UN IQLO’s Philosophy of Marketing

◎路君霞

UN IQLO’s Philosophy of Marketing

◎路君霞

UNIQLO, Japanese clothing brand, founded by Tadashi Yanai in Japan in 1984, is the flagship brand of Fast Retailing Co., Ltd. And UNIQLO’s unique and fruitful marketing strategies play a crucial role in its success. This paper seeks to find out the outstanding aspects of UNIQLO’s marketing strategies, to explain, analyze and propose practical traits for Chinese clothing brands according to current situation.

1 Introduction

UNIQLO, founded by Tadashi Yanai in Japan in 1984, is a Japanese casual wear designer, manufacturer and retailer. It is a subsidiary of Fast Retailing Co., Ltd and one of the most famous five global clothing brands. On September 2nd, 2009, Fast Retailing Co., Ltd. announced its aim is annual group sales of 5 trillion yen (about 61.2 billion US dollars) and pretax profit from operations of 1 trillion yen (about 12.2 billion US dollars) by 2020. This means that the company wants to become the world’s biggest SPA(Specialty retailer of Private Label Apparell). UNIQLO sticks to provide modern, simple, highly adaptable merchandise with high quality to consumers all over the world.

Marketing strategy at UNIQLO has always been the steel back of the company, so the writer wrote this paper seeking to examine the outstanding aspects of UNIQLO’s marketing strategies.

2 Marketing Strategy of UNIQLO

2.1 Product in quality, features and service

UNIQLO, since 1999, has set up "production management firm" in Shanghai, Shenzhen, Ho chi minh city, Dhaka, and Bangladesh,For UNIQLO's product service, every new employee must have the ability to fold the clothes in a right and quick way, have modest and polite speaking skills, have the ability to modify the length of pants. UNIQLO continuously meet customer expectations and create more customers with standardized and thoughtful services.

2.2 Reasonable Price

UNIQLO adopts the penetration pricing method. It is committed to the pursuit "good quality with reasonable price". And UNIQLO’s cuttingprice strategy “cutting price in best selling period in front of others”is aggressive and is quite different from other enterprises which often reduce products’ price at the end of the season. “ Special sales in limited period ” is UNIQLO’s soul strategy that always work. For example, UNIQLO Fleece, priced at 1900 yen in UNIQLO, even if the Fleece at the market have destructive 20% ～ 25% discount and caused a big rush, the president of Fast Retailing Co., Ltd- Tadashi Yanai still insisted on special offer in limited period. Besides，UNIQLO uses perfect SPA. From product design and production to the final sales, all links control by itself. This makes it convenient for UNIQLO to control over the entire company. The monopoly also brings disadvantages. This request all links of risk should be borne by UNIQLO itself from production to sales. But basic style casual of UNIQLO exactly overcomes this defect. Basic clothes practicability are stronger, suitable for all kinds of people to wear.

2.3 Place

In addition to Japan, UNIQLO operates in mainland China, Hong Kong, Macau, Singapore, and so on, 1428 stores in total. China is UNIQLO’s biggest market except its own country. UNIQLO considers local prosperous commercial cores for the first choice to open stores, for example, 5th Avenue in New York, Oxford Street London , Wangfujing in Beijing, etc. There are many international top clothing brands, like Versace.

2.4 Promotion

Advertisements and spokespeople are important tools of sales promotion. In 2007, UNIQLO pushed out the network advertising "UNIQLOCK", which is considered to be UNIQLO's most successful case in the network marketing. The spokespeople of UNIQLO are mainly from Japan, China, Korea and European countries, such as Chiaki Kuriyama, Norika Fujiwara, Atsuko Maeda from Japan.

3 Conclusions

3.1 Summary of the essay

Through the writer’s analysis and explanation, UNIQLO’s successful marketing strategies are mainly reflected in the following tips:

3.2 Some potential problems UNIQLO may face

Like any other company, UNIQLO also has some potential problems.

First, the product design updating is slow. Due to launch basic goods as the goal, the clothes styles are not as much as other companies. and it takes about a year for new products to launch in market.

Second, the form of selling is not suitable for all markets. Though UNIQLO stores are convenient for consumers to choose, many consumers are not adapt to this way, such as old people, potential customers and most Chinese consumers.

Third, products are not fashion enough to compete with other companies. H&M,ZARA and other brands have fashion and popular clothes to attract many consumers. If UNIQLO wants to compete with them, and win the first place, this is a problem to consider.

（作者單位：日照職業技術學院）