Understanding the Marketing Anatomy of the Modern Menswear Fashion Brand: An Abstract

Abstract

The men’s fashion market is expanding at a faster pace than womenswear and men’s fashion is predicted to outperform womenswear in terms sales growth to contribute £380 billion to the global clothing and footwear market by 2020. Despite this growth and the contribution that the men’s fashion sector makes to the global economy in terms of GDP and employment levels, there is a paucity of research within this area. Traditionally, fashion companies have expanded through organic means moving from wholesaling and exporting to franchising and direct ownership. More recently, fashion retailer have increasingly adopted a born global approach to enhance existing strategies or by expanding in some cases only through online sales to becoming omnichannel companies. For many fashion companies, this increase in online sales has impacted upon their in-store sales and as such there has been an increase in the decline and failure of a number of traditional bricks and mortar fashion stores. Bricks and mortar stores, however, are still a necessity in driving sales and still account for the majority of total sales. In the face of this, there remains a very successful global fashion market where key players combine methods of expansion to satisfy the needs of ever expanding and differentiated global markets. Much of this expansion takes place amongst global companies who receive their investment from shareholders, thus allowing them to expand more rapidly and through direct foreign investment such as retail stores. Entrepreneurial ventures which are generally owner managed have tended to expand more organically by methods such as exporting, wholesaling and franchising which offer less risk in the face of business decline and this form of ownership allows for greater control over investment. This exploratory research, which aims to provide an analysis of the menswear fashion brand to guide strategy for the expansion of the menswear industry, was carried out with by means of in-depth interviews with senior personnel in 14 menswear fashion retailers across Europe. It considers expansion, ownership and communication strategies thought to be the key areas for success for menswear fashion retailers. It also considers the differences in expansion and operational strategies between menswear and womenswear through the lens of owner managers or directors of menswear brands and aims to build a model of successful menswear retail strategy across Europe.