Promotion Strategy for Lululemon Research Paper

Promotion Strategy for Lululemon - Research Paper Example Over the years the segment of women’s athletic wear has been majorly neglected. Just like any other form of clothing women sports-wear is very different from men’s. The Lululemon logo depicts the consumer’s health consciousness and their affinity to an elite club of enlightened people who wear similar clothing. According to Nelson (2011) Lululemon’s real genius relies on their Blue-Ocean strategy, which means to create demand in markets where competition is low instead of fighting for a share in a competitive market. So Lululemon emerged as a retailer that targets this niche of women’s athletic wear, and over the years has managed to grab a notable share in the 15 billion USD market for women’s fitness clothing (Helliker, 2010). Lululemon is the first clothing retailer to have adopted the Salon Business Model—which implies that like-minded body and fashion conscious women get together (Nelson, 2011). The main purpose of such a model is to bring together like-minded people who would work together for mutual benefit that would transcend the benefit from the economic transaction. Lululemon started off with niche marketing and was not intended to be mass marketed. The target market of the brand is the affluent, figure-conscious and stylish women (George, 2006, para. 7). Direct Marketing and Personal Selling Lululemon spends very little on promoting the brand through mass media, perhaps occasionally in magazines and newspapers. Lululemon has used â€Å"brand ambassadors† for the promotion of their brands, these ambassadors and not salaried employees but in fact peers or opinion leader that are given $1000 worth of free apparel in exchange for modeling the brand for their clients (Helliker, 2010). Lululemon calls it a stealth strategy not marketing—that has minimum cost and maximum impact. This is a very unique marketing strategy that clearly distinguishes Lululemon from competitors like Nike and Adidas, who spend million in celebrity endorsements. Lululemon has included ambassadors in areas of running, weight-training and men. The men’s fitness wear is also a very rapidly growing segment for Lululemon but still accounts for less than 20% of total sales (Helliker, 2010). According to Kurtz, MacKenzie and Snow, each Lululemon store across the globe has its own promotional strategy which is specific to that area. This could be in the form of painting their store front or covering their windows with slogans. The store hosts their own free yoga classes and store employees are referred to as educators. The company invests extensively in the recruitment and training of these store employees, because eventually these employees play an important role in the promotion of the brand. Personal selling has been greatly influenced with the emergence of e-commerce and the internet. It enables the manufacturer to establish databases and CRM systems to better meet the needs of the customers a nd gather extensive data about them at the same time (Kerin, p253). Internet plays a vital role as consumer promotions are deeply integrated with online product offerings, this can be done so using micro-sites and even email marketing approaches that reach directly to customers at almost no cost (Kerin, p253). Customers can sign-up for