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引言
在1990年代早期，部门价值与今天类似的形式不存在。在经济衰退的压力下，许多成功的运营商迅速扩大。那么，目前的经济衰退现象会像当时那样给我们带来更多的机会吗？如果是这样,那么主流企业能做什么?是以成本领先生存吗？作为一个可行的选择还是有什么更有效的战略选择?这些变化应在短期内或在时尚业内见证整个中端市场的转变和进化?然而，后者的发生可能性似乎比前者大很多。(普华永道2009)。本文将讨论消费者对于价值和主流高端零售商的主观理解，和零售商是如何应对的。它还将分析当前的经济衰退形式是否会给零售商提供类似的机会产生更多的价值。
The Consumers' Behavior and the Retailing Industry-消费者的行为和零售行业
目前的趋势
如果主流企业想要在经济衰退的大环境中生存，并有一个更好地发展，那么他们需要为自己的服务和产品的价值做一个全新的动态定义，这可能意味着企业要降低成本，不增加价值,甚至“松绑”他们当前的产品和服务,然而这实际上是在为将来更好地发展增加价值.
Fashion sourcing and supply
Introduction
The value sector did not exist in similar form as today prior to the early 1990s. Many successful operators expanded rapidly after pressures of the recessions. Will the present recessions present similar opportunities? If so, what can mainstream companies do? Is cost leadership alone served as a viable option or is there any more effective strategic option? And will these changes should be in the short term or is the fashion industry is witnessing an evolutionary shift in the entire mid-market? However, it seems that there is a greater possibility that the latter is happening rather than the former (Pricewaterhousecoopers 2009). This paper will discuss consumers' subjective understanding about value and how can mainstream high end retailers respond. It will also analyze whether the current recession may provide similar opportunities for value retailing companies during the previous recession.
The Consumers' Behavior and the Retailing Industry
Current Trends
If mainstream businesses wanted to survive the recession and wanted to struggle for upturn, they will need to comprehend this new dynamic definition of value for their own services and products. This may signify reduction of costs that do not add value or even ‘unbundle' their current products and services and emphasize on the aspect that actually adds value. On the positive side this may mean new opportunities across the retail industry, consumer and leisure sectors and encourage smarter operators to develop a new and sustainable competitive advantage. The recent recession paved the way towards the emergence of the modern value sectors (Pricewaterhousecoopers 2009).
As Nunez, Polka and Thomas (2010) suggested, the global downturn has changed the big spenders into frugal consumers, not only in United Kingdom but also across the globe. Based on the global survey made by Accenture regarding cross-industry consumer sentiment, 67% of respondents believes that it might take three years before they gained further confidence in purchasing freely again. Within that period, they prefer to shop at discount stores and minimize buying premium price products, reduced purchasing big-ticket products such as cars, shop only during sale and eat at home rather than dining outside (Nunez, Polka and Thomas 2010).
When consumers feel that their country experience a positive economic climate, they feel wealthier and contended with the principle “better values signifies higher price.” On the other hand, during tough times like recession, the relationship of value and price is now under strict scrutiny and consumers become more eager to put an extra effort to compare prices and search cheaper products elsewhere. Bargaining is their new priority but they still prefer the quality that they used to receive during boom times. Trading down has been one of the four distinct purchasing behaviors of consumers to acquire better value for money and sustain standards of living in the present recession (Pricewaterhousecoopers 2009).
The consumer behaviors include:
Trading down: purchasing cheaper forms of products and services
Switching: purchasing from cheaper stores or leisure channels
Buying clever: spending more time to acquire the best price e.g. searching for promotions
Buying less: simply means purchasing less that before
Behavior differs across retailing sectors. Buying less is the prominent behavior of consumers in the clothing industry and food service industry, followed by buying clever, trading down and switching (Pricewaterhousecoopers 2009). As argued by Bloomberg (2010), lower consumer confidence and declining consumer credit due to recession also contributes to these behavioral changes and high end retailers should not expect that they would change their cost conscious mindset. In this sense, retailing is now about “value” and not simply about location of the store.
The current recession did not only make significant shift in terms of consumers' purchasing decisions but it also made market segmentation more complicated and this will make mass marketing an ineffective strategy. For instance, 18 percent of premium supermarket shoppers are also regular customers of discount clothing stores while 12 percent of customer of mid market or value groceries also purchase in designer outlets for clothes. Today's consumers are becoming more heterogeneous and increasingly complex and hard to segment. In this sense, the future focus of both value retailer and high end retailers should more on providing services, products that are tailored more closely to individual needs (Pricewatercoopers 2009).
Furthermore, these behavioral changes also allowed the emergence of new six statistically significant consumer segments. Since almost all consumers tend to be value driven and penny-pinching in some aspects while only few are otherwise (as suggested in the aforementioned surveys), it would be important to create new segmentation rather than using two conventional market segmentation. These classifications represent the general perceptions of consumers considering value, which may help retailers in marketing frugal and value driven customers (Egol, Clyde & Rangan 2010).
