Offering to the market the most up-to-date suasion pieces, Tops positions itself with the unique high street style collection range from clothing, accessories and shoes. Though its price is not low, Tops is still relatively an affordable brand especially for the value they give to customers compared to other luxury brand. Having the most successful retailing story, Tops has been doing an MIMIC campaign in order to introduce itself to a new market such as Vietnam, increase awareness.
They used a lot of MIMIC tools to reach the objectives either by online advertising, printed advertising or public relations with several events and sales promotion. However, though they had quite good strategy with perfect touch points, Tops still has some shortcomings in the way they performed the campaign, which still needs some improvements. The main weakness is they were a little picky on the channels used to communicate to the customers, which decreases the effectiveness of the MIMIC campaign.
In addition, their existing information communicating tools (Faceable, online website,.. ) are still lack of details about the products in terms of price, quantity and size. Therefore, the recommendation for Tops is to increase their advertising budget, which is not a problem to such a big brand, to expand their marketing communication on more newspapers and magazines with full-page advertisement continuously, enhancing the online materials with more details and also increase the effectiveness of direct marketing by sending out promotions through emails to customers more frequently.
INTRODUCTION 1 . Background Information Founded in 1964, Tops is now known as a major British style authority and one of the most successful brands of the world’s fashion industry. This multinational brand is very famous for high street fashion not only in terms of clothing but also accessories, shoes and make-ups recently. From the very first stand-alone store opened in 1970, Tops has continuously grown up with 324 stores only inside I-J and expanded to New Zealand, Australia, United States, South Africa,… Tit a further 148 international stores across 38 countries. Lately, on March 15th 2013, with Maim Son Ltd (see Appendix 1), Tops has finally come and opened its shiny doors for the very first time in Vietnam, which was immediately a buzz to Vietnamese fashion’s. Now, those customers can have their hands on the most trendy fashion pieces from the number one high street brand of he world without traveling or spending time and efforts to purchase online from overseas online stores. 2.
Target Customer As one of the most coveted high street fashion retailer, Tops not only targets at young modern women aged from 15 to 30 , its niche market is the group of females who are driven by a desire to be fashionable and trendy, who love bibbing or clubbing, who want to keep up with the latest trend on fashion magazines. These experiences and innovators are upper-class customers with middle to high level of income, who are willing to spend 60 dollars for a piece of cloth that can gives them a ensue of fun. Please refer to Appendix 2- Customer Segmentation Chart for more detailed information) 3. Positioning Map 4. MIMIC Campaign’s Objectives Though Tops is one of the most well-known British fashion stores, it is still at the introduction stage for the Vietnam market. Therefore, along with the launch of Tops in Vietnam, an MIMIC campaign has been done with these following purposes; Introducing the brand to the market. Increasing the brand awareness. Building customers relationship. Expanding market shares. Increasing sales. Al- TOPS MARKETING MISS AND ITS MIMIC CAMPAIGN 1. Product:
Tops mainly focus on street fashion style with a wide variety of products range from bags, shoes, belt, glasses… For people to wear on their casual or formal occasions. Tiptop’s products is famous for their design and they are widely known to young generation for their unique collection. With the currently popular Western Style wave rise among young generation in Vietnam. 2. Place: Currently, Tops uses direct marketing channel to promote their products which attract a lot of customers every day. There is only one shop which located on one of the most famous Building in HCI, the Icon 68 Biotech.
Customers can also find Tiptop’s products on their official weapon; however, online shopping is not yet available. 3. Price: Being the middle-end fashion brand in the I-J, however, Tops is different Vietnamese consumer mind. In Vietnam, Tops is considered as a higher-end with slightly higher price, that is why Manson SC. Applies value- based pricing, threatens from 500,VEND to 4. Promotions (Tops MIMIC Campaign tools) There are 4 main tools that TOPS Vietnam used for this particular MIMIC Campaign: (please referee Appendix 3-TOPS Other MIMIC tools for more information) 1) Advertising
Manson Corporation chooses to advertise on both Online and Printed mediums: Online advertise: Tops tries to make itself available on websites as much as possible. Various and famous websites which have the most accesses in Vietnam such as zing. Von, kennel 4. Von, potentiometers. Von (tunic, 2013) were selected to reported about the event. On the other hand, to help customers have an overview of the store as well as product, a video last about 3 minutes were posted on Youth which is the most popular video website in the world (baize, 2012).
