Victoria’s Secret is a major lingerie brand that has certainly made an impact on the world of fashion and business. It is a brand known worldwide and designed and marked mainly for the young female crowd. Moreover, the brand is infamous for having a higher-than-average price tag. The brand has many strengths, weaknesses, opportunities, and threats. Those will be discussed below.
Strength
Victoria’s Secret is a very strong company, as it has more than 1000 stores worldwide, and these products are mainly for women with upper and upper-middle incomes. Women who are modeling for Victoria’s Secret have become celebrities after showcasing this famous lingerie brand. Compared with other brands, this brand is well known for creating celebrities. This company chooses models who connect with their audience well, as their customers are women. They also have top-notch models as brand ambassadors, so they could be strong when it comes to advertising strategies. It isn’t just the quality of the product itself that makes Victoria’s Secret successful. It is also because of their regular and loyal customers, as these customers invest in lingerie and innerwear for the brand name because it’s very well-known by many.
Every season, Victoria’s Secret has a major successful fashion show to improve its brand name, reputation, and influence. Another goal of this fashion show is to expand consumer knowledge of their recent collection Furthermore, this fashion show is also showcased in all the leading magazines as well as on TV channels worldwide. These fashion shows also showcase the latest collections. Almost every day, a new style will be released by Victoria’s Secret. The
factories that produce Victoria’s Secret lingerie stitch glamorous new products to be released every day. Furthermore, the styles of the products are designed a year ahead so that they can reach the company goals more efficiently. These efforts show how cautious they are about being well organized and how they strive to maintain their standards to be successful.
Victoria’s Secret has products to be sold at retail stores and through online websites. Also, they have an active online marketing strategy, which includes active blogs and catalogs to create awareness of their product lines.
Despite being a world-famous brand, they use organic raw materials and fair trade practices so that they can provide the best for their customers and also keep the quality and name of the company while also contributing towards economic sustainability.
Victoria’s Secret also has a sub-brand named “Pink” targeted at the younger crowd. Victoria’s Secret targets women aged 21–49; Pink targets late teens as well as college teens; and it has been a great success so far.
Victoria’s Secret has gotten into the minds of women’s audiences because their lingerie has been advertised not only on mainstream television and other media channels but also in glossy magazines ain brand placement in several movies.
Most women prefer to shop at Victoria’s Secret, not considering their price range, but because of the outstanding customer experience Victoria’s Secret offers and the in-store experience the brand promises.
Victoria’s Secret has a credit card named “Victoria’s Secret Angel Card,” which customers can use for their purchases in Victoria’s Secret, Pink, and Bath and Body Works stores. While purchasing through the card at PINK and Victoria’s Secret shops, customers gain points that can be redeemed later when they shop. Moreover, when they share Victoria’s secret news on their social accounts, they can earn social points.
Victoria’s Secret holds the majority of market shares, and this is spread well over several countries. Therefore, it has vast popularity.
When it comes to the new marketing strategies for promoting the product, the company has decided to hold its next fashion show abroad for the first time in history. As they have opened several stores in the UK, the show will be held there, and then it will be aired in 197 countries.
Moving overseas is a big step the company has taken because it increases awareness and brings more customers to the company.
To make it easier for customers, Victoria’s Secret has built its mobile application.
Weakness
As there are so many lingerie brands, Victoria’s Secret has several competitors. This means that customers have a lot of choices to choose from, and the chance of them switching brands is very high.
Some people use the same brand name on cheaper, unofficial products to sell their products with fake product branding. These business malpractices have affected sales as well as brand image. Lack of effort to reduce such activities on Victoria’s Secret’s part could also be considered a weakness.
The images used on the website are mostly edited so the color shown isn’t the same color that is sold, this makes the customer disappointed and not want to buy the product.
The kinds of products Victoria’s Secret has to offer only can be worn in bars, movies the beach, etc. But in the real day-to-day world, there are only a very few people willing to wear such dresses in public.
