Victoria's secret has been on the market over almost 40 years. Eight years prior to founding Victoria's secret, Raymond was embarrassed when purchasing lingerie for his wife at a department store. Realizing that other men felt the same way, the man saw an opportunity to create a lingerie store designed to make men feel comfortable shopping. Unfortunately, selling lingerie to male customers was increasingly unprofitable and Victoria's secret headed the bankruptcy.
Limited Brands decided to buy the company and made Victoria's secret a multi-billion business. The major modification Limited Brands did was changing the target market. It was no longer men buying for their wives but for women themselves. Middle class women from 18 to 45 is the new target market. As time goes by, the company became wide and segmented into beauty products, underwear, swimwear, sportswear, clothing for teenage girls.
Victoria's secret target market is middle class women who particularly value their image and feel confident in their skin. It is segmenting markets on the basis of personality, motives, lifestyle, and geodemographics: psychographic segmentation. Its targeting strategy is multisegment because products are designed toward many different types of women according to their age, style and taste. For example, PINK is a sub division of Victoria's secret for teenager girls.
Victoria's secret products are created to make women feel glamorous, confident, sexy and beautiful in their skins. The company sell to those women no matter where they come from ( UK, America, Canada, United Arab Emirates etc. )
To communicate with customers, companies need to build a good promotional strategy. A promotional plan includes elements such as advertising, pubic relations, sales promotion, personal selling and social media. Victoria's secret is considered as the number one retailer of lingerie and beauty products around the world. It considerably dominates women products market. Its closest competitor are Adore Me, American Eagle Outfitters, Gap and Women's wear Daily.
Victoria's secret competitive advantage is its advertising strategy that consist to hired famous supermodels ( Victoria's secret Angles ) to promote products on TV and on Fashion shows. Every year, the company invests in fashion shows to exhibit new collections on Angels, Also, it invites artists singers to perform during the show ( Rihanna, Taylor Swift, Ed Sheeran ). Besides the popular annual fashion shows, VS also is part of huge american events like The Super Bowl. This year, the company created a special commercial with Angels playing football.
Furthermore, Victoria's secret always stays connected to its costumers through emails and social medias. The company also has its own catalog, website and smartphone application in which customers can order any products anytime. It promotes discounts up to 50% to customers. Gift cards and reward cards are also available.
Victoria's secret impact is worldwide because it is easily accessible in airports and tourist cities like New York and London.
Victoria's secret is a strategic business unit of Limited Brands. The company includes a diverse product mix which including: underwear, sleepwear, seasonal wear, accessories, swimwear and beauty cosmetics. The main strategy of Victoria's secret focuses on marketing efforts ensuring brand recognition through several tactics such as: fashion shows, celebrity endorsements, catalogs and advertising. Currently, the company sells to customers in over 80 countries though their direct website. VS always provide good quality and variety on their products, for it makes them a brand loyalty which the majority prefers Victoria's secret over the competitors. It dominates its world with modern-style, fashion-inspired collections, prestige fragrances, cosmetics, celebrated supermodels and world famous runway shows. Victoria's secret products range from intimate apparel and hosiery to loungewear, body care products, fragrances, cosmetics and fitness wear.
Furthermore, Victoria's secret expanded its product line by creating PINK which is targeted only toward teen girls. PINK provides underwear but also clothing ( shoes, sportswear, swimwear ).
At Victoria's secret there are two ways to shop, you can shop by collection or by style. For example, to shop lingerie items, customers have the opportunity to chose among many product lines which is divided by styles and collections. Currently, VS lingerie collections are Very Sexy, Dream Angels and Designer collection. Also, VS lingerie style are Bras & panties, Bustiers & Corsets, Teddies, Babydolls & slips, Garters & garter slips, Gowns & Kimonos and Fragrance.
Victoria's secret is trying to be the dominant young, sexy and sophisticated lingerie and beauty brand in the world. The company is also known for setting trends and creating demand through innovative designs. With presence in almost all major mall in USA and tourist destinations such as shopping centers, airports and major cities, VS aspires to become a destination brand, meaning a customer would be tempted to visit malls just too see the VS store.
