Edfad

Edfad

  • Submitted By: IceTrace
  • Date Submitted: 01/21/2009 6:01 PM
  • Category: Science
  • Words: 432
  • Page: 2
  • Views: 371

Gap lnc. use all segmentation. The combination of Old Navy, The Gap, and Banana Republic attempts to cover many different social classes in terms of preferences and life-styles. Gap lnc.’s one of the segmentation was to increase the number of stores and to acquire competing brands as a basis for geographic segmentation. Demographic segmentation was used to include consumers within a certain age, income, and lifecycle stage. Psychographic segmentation targeted customers with certain lifestyles and values. Behavioral segmentation of the market catered to customers that desired certain benefits from their clothing.

To attract customers from different social classes, the Gap acquired Old Navy and Banana Republic. However, the Gap’s positioning strategy limited the brand’s image to a certain trademark style, without creating enough variation between its sibling chains. This resulted in sales being taken away from the Gap by its sibling chains, who offered versions of the same styles at different price levels. This also confused consumers that noted similar items at a lower price in Old Navy stores, causing them to think that the Gap is selling inferior products at an increased price. Furthermore, the Gap quickly introduced many new products that did not fit their trademark style, alienating customers in the process. The parallel geographic expansion of locations did not help, since only new stores increased sales while older locations saw sales fall.

The social influence of families and households expanded the Gap into chains that provided styles for kids and babies. This expansion created more physical locations outside of the flagship the Gap, forcing customers with families to travel between the different stores. Furthermore, the BabyGap store not include maternity clothing, since these were only available online through GapMaternity.

Its original positioning strategies were to sell affordable and comfortable business-casual clothing while...