Shopper 2.0: it represents technologically advanced shoppers and has the greatest tendency to purchase online on all categories. All members are price sensitive and often use coupons and shows little brand or format loyalty (Egol, Clyde & Rangan 2010, Garfinkel, Gopal, Pathak & Yin 2008)
Deal Hunters: are highly price sensitive frugal customers. They are heavily dependent on coupons and low levels of brand or format loyalty. In contrary to Shoppers 2.0, they do not often shop online. They only conduct online research to determine the best deal in the store but not to shop online.
Online window-shoppers: similar to deal hunters, they also conduct research online and less likely to buy online. However, unlike the Deal Hunters segment, they elicit moderate degree of price sensitivity and brand switching (Window Shopping on the Net 2000, Egol, Clyde & Rangan 2010)
Channel Surfers: These customers are most eager to search for the brand they prefer and most likely change retail destinations to search for brands at favorable prices. They tend to trade off convenience to get favorable deals on the brands they prefer
Loyalists: these are consumers that do not often change retail format or brand. They conduct research or purchase online to preserve their established brand preferences
Laggards: consists of least interested in modifying behavior. These people perform minimal online research and do not often use coupons. They do not often change brands or retail format. Their small number, less than 5 percent of the overall population represents significant shift in consumer behavior
Popular Responses of Fashion Retailers
Various traditional marketing practices are gaining further momentum during the present credit crunch and the right one, if employed correctly, can support problematic retailers to remain profitable. Some anecdotal evidences and consumers affairs articles suggest that haggling is back and in fact, news articles presented suggested to consumers how to haggle and the right place to haggle (Communications Expert 2009) and recommendations for retailers how to deal with hagglers (Peachey 2009).
Once popular form layaway plan, that enables buyer to choose an item and pay it over a set of period of time, is experiencing a revival among some retailers as a promotional strategy. Kmart made layaway as their main marketing campaign for the holidays and soon after customer requests for layaway also encouraged its sister store Sears to provide the option (Nunez, Polka and Thomas 2010). A new firm called eLayaway has upgraded this strategy. They allow customer to select products online from over 1,000 retailers and arrange for monthly deductions from their bank account in exchange for 1.9 percent service charge. After payments are completed, the merchant delivers the product to the customer. Even upscale retailers such as Versace, Louis Vuitton, and Calvin Klein, are also offering elayaway plans for their customers. Consequently, the firm's customer base has increased ten times within a year (Nunez, Polka and Thomas 2010, eLayaway 2009).#p#分页标题#e#
Discounting, even in high-end retailers, also serves as a prominent strategy. Saks Fifth Avenue abandoned their long-term verbal agreement between designers and retailers about and by how much to reduce prices when they reduced the price of some of its designer goods by 70 percent. This strategy, however, was a practical one to clear their inventories before fashions changed. Discounting might serve as a sensible way to move unwanted inventory but this may result to threatening habit if customers get used to discounted prices and begin waiting for sales (Nunez, Polka and Thomas 2010). Armando Branchini (cited in Value Retail News 2010), executive director of the Altagamma Foundation - an association of Italian luxury brands, even stated that discounting often have a negative impact on luxury brands' integrity. Moreover, such strategy does not often result to desirable outcomes; for instance, despite Saks' steep price reduction, the store's January sales still decline by almost 24 percent (Nunez, Polka and Thomas 2010).
In contrary, coupons can persuade customers to try services and can increase the profiles of brand names (Nunez, Polka and Thomas 2010). Coupons can increase sales without acquiring the costs of offering a price discount through the retailer whilst preventing consumers' misunderstanding regarding the change of brand's value. In other words, high end retailers can employ coupons or gift certificates since this strategy does not necessarily pose a negative impact on its brand's integrity and value, as long as these coupons are found in relevant media (e.g. high end retailers should issue coupons in high end magazines) and are designed based on the brand's value (e.g. coupons must have the company logo and design should reflect the company's brand image) (Yin & Dubinsky 2004).
Many retailers employ this strategy since it serves as an effective approach in attracting new, existing, loyal and even competitor's customers. It also serves as an effective way to deliver their message that improves consumer awareness of the brand. When the coupons contain the company logo, product image and regular price information, they can improve brand familiarity and sustain customers' perception of the value and price. In addition, coupons can also attract consumer to a specific retail outlets, encourage consumer to buy additional products and improve the relationship between consumers and retailer. Coupons provide economic value for the consumer since they provide monetary saving and convenience from less information search (Yin & Dubinsky 2004).
Apart from the aforementioned strategies, providing positive experience such as the way how sales personnel deal with their customers also played an important role for value retailers to expand rapidly after the last recession (Pricewatercoopers 2009).
Anticipated Trends
Researchers of Pricewaterhousecoopers (2009) believe that retailing industry of United Kingdom is witnessing a structural change. Almost 70 percent of their respondents have traded down for some or all of their groceries and they will continue such practice even the recession was over. Likewise, 50 percent of consumers of the clothing industry will continue to search for cheaper options even the recession is over. Consumers only trade up for highly perishable items such as meat, vegetables and fruits as well as in chocolates and other relevant indulgences. However, they will still choose abroad for holidays rather than staying in the UK. So what drives these decisions? (Pricewaterhousecoopers 2009).
