lauren shirt. It has the stylish component, but it has also something a little extra. In reality, the customer can purchase an almost identical shirt somewhere else, without the labelling on it, for quite a bit less. It is the status and the reputation that the brand carries which really promotes the brand value and encourages people to purchase the brand against the plethora of competing brands.

Brands are cultures

Many people think that branding is nothing but just creating a brand name, advertising it, and building the image of the brand. According to Prof Douglas B Holt of Harvard Business School, branding is not a selected set of activities but it is a strategic point of view. Branding requires managers to put conscious efforts to build the society’s perceived value of the product.

Society attributes meaning to the products which would eventually become facts about the product over the years. These facts make up the culture of the product. A brand need not just be a name or a logo, it can also be unique design features. These features become material markers of the brand. Customer experiences, advertisements, sponsoring activities to the events, newspaper articles evaluating the brand and conversations with friends and colleagues that mention the brand establish the brand culture.

Brand value

Brand culture facilitates the customer to form perceptions about the value of the brand. The value of the brand is nothing but the difference between what a consumer will pay for a branded product and a physically identical product without brand culture. In consumer markets, brand value has components such as reputation, experiential and symbolism.

Reputation value

Consumers often feel the risk of unknown and also they have the tendency to reduce it by some way or other. For example, if the consumers don’t know about the quality of the fabric that they intend to purchase, they would perceive the purchase decision as risky. In such situations, reputation of the brand in terms of quality offers confidence to the consumers to go ahead with the purchase. The stories about product experiences which they hear from various sources also act as a base for building the reputation of the brand.

Experiential value

Consumers don’t value the product on all parameters. They often jump into conclusion very fast and become regular in buying and using particular brands based on faith. Becoming regular with a particular brand help the customers in reducing the search costs and need for straining the brain in analysis and decision making.

They often are not interested to investigate the evidences for the claims the brands make. They tend to attribute certain benefits for which they buy the particular brand. Raymond constantly promotes ’Complete man’ benefit for their suiting which is the key benefit for which consumers go for Raymond. That’s why Raymond still remains above competition with a leading value and volume share in the organised ready-to-stitch (RTS) market.

To be continued

(The author is assistant professor - marketing, Sardar Vallabhbhai Patel Institute of Textile Management)