After meeting face-to-face, businesses use people ( the "sales force" ) to sell the product, This technique is called PERSONAL SELLING. The sellers promote the product through their attitude, appearance and specialist product knowledge. In other words, it is a promotional method in which one party (e.g: salesperson) uses skills and techniques for building personal relationship with another party (e.g: those involved in a purchased decision) that results in both parties obtaining value. In order to apply this technique effectively it is necessary for a company to focus on the practical application of sales techniques and the management of a firm's sales operations (sales management).
Victoria's secret personal selling is perfectly trained to offer helpful information, maintain a friendly environment and acknowledge customers. The sales personal always make sure to keep them aware of any sales promotion available in the store or online. Also, the company provide many reward and gift cards so that customers can get up to 75% discounts on any product (women wear, fragrances or any beauty product).Victoria's secret practices are not mainly relationship selling but traditional personal selling because it only sell goods and services and not really advice, assistance and counsel. For instance, in order to sell more, the company is having a couple of sales promotion going on for Spring 2015. There are $15 off $100, $25 off $150, $50 off $250 purchase, with any bra purchase online it is free shipping and returns, also there is a free secret reward card worth $10,$50, $100 or $500 with any $10 purchase plus weekly surprise and finally a free necklace by Ashiana with any $50 clothing purchase.
Because VS product is standardized, is easy to understand and it has a lot of customers geographically dispersed, it doesn't need to have a strong personal selling, otherwise Advertising and sales promotion are more important.
Victoria's secret is known to invest a lot in advertising. Thanks to the success of their glitzy fashion show and its fashionable underwear lines, the company has been the most popular lingerie retailer on the industry. VS has raked in $4.8 billion in sales through the third quarter of last year, up nearly 5% from the same period in 2013, shares of its parent company, L.Brands have climbed over 70% over the past two years.
Victoria's secret is the most popular retailer of lingerie throughout
the most powerful countries of the world America, UK and Canada. The reason is
they mainly invest in advertising and they know how to keep good relationship
marketing with their customers. Advertising is one of the most important factors
in marketing in order to sell; a company should establish objectives and strategies
on how to make the market aware of its products. Mostly, Victoria’s secret
promotes the benefits of its products by using product advertising (pioneering advertisement).
Nowadays, Victoria's secret has become the only name that matters in lingerie.
The company controls a whopping 35% of the lingerie market - a remarkable feat
for a specialty retail brand. Several brands have tried to compete with the
brand but no one has come close to the dominance of Victoria's secret.
The company’s slogan is “A body for everybody”. It doesn't take genius
to understand the appeal of beautiful girls parading in their underwear. But
Limited Brands, the company behind Victoria's secret, has turned lingerie
marketing into a fine art, or at the very least into high fashion.
The company has a calculated strategy to for captivating the girls and
women in America. The brand's formula for success against competitors is :
1.Captivating female
customers: The brand's advertising team carefully selects models they believe
female customers will relate to. For example, longtime Angel Alessandra
Ambrosio's image as a wife and mother helps the brand.
2.Uniting stores with
online: The Company has been streamlining its store and online assortments to
give customers what they want. For instance, bras that are promoted in stores
are also displayed prominently on the website. The company has been using
online data to make smart merchandising decisions in stores.
3.Paying attention to
international market: Besides targeting in America, Canada and UK, the company
entered mainland China this year, which could potentially lead to a much larger
expansion. In recent years, VS has incorporated more Asian models into its catalog and annual fashion shows.
One of their most popular ways to
advertise is through the organization of Fashion shows every year with the most
popular models and artists thorough the world. Victoria’s secret fashion shows
is one of the most watched show in America, Canada and UK and the main factor
of its leader rank over the market. Furthermore, VS is also involved in famous
event like the Super Bowl. The company created super bowl ads which are
released before the games, to promote its Valentine’s Day collection.
Beyond the TV, Victoria’s secret
campaign includes social media outreach to millennial consumers via Snapchat,
Facebook, Twitter and Instagram. "Social for us—particularly for our
customer base—is one of the most significant pieces of our advertising
strategy," Razek said. "We've got a very loyal fan base, but the
models [also] have a very loyal fan base."
