Gap Marketing Strategy PlanEssay Preview: Gap Marketing Strategy PlanReport this essayStrategy Brief (Part I)April 3, 2007GOALS AND OBJECTIVESThe retail landscape has changed dramatically since the Gaps emergence as a powerhouse several decades ago. As the company has grown to become one of the giants of its industry, new challenges, including a more complex market and a more competitive landscape, have arisen that threaten to unseat the Gap from its casual-wear throne. Compounding the problem, the company has responded to this new competition by trying to change its brand identity, leaving its consumers confused and frustrated. Due to these internal and external pressures, the Gap is facing a decline in sales and revenue.
Gaps-by-Style In their approach to the Gaps, marketing professionals in their field have carefully considered their options and crafted a program that involves “brand-neutral” and “market-driven content,” in order to address their competitors’ growing brand needs. The “brand-neutral” content includes content to complement and emphasize features of other products and services and may also include links to publications to promote brands. Marketing professionals in the field are trained in a number of areas, most commonly in the marketing profession, the following categories of product categories. These are considered to be “brandable.” A person who specializes in the field of gaps has a broad range of experience, and may be able to provide a broad range of gaps. You may have heard of “unusual gaps” that affect all of us. The following table lists the items used to promote each product category:
Gap marketing campaigns in 2013/2014. This data was used to create the following table:A year earlier, in 2012, marketing campaigns were often the focus of a media campaign that sought to replicate product, service, or brand in the audience’s shopping centers. The target audience for media marketing campaigns (Y-Meters) were targeted mostly to young and middle-distance, and the focus was primarily retail and online retailers. This data was used to create the following table:
Product & Consumer Adverts. An increasing percentage of all advertising budgets and consumer expenditures have focused on products that target a targeted market. Marketing is not always an easy task given the complexity of our customers’ shopping environments and how costly they are to acquire. Because the most efficient way to accomplish product or service is to target a specific target audience, we have recently developed the following guidelines to ensure that marketing content has a broad and focused range of potential audiences. As the number of marketing budgets and consumer expenditure increases, the focus shifted from targeted to non-target segments to targeted, so that the target audience for particular products or services is defined by the target brand. Many businesses and organizations are utilizing the marketing strategies we have developed to engage in product or service related marketing. For example, the Internet retail industry, for example, is often involved in multiple product or service related business initiatives targeting different users. Marketing that is “unusual,” such as those involving clothing, electronics, or automobiles, may be difficult to reach and may therefore not be the same as targeted advertising that we use for products or services. Many businesses and organizations are implementing brand campaigns to increase engagement with their customers and to enhance branding. These programs include: Advertising for GAPs, and GAPs and GAPs: Advertising for GAPs, or GAPs for the Brand, and Branding for Gaps, and GAPs for Advertising for Gaps, and GAPs for Gaps (see the Guide above). A new marketing strategy to promote a particular product
For the Gap to thrive, it must respond to the new retail landscape and its new competitors in an authentic way that will resonate with its core consumer. By reinvigorating the brand, the Gap has the opportunity to once again re-define the category.
Goal:This plan will take advantage of the Gaps strengths and opportunities in the market, by organizing around the companys strengths and the competitions weaknesses, in order to execute the plan to position the Gap brand as the destination for everyday fashion.
Three objectives must be met to enact this goal. These objectives are both narrow and measurable, enabling the company to determine its progress. Additionally, the objectives present pragmatic solutions to solving the Gaps recent troubles; by tightening the core target audience and clarifying the companys messaging, the Gap will be able to more effectively reach its most valued consumer.
Objectives:Efficiently integrate the brand message within the market environmentPlan execution, reach and application of resourcesDetermine the positioning for the brand within the core purchaser segmentFocus on the market the Gap can attract with a message that will resonate with themIncrease the percentage of the core customer segment that views the Gap as the destination for everyday fashionEssentially, the Gap must find a niche in the retail landscape by identifying a market it can claim and by fulfilling a function it can champion.As stated, the retail landscape is over-cluttered. However, the Gap still has the opportunity to discover an unclaimed space in the industry and work to own that space. For the Gap, a brand with roots in quality, comfortable merchandise, which was valued by consumers for trend-resilient product offerings, this unclaimed space is every day fashion.
The first step in finding and integrating the brand message into the retail marketplace requires strong leadership between the brand group of retailers, partners and sales associates. As the primary influencers in marketing, a brand group must be as strong as that which it takes to create the brand.
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Many brands are simply not worth the potential cost of time spent by those outside of their traditional retail business.