Printed Tops has chosen two main magazines to public their brand on: Her World and Hoper’s Bazaar, which are the top famous fashion magazines in Vietnam. They are just perfect touch points to use to reach its targeted segment. Weaknesses: These advertisements were not held continuously (once on Hoper’s Bazaar on March 2013 ( the month of opening) and 2 times with short notices about their sales promotions on Her World( May and June 2013) . Besides that, they did not stay on the magazine and online newspaper for international customers who live or travel in Vietnam. ) Public Relation Tops Faceable Tops Vietnamese Faceable is well organized provide much information about the vent, contest, promotions and their new fashion collection. In addition, Tops frequently catch up with the Tiptop’s event from other countries to update the fashion trend for followers who always love fashion. (Please refer to Appendix 4 for the reasons of using Faceable) Weaknesses: Tops is the famous brand of foreign. Thus, many people believe that Tiptop’s products are very expensive and unsuitable for Vietnamese as a result. However, Tops did not give detail the price, size and color of product.
Besides that, they are lack of English language for foreigner people. Opening event As the first time to appear in Vietnam, Doppelgängers the fashion show on their opening day. To prepare for this show, Tops used effectively media advertising tool to introduce their brand to Youngstown lovers. For example, there are some favorite websites of young people and magazine, such as yang news, AAAS news, Deep magazine; Faceable… Moreover, Tops has invited many fashion’s and celebrities. According to Shims (2010), learning the media preferences and life style of the customer will help to choose the best contexts for your brand messages.
It is realized toothpaste choose the right context for the young customer as a new message with new brand, new styles, and the brand of youth. 3) Direct Marketing With the support of its strong foundation, Tops know Just exactly how to reach their target customers. The store has send its information about launching, grand opening, sale promotion through email and text message of customers who owned a membership card of any Manson belonged brands. Moreover, in the first few months opening the brand, in order to reach their potential customers, Tops has collected their clients’ personal contact information, right at the cashier area.
Those contacts will also be sent updated event or promotion. Their integrated campaign so far has built quite a strong relationship between brand and their potential customers. Weaknesses: Tops did not effectively using this tool with the mass customer information that they have. They did not use any images or other forms of electronic letters to communicate with the customers through emails. They lacked of using multi- language for different customers. ) Sale Promotions Even though Tops was Just opened for 4 months, they had 3 different sale promotion events at different times: Opening Sale Promotion (30% of 20th April and 1st May Sale Promotion (50% on selected items) Final Reduction Sale Promotion in June (50% on selected items) According to Shim (2010), treachery of Marketing Communication Effects, TOPS is on the trial stage. Therefore, it is a perfect way to get the customers try theirs products to influence their attitude and belief toward the brand. In result, at any sale events, customers were willing to wait in line to get a chance to shop at TOPS.
Weaknesses: The sale events were only introduced to Matron’s customers through mobile messages, on faceable and its website, not enough notifications were given to customers. RECOMMENDATION As said by the marketing manager of Ford Company, we would like to be everywhere; we will go to the places where customers are (Shims, 2010). With the analysis above, the main weakness of Tops is that its advertising(including sale, and events information) did not reach all of the touch points it can, therefore, we suggest: 1) Increase adventitiousness on Vietnamese, English newspapers and magazines.
There are some suggestions that can touch Top Shop target customers: Mot , Style, Eel Vietnam, Hang Hue, and Du Lice Magazine (Vietnamese Language). Traveling ND heritage Magazine (English language). 2) They can also improve the existing touch points by: Held the advertisements on existing channel continuously. (once a month on magazines, and twice a month on online newspaper). Adjustment in website and Faceable to more detail, such as adding price, color, size. Besides that, Website and Faceable need to give more information by English language to serve for the foreign people who live and travel in Vietnam.
Sending direct marketing materials through customers emails with images, and the customers speaking languages. APPENDIX APPENDIX 1- MANSON SC. Company Tops is launched by Manson SC, who is known as the top fashion retail company in Vietnam with 15 brands in its portfolio such as Mango, Charles & Keith, Christian Lobbying… According to Manson (2013), Manson SC is among the top fashion retail companies in Vietnam introducing some of the most recognizable international fashion brands to Vietnam.
