Primark Integrated Marketing Communication Plan

Primark Integrated Marketing Communication Plan

Primark Integrated Marketing Communication Plan

Introduction

The clothing industry in the UK has experienced intense changes resulting from the growth of discounted clothing selling. The position of discount fashion retailers including Primark and New Look has been significantly challenged by the entrance of supermarket operators such as George at Asda and Tesco while intense competition from international chains such as Gap, Zara and H&M has also increased due to the accelerating pace of globalisation. As a result Whitefield (2001) argues that the UK fashion industry industry is one of the most competitive in Europe with multiple fashion retailers having captured approximately 70 per cent of the overall clothing market in turn generating a high concentration within the industry.

Company overview

Primark was first established in Dublin, under the name of Pennies, which, situates itself amongst the retail market in the service sector. Trading in over 125 stores, and currently taking over little woods stores, additionally opening up another 65 stores this year. Primark currently targets the under 35's, with there up to date fashion conscience clothing lines, at low cost prices encompassing the brand mark “Look Good, Pay Less”. On average each item in store is around £3-4, which compared to other retail stores is exceptionally good value for money. Primark has expanded into many departments including, ladies, men's, children's lingerie, nightwear, footwear and home ware. This means it comprises a large threshold population, attracting a high volume of customers. Unlike other stores, Primark has a considerably large selection of lines, and stock constantly changes to meet demand, acting as a high street warehouse.

Primark integrated marketing communication plan

None of the retailers owned any apparel or textile manufacturing facilities and they focused on the design, planning and integrated marketing communication plan functions of the supply chain. Most of the retailers interviewed supplied a market ranging from functional, long-life cycle, low-fashion Primark products with a predictable demand (e.g. basic T-shirts), to the volatile, short-life cycle, innovative high-fashion content Primark products that we were interested in. Different systems of sourcing were employed for these different types of Primark product. The more predictable and basic nature of the former, with its much lower profit margins and its much higher volumes (one retailer, for example, sold six million T-shirts in the UK in 2006), enabled sourcing to be committed well in advance, directly from familiar global suppliers, mostly in the Far East, where close proximity among fashion manufacturers, fabric suppliers and logistics centres was preferred. These higher volumes and long Primark product life cycles enabled economies of scale and this could facilitate the development of stable and ongoing partnership relationships, and even the integration of IT systems, where manufacturers responded to placed orders by delivering goods held in stock on a “call-off” basis.

Newly developed Primark products were first tested by sourcing small trial quantities, sometimes as few as 20 items, from specialist QR local suppliers to see if they were ...