Marketing Plan: Topshop in Argentina

Topshop is a British clothing retailer brand, subsidiary of the Arcadia group. It specialises in fashion clothing, shoes, make-up and accessories. It currently has more than 300 stores across the United Kingdom and over 140 stores in the international countries. Moreover, further international flagship store of Topshop continues to open more than 150 new franchise stores around the world over year 2014 including online shop in Beijing, china.
Topshop is well known high-street clothing brand for up-to-the-minute- affordable style. Not only Topshop sells female clothes but also offers Topshop makeup, jewellery, bags, and shoes. Topshop bring innovation technology of digital marketing to promote the brand such as Topshop.com, Facebook page, Tumblr, Instagram, and blogs where people can globally access through.

SWOT Analysis (including ALL OF THEIR LEVERAGE AND SERIOUS PROBLEM)

Strengths * Strong brand name * Fast fashion trend * Affordable price * Accessibility – many stores all over countries * Many product lines * Many collections and styles * Free persona style advisors * Collaborations with designers and celebrities such as Kate Moss * Online shopping website | Weaknesses * Difficult to manage product lines * Difficult to control staff * High management cost * Average product quality * Customer service | Opportunities * Target teenagers and young customers * Geographic expansion * The growth of online sales | Threats * High competition among high street retailers * Oversea legal policies and government e.g. Tax and Tariff regulation * Foreign currency |

PEST Analysis (external environment) Political/Legal | * Tariffs: Argentina is a member of the MERCOSUR common market, formed in 1991 and composed of Argentina, Brazil, Paraguay, Uruguay, and Venezuela. MERCOSUR members agreed to increase import duty rates temporarily to a maximum rate of 35 percent on 100 tariff items per member country. In early 2012, the Argentine government announced a tax increase on “high-end” imported cars and motorcycles with the stated purpose of protecting the domestic industry. * Nontariff Barriers: Argentina has carved out exceptions for some industries (e.g., graphics, printing, machine tools, textiles, and mining), enabling importation of used capital goods at a zero percent import tax. * However, import barriers imposed by the government during 2012 have impacted the market and apparel retail volume sales showed a contraction of 6% in July 2012 from the same month a year before, as reported by CAME (local chamber of small and medium-sized enterprises). | Economic | * Inflation is accelerating and projected to hit 40% in 2014 * Official exchange rate was severely overvalued * The government devalued the peso by 20% | Social | * The vast majority of Argentines belong to the middle class * The female population is greater, representing 51.06% of the total 41,086,927 people, compared to 48.93% men. * Young population is the key driven of e-commerce market * According to Larumbe, 80% of Argentina's textiles and apparel production is consumed internally and 20% exported, mostly to the South American Mercosur trading bloc. | Technology | * Technology Innovative Program III is Argentina’s General Program of Technological Innovation to increase the ability of small and medium-sized enterprises to carry out innovations |

External analysis
Argentina, officially the Argentine Republic, is located at South America. With the female population is greater than men presenting 51.06% women and 48.93% men of the total population 41,086,972 (Countryeconomy, 2014). In term of economy, as can be seen from Appendix 3, Gross Domestic Product (GDP) in Argenica was worth or 474.9 billion USD in 2012 which are continually increased over 5 years. It can be said that the economy of Argentina is positive growing. In contrast, since uncertainty of economy can effect to fluctuate Foreign Direct Investment which is worth 445.9 millions USD in January 2014 decreased from 777.64 millions USD the fourth quarter of 2013. Because of the decline of FDI in Argentina, the country has to deal with a loss of credibility among both local and foreign investors. With moderate inflation rate is 10.9% in 2013, the impact of products and services is high price. Therefore, when Topshop operates in Argentina, businesses and consumers will spend more money on goods and services which the products will be charged higher price.

Position Figure 1: Perceptual Map

Topshop positions itself as a high-street brand targeting to mass market with high fashion. As Topshop has successfully positioned the brand as ‘The latest fashions at affordable prices’, as shown in Figure 1. This is because Topshop offer variety product lines, new collections, and collaboration with celebrities that customer perceives up-to-the-minute style.

* The competitive of Topshop is Zara and River Island. Zara products are all very similar in prices. However it does have basic cloting at cheap prices called the TRF collection. Also has expensive clothing at high price with more fashionable and unique style. * Zara add the value into their design so they can increase the price. * Zara not sale accessory such as ears ring, bracelet and necklace as Topshop do. * River Island * Topshop is a one-stop store in fashion. They provide many type of items; hat, belt and accessory. * Treats of Topshop, not have their own brand-image on cloths, the design are not so unique and not durable.
ZARA’S LEVERAGE : provided medium to high-end brand which can reach the wide range of customer. ZARA launch a new temporary collection which called “TRF” provided the medium price, casual style for the teenager while the BASIC ZARA still added value itself by design, fashionable and unique for young-adult. In term of location ZARA always located in the high-end department store even ZARA’S price isn’t as high as other high-end brand but customer will be perceive that ZARA in the one of the HIGH- END brand.

pricing strategy best fits your company’s needs, and why it is the best fit. Present your pricing strategy and your pricing objective in 3-4 bullet points. * Topshop use the pricing model to its advantage by creating one style of products and ranging the prices of it by tweaking it at each price level. * Topshop is promoting awareness of collections, producing more pieces for these collections in more sizes and present them in every Topshop store. * Available for students to use their student ID card to get the discount and promotion.