Levi Strauss & Co. puts high importance on the people variable. Because Levi’s has set up Levi’s outlets all over the world, they are able to give highly specialized and helpful advice to customers. Also, customer service will generally be a lot better than in department stores, because the customer will always be able to get what he is looking for, as Levi’s outlets tend to have all the different Levi articles in stock, which you will never find in a normal department store.
Levi Strauss recruitment tactics are usually very motivating and quite unorthodox. As taken from an Internet career database: “Ask any Levi Strauss & Co. employee and they’ll tell you: working at Levi’s is a truly unique experience. … If selected you’ll join a global team of 30,000 people involved in, or supporting, the design, creation and marketing of products, carrying one of the world’s most recognizable brand names.” This kind of recruitment is not very common in the business world and it reflects the connection that Levi’s builds up with its employees.
Levi’s is also one of the very few companies where employees are actually encouraged not to wear suits and ties, but instead only casual wear (in most countries, not all). This will have a positive effect on the work atmosphere, or so Levi’s believes.
Furthermore, Levi’s tries to motivate their personnel in various ways: First of all, they create a group feeling and allow workers to dress casual, which is a quite successful method in itself. Secondly, in 1996, Robert Haas, chairman and CEO of Levi Strauss, announced the Global Success Sharing Plan, which called for a “one time cash payment of approximately a year’s salary to all employees around the world, if in the next six years the company achieves its cash flow target of $7,6 billion.” This of course greatly motivates all employees all over the world and will incite them to do their utmost for the company. It also has the positive side effect of making the employees more likely to stay with the company (as nobody wants to miss a year’s salary).
Over the years, Levi Strauss has offered various incentives to its employees, including generous stock ownership and redemption plans, as well as innovative benefit packages: in 1992, the company became the first Fortune 500 company to offer full medical benefits to all unmarried partners of its employees.
Dockers has similar marketing strategies to Levi’s, partly because they are owned by Levi Strauss & Co.. They too have specialized Dockers outlets in which you can buy any Dockers article that you can possibly desire, as well as get the right kind of assistance.
Although they are not as widely spread as in Levi’s, but Dockers as well encourages casual wear for their employees. A reason for Dockers being a little less excited about this approach is that the age group they aim at, is slightly older than the one for Levi’s and also because their image is rather classy.
PROMOTION
Modern marketing is not only about the product, pricing it and making it available to target customers. Companies must also communicate with their customers, and understand them. A company total marketing communications program is called the promotion-mix
-Advertising: any paid form of nonpersonal presentation and promotion of ideas, goods or services by an identified sponsor.
-Personal selling: oral presentation and conversation with one or more prospective purchasers for the purpose of making sales.
-Sales promotion: short-term incentives to encourage the purchase or sale of a product or service.
-Public relations: building good relations with the company various publics by obtaining favorable publicity, building up a good “corporate image”, and handling or heading off unfavorable rumors, stories and events.
The Levi Strauss company starts like others company with a clear target market in mind, which is the person who is gone buy the product because what ever is gone happen it is the company who decide her target especially by setting price.
Determining the response sought:
Once the target audience is defined, the marketing communicator must decide what response is sought. It may be in any of six buyer-readiness-states.
When developing the promotion-mix the company must choose a strategy depending on the buyer-readiness, Levi Strauss which is a consumer-good company will put more of their funds into advertising, follow by sales and promotion, personal selling and then public relations.
Consumer goods
The promotion done for Levi’s jeans in the stores, is mainly done by point of sales materials. In this way of promotion, presents are given with the item purchased. On the other hand, Dockers promotion doesn’t consists on free gifts, but more on the service rended. Remember, next time you go to a Levi’s store that as soon as you enter the store, you will immediately have somebody asking to help you finding what you are looking for. They will even tell you what suit you better which size will fit best, because they want you to have this image of Levi’s as a company that not only sales clothes but also gives you this feeling of being important, which is true because you are the one who is going to buy their product.
Jeans are no longer the cheap casual wear for the average people it became the uniform of the street Levi’s is not the only one to have understand the power of this strong material, designers such as Versace, Gaultier, Armani, thus the company must regenerate herself that is also one of the reasons why Levi’s decide to change a bit their product simply because people want more of this material, which created the Dockers pants . To work for Levi’s you have to love Levi’s as you can imagine all employees come every day to work wearing Levi’s jeans or Dockers pants. Today Levi’s is represented all over the world. The Levi’s collection contains jeans, Dockers pants, jackets, sweaters, shirts, belts and others for both men and women.
Levi’s advertising is as we can imagine focused on the target market, for example when the company advertise his 501 jeans it try to reach the largest amount of young buyers. Thus, after some research they discovered that an important number of teenagers watch MTV, TMF and all kind of entertainment programs.
Ads can also be seen all over the bus stops where most of the time they only show the product or just the red Levi’s tab. You have different television ads of Levi’s and all of them show the importance of the Levi’s jeans and how life would be without it. Let’s remember for example the ad of last year, where this perfect guy falls from his boot and start to drawn but luckily for him his was wearing the 501 jeans, which attracted the sirens who after touching him everywhere, they give him the kiss of life and of course they want something in exchange, so they started to unbutton his jeans but of course he prefer to keep his jeans, so he escape from them. Another ad which also shows a young guy taking the padlock from his bike to attach his jeans so that it doesn’t get stolen. Thus the ads want to express the feeling that life doesn’t worth it with out a Levi’s jeans.
PLACE
Distribution decisions and processes are among the most important elements of the marketing mix. In fact retailers often say that the critical factors in retailing success is location.
A retailer location is the key to attract customers. That is why most Levi’s stores are located in downtown. The atmosphere of the store, the little thing that you get by going to this store and not another, also makes the customer choose this particular shop.
Levi’s as a renovative company, has found a new trick: imagine for a moment a woman looking for a pair of jeans, of course it must be the perfect shape, the jeans must make her look as much as possible like the most desirable human being. That is where Levi’s decide to use the technology of some software programmer this end up in a way of making custom-fitting jeans by computer. In 1994 the new idea was launched in four US stores. A month later seven other stores where equipped with the software, even though the jeans cost $10 above the normal price most women still agree to pay the extra amount. Thus this little software could change by a significant amount the level of sales and the image of the store.
The atmosphere of the store is also an important element which influences consumers’ judgment about the store but also about the brand that why all Levi’s stores look approximately the same.
Bibliography
REFERENCES
Levi’s Strauss & Co. webpage
Http://www.levistrauss.com
Levi’s Jeans webpage
Http://www.levi.com
Dockers khaki pants webpage
Http://www.dockers.com
Armstrong G and Kotler P,
Principles of Marketing, seventh international edition, 1996.
Dibb S, Simkin L, Pride W and Ferrel O.C,
Marketing: Concepts and Principles, third European edition, 1997