Since the product is made in most Asian countries, such as Sri Lanka, Indonesia, China, etc, the market in these countries is limited cause the company has a policy that the country that is manufacturing their products cannot sell the product.
When marketing the brand Victoria’s Secret has a lot of challenges, as most women aren’t comfortable of shopping openly and are not sure of the need for lingerie.
The company had to beat the cheaper companies, so they started to focus on new product lines, and some of the latest introductions have gotten poor feedback from the market. As a consequence of such feedback, it has resulted in customers switching to other brands.
Since Victoria’s Secret has left out the plus sizes they have had a loss of 6.5 billion dollars.
When it comes to the company website they could improve by adding more images of the product so that the customer can get a closer look.
When promoting they have failed to update accurate sale days, cause sale dates aren’t the same as in the store, catalog, and online.
Victoria’s Secret has too many promo codes, this allows the customer to stock these codes and receive multiple free things when purchasing things online.
Victoria’s Secret does not put much effort into differentiating the personality of its brand “PINK” for the younger crowd. More than differentiating they try to make them both seem like one brand, even though they two are meant to be for different crowds.
Victoria’s Secret neglects to reply to their fan’s comments on social media platforms. This could be identified as a major weakness as getting input from fans as ideas and criticism can further develop the company into a better brand.
Opportunities
Victoria’s Secret can focus on marketing its products to Asian countries since these countries have very limited reach.
As most women don’t feel comfortable shopping openly the brand could create online digital dressing rooms to create an environment where women can have a better experience choosing clothes with added privacy.
As the company only has selected and employs models from a particular size when promoting, they can try marketing by promoting models of different sizes since women are from many sizes.
Also since the stores where the product is sold are very limited, they can try expanding their stores into many locations. Also as a result they can have a lot of space and can handle many clothes.
As Victoria’s Secret only focuses on selling women’s products it also can focus on selling men’s products which could improve its profit as well as the brand name.
They can market and sell their products online as well. So when the customer is online purchasing they could also customize the design as well, which is a feature most of the young generation would love to experience.
Victoria’s Secret might have opportunities to sell their products through other channels apart from physical stores and
the official website (For example, eBay and other online stores like Amazon)
Victoria’s Secret doesn’t have to offer customized email alerts as this could be a huge investment and improvement to promote the product based on customer history, size, and visitor information.
Victoria’s Secret should know what their customers see and how they behave
when they visit their website. They can try using information such as page frequency visited, and where the customers visit from so that it’s easy for the company to target who their customers are. For example, the company might also be having customers from Asian countries visiting the website since the product isn’t sold much in those countries. So the company can start considering focusing on
the Asian market as well.
They should design the product considering factors such as the climate, season, and geographical region, for example, beachwear in Toronto wouldn’t be popular in February.
As Victoria’s Secret shares its customer information with third-party marketers, it should aim to tighten the security of its customer data and privacy.
Threats
Victoria’s Secret has a lot of online competitors and even though such brands have started relatively new, they are aggressively invading the lingerie market.
As the products of the company are very limited, unaffordable to the majority public, and are sold in limited places, it will certainly affect the company’s profit and could become a huge loss if an economic downturn arises.
When it comes to promoting and giving discounts, most lingerie companies give offers on their product more than Victoria’s Secret does.
Some companies copy the exact design and sell it at a cheaper price, so the customer is reluctant to spend excessively on lingerie.
There is a risk for the company when the data is been shared with a third party that it could get leaked easily. As the product price goes high the customers always will want to buy cheaper products and consequently, the company could have a loss.
Victoria’s Secret is facing a lot of competitors in the intimate market cause apparel brands such as American Eagle are readily available and their international stores have given them better
international appeal. Therefore as discussed above, it could be identified clearly about the strengths,
weaknesses, threats, and opportunities the world-famous brand Victoria’s Secret has.
Throughly researched ! Well done again Sharannya !