Gap Branding Report

Gap Branding Report

Siying Wang

Introduction:

As one of the most famous global retailers in the world, Gap was first founded in San Francisco, California by Don G. Fisher and his wife Doris in 1969. The Gap, Inc. constitutes five iconic brands in the marketplace: the flagship Gap brand, Banana Republic, Old Navy, Athleta and Intermix, which offers casual clothing, accessories and personal care products for men, women and children.

The flagship Gap brand established in 1969 has several sub-brands: GapMaternity, GapKids, BabyGap and GapBody. It offers clothing and accessories of an inventive American style which helps customers to express their individual sense of style. Banana Republic was purchased by Gap in 1983 and was rebranded as accessible luxury brand in the late 1980s offering high-quality apparel and accessories collection of a modern, soulful, effortless and soulful style for men and women around the world. In 1994, Old Navy was created in order to rebrand as a less expensive alternative which offers great fashion at an affordable price. Athleta was added in 2009 and is designed for woman athletes, offering versatile and fashionable apparel for gym, studio and everything in between. Intermix as a multi-brand fashion retailer founded in 1993, was acquired by Gap in 2012. As its name indicates, Intermix offers a mixing fashionable of on trend and irresistible apparels in unexpected ways.

Target market and 4P’s:

Product: Gap Inc. offers a wide variety products to celebrate customer’s personal sense of style by providing apparels such as Jeans, skirts and dresses, outerwear, sweaters, shirts and T-shirts, activewear, sleepwear undergarment and accessories such as bags, shoes, belts, socks, hats, cold weather gear under its five prime brands.

Prices: Gap offers moderately priced clothing and for all ages. Apparels and accessories offered by Old Navy are meeting the relative low-end objectives; while Banana Republic is the brand with highest price among Gap Inc.’s iconic brand and the Gap fulfills the demands of customers stay in the middle class.. This pricing diversity satisfies different demands of different level of customers and their budgets. In general, low incomes and teenagers prefer to purchase from Old Navy, middle incomes are tend to purchase Gap while high incomes and professional workers prefer shop from Banana Republic store.

Places: Gap Inc. was established in California and now has its most influence in the United States while its products are available for purchase in more than 90 countries globally through 3300 company-operated stores, almost 400 franchise stores.

Promotion: Gap promotes itseslf mainly by television and print advertisements such as fashion magazine like Vogue, Vanity Fair and InStyle. Advertisements can be also found at outdoor billboards, bus wraps, and bus stops. In order to promote online sales, Gap also connects with fashion magazines’ websites. Partnered with Nike, American Express, Apple Inc., The Coca-Cola Company, Starbucks, Converse, Electronic Arts, Head, Bugaboo, Penguin Classics, Armani, Hallmark, SAP and Beats Electronics, Product Red was founded to raise awareness and funded to help eliminate HIV/AIDS in Africa. Other promotion are used by Gap is Gap credit card.