Ch. 17 - Personal Selling and Sales Management

When reading through this chapter I noticed that the concepts and points made are really what drives retail. Having worked in other retails I know that capturing customer data and leveraging customer information is super important for the company for many reasons. But when it comes to UNIQLO, those two concepts are important and play a big role in our company but identifying customer relationships is what helps drive business in our stores.

For anyone that has ever visited a UNIQLO the employees that help will most likely ask you to fill out a comment card. That card asks you to rate your experience in the store from very satisfactory to unsatisfactory. Then on the bottom it asks you to write a comment on how you feel about the store or any commentary in general. This is also where if you have a problem or think an item can be improved you can write about it there. This helps a lot with identifying customer relationships. All those cards get read by the store managers and then get sent to the corporate office in Japan. It then gets read by the employees there and it helps the company change. For example, a lot of our customers come into our store to buy the Ultra- Light down jackets. Those Jackets would get wet and become a bit heavy for customers. And as we all know the whole point of that particular jacket is to be light. So when customers complained and wrote about how they felt about the Jacket, UNIQLO came through and created the Water Defenders. Which is the same Jacket with the same style and colors that everyone loves but is now water repellent.

The CEO of UNIQLO personally visit all of his stores at least once or twice a year to make sure the stores are properly displaying the clothes and that the employees are being as helpful as possible. Although the company has the self-help system they still make sure that the employees help and greet all customers. The reason why I mention this is because one of the ways the employees ask customers to fill out a comment card is through customer servicing. So for that moment if you do well with the customer then the comment will be good and will look good when it reaches Japan. And at the very end of the card it says to put in your email if you want to receive coupons. Which when you help a customer they will mostly likely put that in. Which helps with the whole capturing customer data.

Ch. 16 - Advertising, Public Relations and Sales Promotion

When advertising for a retail store, there needs to be something that shows the customers that your store and product are better and different from that of other stores. UNIQLO tends to show that in their ads. The product of my focus is the popular Ultra- Light down Jackets. In the picture right here, it shows an ad of the jacket. And this picture I took myself, the ad was on the side of a bus stop. I think they did this to show the attributes and benefits in such a simple way. If compared to other retail store ads you can tell the difference in style and the angle that they go towards.

Since UNIQLO is known for being basic and simple with their designs and products you can tell they show that through their ads whereas if you compare their ads to the ads of Old Navy you can tell there is a major difference. Old navy doesn’t talk about their benefits nor attributes really but mostly their prices. And Old navy uses a lot of graphics and color while UNIQLO is really monotone most of the time.

UNIQLO also does a lot of advertising appealing ads but they are very subtle. They usually show the Ultra- Light down Jacket in the mobile state and they show how it looks inside and on a person. Since a lot customer thinks the UNI from UNIQLO means unisex, I feel that the advertisers for UNIQLO use that to an advantage to promote to both woman and men. A lot of stores consider the customers a HER but in UNIQLO our customers are both and so the ads a meant to appeal to both women and men. 

Ch. 14 - Marketing Channels and Retailing

Retail is a forever going to be a popular business because women love shopping. As long as women exist in this world the retail will thrive. There are many types of way that retail stores sell their product but it usually consist of the following. For starters there needs to be a product, which for UNIQLO we have the Ultra-Light Down jackets. Then there is the place, since UNIQLO is an international company that’s expanding all the time, we usually sell the Ultra-Light Down Jackets in all our stores but some stores like the ones in Japan are really basic in style but the ones like the stores in New York have a lot more style and are more trendy. The other things are promotion and price. These two I feel fit hand in hand because the promotions are made so the customers don’t feel bad for buying something as they would if they bought it at regular price. The ULD Jackets go on promotion where instead of 79.90 it would be 69.90 or maybe 59.90. When looking at it, it doesn’t seem like such a big difference but a lot of customers won’t buy it unless it is on sale. The next thing is the presentation. UNIQLO is known for their great displays and when there is a collaboration the visual team does a great job to make the store look even more amazing. And lastly the most important thing to have in mind in my opinion is the personnel. The sales associate really do make the business. If a customer doesn’t get help to find something they won’t buy it whereas if there are sales associates to help the sales then go up. I have notice firsthand how important sale associates are to a retail company. A lot of people get overwhelmed when going into UNIQLO since the stores has a lot to show and they really need direction with what they should get or the size.