Why some purchasing options change to pre-recession times while others do not? The percentage of total household spending that covered by clothes and groceries has been decreasing for almost three decades and this would likely to continue as people tend to spend more on leisure, technology and housing and fuel. They will change their spending in clothing if they would see substantial tangible benefits in doing so. This is perhaps the whole value means (Pricewaterhousecoopers 2009).
What Does Value Really Mean?
Researchers of Pricewaterhousecoopers (2009) purchased five distinct types of garments starting from T-Shirts to Jeans, from ten different retailers ranging from value to designer stores. The researchers performed industry standards textiles tests such as colour fastness and performance after washing and compared the results with the retail prices. Surprisingly, they found out that not all cheap clothes have substandard quality. In fact, many clothes from the value retailers performed better in their tests. Cheap clothes that were even ranked as the best performing garment bought from the leading value retailer (refer to Figure 1). Even though, the researchers did not test subjective aspects such as the style and fit, obviously, many consumers already realized that price is not necessarily correlated with product quality. This is perhaps the reason why consumers prefer to shop at value stores even after the recession period (Pricewaterhousecoopers 2009).
Pricewaterhousecoopers' research suggested that majority of consumers in United Kingdom have traded down and many of them would continue such behavior. They do not prefer going back paying the old prices. Sustained upturn after the recession would be impossible. Nevertheless, consumers are still eager to pay the high price as long as they would clear see the benefits of doing so (Pricewaterhousecoopers 2009).
Recommended Strategies for High End Retailers
Competing on the price alone is not a viable strategy especially for high end retailers since this would affect their brand image. They could use aforementioned strategies such as coupons since this has been an effective way to attract consumers without sacrificing their brand image of the product or even of the retail stores. Discounting is strongly discouraged for high end retailers (Pricewaterhousecoopers 2009).
High end retailers should also address another problem—the quality of their goods. Pricewatercoopers (2009) discovered that the principle called “better value signifies higher price” does not apply anymore. The question is why leading value retailers were able to improve their products and they even exceeded the quality standard of designer clothes. The answer might be that designer manufacturers have overlooked the quality of their materials. Another possibility is that they did not bother to compare their products to the products of value retailers—assuming the value retailers always offer substandard products.
Consequently, failure to conduct research about the quality of clothing offered by value retailers so that they would be able to improve their offerings resulted to devastating consequences—long term change of customer's perceptions about quality of products offered by value retailers and designer shops. Perhaps designer shops assumed that style and fit enhances the value of their products but such perception does not always apply for penny-pinching yet uptown consumers.
In this sense, high end retailers should ensure that the quality of their products should exceed product standards offered by value retailers. This can be done through searching and selecting the best new suppliers and create long-term relationships with them. Creating good relationships with the best suppliers is very crucial if fashion retailers want to offer ‘value' to their consumers at lowest possible costs (Zorger 2009). Moreover, they could also improve the quality standards of their clothing and ensure that value retailers would not be able to reach those quality standards.
Another recommended strategy is to employ approaches related to customer acquisition and loyalty. First, high end retailers should consider the factors that create and affect customer loyalty. Second, they should recognize every form of loyalty. True brand loyalists are uncommon and might be non-existent at all. High end retailers should learn to manage and develop all forms of customer loyalty including conditional, emotional and passive—utilizing various types of strategy. Third, aside from improving their supply chain, they should also consider third party channels such as mall, department stores and boutiques since they could improve or destroy customer loyalty of a brand, unless these are handled effectively. Fourth, retailers should be able to respond to changing customer needs and market conditions (Driggs & Kasolowsky). For instance, they could imitate the strategies of Zara (Zara 2010).
Majority of high end retailers knows a lot about their customer but they are not often aware of the factors that influence acquisition and retention. Customer retention requires recognizes other factors that could influence their buying behaviors (Driggs & Kasolowsky). This may mean training sales personnel to accommodate their customers better (Loyalty Lives But not without care and attention 2010) or determining how music (Association for Consumer Research 2009, Rink, Swan, McGee & Trawick 1991) and scent of the store (University of Galen 2009) could influence consumer's purchasing behavior. Companies should also learn to measure the right thing in assessing customer profitability and loyalty. Customer satisfaction should not be considered as the sole factor in customer loyalty. High end retailers must study customer lifecycle to avoid losing present and potential customer value (Driggs & Kasolowsky).
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Conclusion
Because of the changed perception of consumer regarding the quality of products offered by value and high end retailers, customers do not want to go back in their pre-recession buying habits, specifically in terms of purchasing clothes. In this sense, high end retailers should improve their offerings and employ strategies related to customer acquisition. They should also offer benefits that value retailers cannot offer in order to change customers' perceptions into pre-recession perspectives.
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