Recommendations

Closing Strategic Gap

After closing the tactical gap, we came up with several future growth strategies for Denizen in terms of product innovation, improving retail experience and improve communication to close the strategic gap.

Product Innovation

Based on our survey results, consumers perceived Denizen to have limited product offerings and designs. As such, Denizen should improve and increase its product offerings and designs to attract its desired target consumers. Riding on the Korean and Japanese trend, Denizen will engage dedicated design team to update their designs of tees regularly and seek collaboration  with celebrity designers to launch trendy designs to entice the youth to purchase Denizen products. 

Improving Retail Experience

Photo Booth

To make the retail experience more exciting and to help Denizen attract the correct target group (a younger crowd), we would set up a photo booth in selected stores.  After  trying on the jeans, consumers can choose to take photos in the store.  Thereafter, we would display the photos in a LCD TV in the store. We would also be posting the photos on Facebook after obtaining their approval to drive traffic to our Facebook. To goal is to enhance the overall retail experience by evoking more excitement to allow the customers to stay in the store for a longer period of time. This would encourage them to make a purchase eventually. 

Mobile Application

(1)Body shape Analysis:

Part of the retail experience would be the use of this mobile app to help analyze customers body shape. This would be to help consumers find the right fit and to bring across Denizen’s focus on Asian cuts.

(2) Catalogue of latest collection:

This would be to help create a virtual retail experience to engage the consumers continuously. This can also serve as a platform to reach out to the consumers regarding the latest product launches and offerings.

Customer Service

To complement the retail experience, customer service is one of the important touch points. Training has to be provided for all retail staff in areas such as offering professional recommendations for jeans and other apparel. Denizen will seek to achieve the Service Excellence Award by SPRING Singapore in the next 5 years to come.

Improving Communications

To assist Denizen in improving the products and services, it is important seek feedback from the consumers through continuous engagement. This can be done through the various online platforms that she has. For instance, with the launch of Denizen Singapore Facebook page, it would be easier for the local team to make use of this platform to gather opinions from the Singapore market.

Strategic Challenges

Challenges faced in Singapore retail industry

Non Critical Challenges

The common strategies to build and expand the brand typically consist of two major areas - to expand geographically and to extend the brand. However, Denizen is in a unique position as an endorsed brand from Levi's and thus, these strategic options will not change the due course of the brand's future greatly. 

Brand Extension

Denizen is only a year old brand in Singapore and has yet to build any form of substantial brand equity to differentiate itself from its competitors. Denizen itself is an endorsed brand from Levi's with the aim to leverage on the strong associations as a jeans specialty. It is not common from a brand extension to form its own extension as it would have to align many differing brands together. 

Additionally, the apparel industry is saturated and has little room for expansion. By expanding wrongly, sales might be cannibalized from the parent brand. 

Geographical Expansion

Denizen has different brand positioning for both the western markets and the eastern markets. In the west such as USA, they are sold to the value conscious family with advertisements featuring family members wearing Denizen jeans. In the east, they are sold to youths and position itself with a unique selling point of Asian cuts. Having a well penetration into diverse markets in Asia, it will take a few years for Denizen to achieve a strong foot hold in these countries as part of its brand building process.

As such, we can see that Denizen has strong localization in the markets where it operates thus far. Hence, our main coverage of strategic options will only cover the Singaporean aspect.

Future Brand Management

In view of Denizen’s goal to compete in the Brand Relevance  rather than the Brand Preference segment of the jeans industry, we have proposed a 3 pronged approach to help propel Denizen forward. The 3 areas are in integrating marketing communications, adopting a product strategy and enhancing the overall retail experience.

These approaches are aimed to increase the brand awareness and enhance the brand image of Denizen. Through product design and improving the retail experience, Denizen will be able to perform better in Feelings and Judgement in the CBBE Model. Consistency in all the marketing programs will help to reinforce the brand and the messages communicated to the target market. Through constant evaluation, Denizen will be able to position themselves competitively in Singapore in the long run.

With all the recommendations in place, we hope that if Denizen ever head down the path of diminishing brand value, it will be able to rely on its feedback channel to identify changing consumer trends and their flexible product innovation and interactive, customer-centric retail teams to react quickly to the ever-changing  competitive landscape.