Uniqlo Marketing Audit

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Name: Heng Wai Ling

Student ID: 14092951

Subject code: MKT 3124

Assignment: Audit

Executive summary

        UNIQLO, owned and operated by Asia’s largest clothing retailer-Fast Retailing Co., their objective is to produce truly great clothing that has unique value and allowing everyone to experience the happiness, joy and satisfaction of wearing the clothing. As the trend of fast fashion shaking up the entire fashion with an increase 20% in the fast fashion sector within the last three years (The state of Fashion 2018, 2018), UNIQLO aims to become the largest clothing retailer worldwide by year 2022 (Roll, 2018) with target of achieving 1 trillion yen revenue and 200 billion yen operating profit for their greater china region (Appendix 1) and 300billion yen in sales for their Southeast Asia region (Appendix 2) to achieve their ambition of dethroning Inditex, the parent company of Zara and becoming the leader of global apparel ("UNIQLO Business Strategy", 2018). As per their objective to increase their global sales, they implemented the product differentiation strategy by using innovative fabrics to offer functional performances and focusing on quality than price which distinguish themselves from their price driven competitors. They also used psychological, promotional, low and value-based pricing strategy to set an attractive pricing which attract customer and matches customer’s perception for value. In terms of distribution, they used selective distribution strategy as their product is considered mid-level range which only outlets with calculated potential would be selling the company’s offerings. Also, with their implementation of digital marketing, they proved themselves to be the most forefront in terms of technology trend with their mobileapp. These strategies implemented by UNIQLO can aid them in achieving their objectives. Their main offerings are affordable and innovative apparels which provides functionality and other basic apparels as well.

SECTION2: Current situation

SWOT Analysis

Being one of the leading brand in the industry, UNIQLO strengths helps to sustain their position in the market. One of UNIQLO strength would be incorporating automation to business activities which provides consistency in the quality of their product and allows the company to scale up or down depending on market demands. The most recent strategic step would be them strengthening their partnership with Shina Seiki Manufacturing Ltd for the revolutionary technological innovations for their products (Lane, 2018). Besides, UNIQLO is also known for having an excellent record product innovation as they develop products like AIRism, HEATTECH and UV cut. Also, UNIQLO has created a strong distribution network throughout the years which enables them to reach out to most of their potential market. As of January 2018, UNIQLO owns 1300 stores across 15 different countries and they also have an online store as well. Furthermore, UNIQLO established a strong dealer community which places the customer as core whereby the dealers don’t just promote the products but also have heavy investment in training the sales team to provide an excellent physical shopping experience through culture of employee explaining to customers on how to extract maximum benefits from UNIQLO products or through in store videos.