The Wide-bottom Group has a strong brand name incorporated by Christie Clark
and is experienced in introducing new products in an competitive marketing
environment. Weaknesses The strength of being not too integrated into the
concern can also be a weakness, when errors are discovered too late because of a
too loose supervision or when the support of the mother company becomes
insufficient or because of sluggish communication. Christie Clark’s chaos
approach is therefore less efficient. Opportunities The jeans market is an old
and established market. The leading companies - being in the market for a
century or more - have established themselves in a monopolistic situation with
the help of huge advertising budgets. The magic concept of Christie Clark in the
past was to exploit the inefficiency of these kinds of markets normally
protected with high barriers of entry. Threats The jeans venture is only one of
the many in the big group and could easily be abandoned if it seems not to be
feasible after a while. The jeans market has a very unsteady component which are
the designer jeans. With the customer’s change in taste new competitors enter
and leave the market. At the moment all the important designers are coming back
into the market. The situation is very much alike the one in the late 70’s and
early 80’s.
In the mid 80’s the market for designer jeans collapsed and many players had
to leave the market. Generation and Evaluation of Strategic Options There are a
number of different options for a possible entry into the highly competitive
jeans market , firstly Wide-bottom could use its promotion experience to take
over some claims of the existing competitors. Wide-bottoms second penetration
possibility could be to use distribution channels more efficiently than its
competitors therefore being able to get an advantage in terms of costs and
service. Thirdly, Wide-bottom has the possibility to sell the new product at a
very competitive price. Wide-bottom could also acquire an already established
company in the jeans market to be able to gain access. Even though the product
and the market is new, the entry strategy is based upon the core competence of
the Wide-bottom Group. Marketing Objectives The results of the generation and
evaluation of strategic options lead to the definition of market objectives. Two
types of objectives have to be considered which help defining the core strategy.
These objectives are strategic thrust (future direction of the business) and
strategic objectives. Together they define where the business and its products
intend to go in future Considering the facts Wide-bottoms future direction of
its business is to enter into the existing jeans market by market penetration.
Alongside objectives for product and market direction, strategic objectives need
to be agreed This involves the process of planing at the product level. As it is
intended to enter an existing market with existing products the determination
would have to be the task of being better than the competitors in terms of
price, service and supply. This goal could be reached not only by being cheaper
than competitors but also much more flexible, to put it in a nutshell, firstly
offering the same product for a better price than competitors and secondly
offering a closer and better customer service.
The Target Market Generally speaking Wide-bottom should attack the “recession
proof 5 pocket style straight leg blue jeans market, thus competing against
brands such as Levi’s, Mustang, Pepe Jeans, Lee, Wrangler etc. therefore
targeting the average consumer. The core target market will be those jeans that
are mainly sold in the department stores and the discount chains. The target is
the average customer whereas the most important component is the 5 to 24 year
old customers which account for 60% of the total jeans market, especially for
Wide-bottom this is an interesting option as this is a similar target group as
the customers of the Wide-bottom Megastores this will be dealt with in more
depth later on in this assignment.