Another aspect of being a retail store is the fitting rooms. The fitting room is really where you sell an item. It is also where you can convince the customer to sign up for any of the store reward cards or credit cards. Since UNIQLO doesn’t use either of those, when in the fitting room we try to make sure each customer leaves satisfied. That means getting them every size they need and making sure they leave with at least one item that they would like to buy. This also ties in with the aspect in retail mix, about the personnel position. Being there to assist a customer and cleaning up after them really is the most important thing.

Ch. 6 - Consumer Decision Making

When talking about consumers and what makes them buy I like to think of myself and what makes me want to buy something. One of the things I do the most to make sure I want to buy something is to research. I for one am a super make-up fan so before I buy a product from a certain brand I research it and see what other people think about the product. Another thing I do is really stick to what I am already use to because if it works well then why change. These are both an example of internal information search and external information search. I think that in this day and age since social media is the #1 way to market to consumer, a good amount of people research the product that they want before buying.

UNIQLO uses this to their advantage because most of the customer that shop at UNIQLO are returning customers. They use the internal information search, the customers like what they got at UNIQLO and comeback for more. This is particularly true with my product, Ultra- Light down Jacket. The customers would come to the store just for those jackets and they would buy more in different colors and styles. It got to the point where UNIQLO decided to sell Ultra-Light down Jackets all year round, which before was only sold during the fall and winter.

UNIQLO also uses the external information search to their advantage. They use the marketing- controlled information source, to continue getting new customers and make them returning customers. If you live in big cities like New York City, Chicago, or Santa Monica you can see a lot of the UNIQLO ads all over public transportation.

 Also when UNIQLO has a collaboration with another designer you can see ads on the New York Times, which helps bring in a lot of the older crowd to UNIQLO to shop. Also when the collaborations with Novak Djokovic, who is a famous tennis player, this collection brought a lot of the sports fans to shop and again become returning customers.

 

Ch. 5 - Developing a Global Vision

The global marketing is forever expanding because most businesses dream is to expand just like UNIQLO did. UNIQLO is a Japanese company but was expanded all over Asia then to Europe and the United States where the CEO goal is to have more than 200,000 stores opened by 2020. Since UNIQLO is known all over the world their trade mark items are the same all over, the Ultra-Light down jackets and parkas, as well as the heat tech/ airism items.

UNIQLO contributes and falls under the global marketing standardization concept. The reason I say this because all of UNIQLO’s merchandise is shipped directly from Japan to a warehouse that distributes those items to the stores in that nation. The exact same items are sent to all stores. I once asked a manager at one of the UNIQLO stores (this manager worked in a lot of UNIQLO stores around the world) if the same items that we get here in America are sent to other stores and he said yes. These items are made in mass production and since we want all our customers to be satisfied we send all the same products to all the stores. This also fits into the special collaboration items that UNIQLO has with INES de la fressange, Lemaire, and MoMA. These items are sent mostly to our higher end stores such as Manhattan stores and some stores in Europe. Though the Ultra- Light down jackets gets the customers in the door the jackets that have different designs such as the ones from the MoMA and INES really keeps people shopping more.

I also think that culture ties in well with global marketing standardization for this company. Almost all the UNIQLO’s have the same format and put certain items next to each other. In all stores the Ultra- Light down jackets get displayed the most and it is usually in the center of the floor. The reason why I think this ties in with culture is because in Japan the common office worker wears the same thing and color as their co-workers because in an office environment it is not nicely looked upon if you dress up too “gaudy”. They all have the same work space as well except for the higher ups in the companies who have their own office. This plays into place with their designs and their choices of colors used for the clothing. As well as how they corporate managers want to have their things display and what items they want to be displayed.