Victoria's secret sells lingerie, womenswear and beauty products through its catalogs, website and its 1600 stores around the world. Mostly, Victoria's secret can be find in every biggest cities ( New York, Montreal, Paris etc. ) and airports around the world. Victoria's secret has on average 12 retailer channels in New York City. I choose to visit the biggest store located on 1328 Broadway between 35 st and 34 st in Midtown West this morning. Most of the stores are open during the week from 9 am till 9:30 pm and on Sunday from 11 am till 8:30 pm. It was very easy to find the place because as soon as i went out of the subway station ( D, B, F, M, N, Q, R to 34 st Herald Square), my first view was a big poster with two Victoria's secret Angels right in front of me. Once into the store, my first impressions were "HUGE" and "CROWDED". I had 3 floors ( Basement, 1st and 2nd ) to look at. I noticed that the first floor ( entrance ) is mostly Victoria's secret beauty products ( fragrances, bags, lotions, creams etc. ) and new lingerie collections. The second floor is for underwear, pajamas and particularly PROMOTIONS. It is also the most crowded floor. This month, the most interesting promotion is 5 panties ( value of $11 each ) at $27. The basement is for sportswear, swimwear and teenagers underwear. To give customers an idea of every collections and make it easier to shop, there are mannequins and pictures of VS angels wearing every items all over the store. Also, at each floor, there are at least 10 VS employees ready to help and advice customers. This store is very enjoyable because of decorations, pink lights, parades on huge screens, wings and pictures of every VS angels all over the walls, good music and good customer services.VS pays attention to every details, even fitting rooms transport customers in its very feminine pink world. I could also notice that most of customers in this store were couples, and tourists ( from 16 to 50 years old ). Some of them were only in the store to take a look and take snaps but mostly, they stepped out with at least one little pink VS bag. Prices are not affordable to everybody but thank to regular promotions and discounts, a person with a normal annually income can get good items. Besides selling through stores, VS has an official website where it is easy and quick to shop every items ( https://www.victoriassecret.com/ ). Also, a VS application is available on Apple and Android. The advantage of shopping on line is that it allows you to create an account with you email, to receive codes or coupons and to accumulate points in order to get discounts.
Victoria's secret target market is females from 15 to 45 years old. Especially, women comfortable in their body and who accord an importance to their femininity. Generally, the first thing that makes a woman feel more feminine is her underwear. Through the underwear, it is easy to get an idea of what personality she has. So Victoria's secret, according to each type of femininity, creates different collections that fit to every particular situation ( from the simplest daily underwear to the sexiest fancy for Valentine's day ). The need to buy at Victoria's secret is mostly a need for change because whatever the underwear and lingerie pattern, it is intimate. It is also a functional need because every human beings should wear underwear.
Why women want to change? To feel more beautiful, comfortable, sexy, attractive to her partner. In order to attract them, Victoria's secret invests an important amount of money in advertising ( at least $474 million in its most recent fiscal year ). The company got one of the most popular annually show promoting by famous supermodels and artists ( Rihanna, Justin Bieber, Taylor Swift etc. ). Besides that, the good looking ( unusual ) of VS stores keeps women coming back for more. They really created a hype that we are all aware of. Also, it is very impressive how according to every season, VS keeps designing new collections, patterns and looks all nicer than each other. Furthermore, the company does great deals and promotions, the more you shop, the more coupons you get. It is a major driving factor for customers. In addition to being beautiful, VS items are quality. Women are shopping for something that will last and perform, if well taken care. Obviously, quality includes comfort, products are designed with women mind and there is something for every shape and size. Generally, there are two different motives for customers who shop at Victoria's secret. Either they are looking for something in particular and are on mission to get it ( they are familiar to the store and are looking for a particular style, design or look and know that VS is the place to go ), or they are just browsing and end up buying something because they love it ( they are just looking for what the store has to offer, usually it is a captivating marketing, a beautiful product or a good price point that sway the costumer into a purchasing decision ).
Victoria's secret target market is middle class women who particularly value their image and feel confident in their skin. It is segmenting markets on the basis of personality, motives, lifestyle, and geodemographics: psychographic segmentation. Its targeting strategy is multisegment because products are designed toward many different types of women according to their age, style and taste. For example, PINK is a sub division of Victoria's secret for teenager girls.
