Burberry Repositioning strategy

This document discusses the importance of positioning and repositioning for marketers and its implications on business performance. It also explores the changes in positioning of the Burberry brand and provides methods for repositioning the business.

Principle of Marketing

Table of Contents
Title: Burberry Repositioning strategy............................................................................................3
Task 1...............................................................................................................................................3
Importance of positioning and repositioning for marketers with implications on business
performance.................................................................................................................................3
Task 2...............................................................................................................................................4
Changes in positioning of brand.................................................................................................4
Task 3...............................................................................................................................................4
Methods for repositioning the business.......................................................................................4
REFERENCES................................................................................................................................6
INTRODUCTION...........................................................................................................................1
.........................................................................................................................................................1

Title: Burberry Repositioning strategy
Task 1
Importance of positioning and repositioning for marketers with implications on business
performance
Positioning and repositioning is one the important and challenging concept of marketing,
which aims to make distinctive and differentiate image of brand in terms of competitive
advantage and satisfaction of targeted image (Roy, 2020). Positioning in marketing considers as
a process to create a valuable image of business under customer mind. While repositioning refers
to procedure to change the existing identity of product or brand in targeted area. Hereby, key
challenge under positioning the brand is to make strategy for differentiating products from
competitors. Under this process, marketing communications aid to take right decisions for
adopting effective strategy as per company's strengths and weaknesses (Hu and Trivedi, 2020).
As Burberry competes on quality as well as intangible attributes such as brand value, reputation
and prestige, therefore, it helps in building its brand equity and shaping the customers attitude
towards its luxury products. Repositioning the brand's image is considered as the most difficult
concept, which refers to sort of business positioning by altering existing market perception. For
this process, a company like Burberry requires to change its brand vision and develop new
strategies that match with new trends and preferences of customers. This would help in
increasing business performance by successfully developing market strategy, which emphasis
mainly on way to attract new customers and respond efficiently towards changes in market
environment (Preiksaitis and Dacin, 2020). Through repositioning brand successfully, a number
of benefits can be gained such as better alignment of business as per current trend of
marketplace; potential attention of media; clearing the target market by undertaking those
products which as not performed as per expectations and more.
But apart from benefits, repositioning business or brand image, may arise various
challenges also, like reducing sales when product is repositioned; negative perception due to
unclear message or ineffective way of marketing communication; loosing interest of existing
target etc. To overcome these challenges that may arise risks for business performance, Burberry
Plc needs to develop good marketing mix strategies.

Task 2
Changes in positioning of brand
Burberry Group Plc is one the fastest growing fashion house of UK, which deals in
luxury business and focuses more on distributing trench coats, fashion accessories, ready-to-wear
clothes, fragrances and more. It has established in 1856 in UK by Thomas Burberry at small
level, but today, it is ranked as international brand in fashion industry, where it has opened more
than 498 stores worldwide (Zhan and et. al. 2020) But due to certain conditions in US and Hong
Kong like slowdown in tourism, it has analysed that sales and revenue of this firm has declined
by 10% i.e. near about £2.8bn in 2017. Therefore, to gain profitability and increase revenue rate,
this company is seeking to repositioning its brand, that will lead to increase its competitive image
as well. As products of Burberry is mainly associated with high social status, elite community
and celebrities, therefore, for repositioning its management is required to make changes in
marketing strategies that must match with new segment or new customers (Khamis, 2020). For
this process, it is also essential for respective firm to add more value in products, for resonating
wants and needs of new targeted area. This will help in changing existing perception of
customers and re-establishing the position in fashion industry. But before to make any strategy,
management of Burberry Plc needs to evaluate its current position in relation to its major
competitors like Gucci, Primark, Hermes and more. For this process, visually representing the
positioning gap, highlights areas to respond for repositioning brand image. The present position
of Burberry Plc as compared with its major competitors is shown as below –
Positioning Map
High Price
Low Quality High quality
Low Price
Burberry Plc
GUCCI
Primark

After repositioning the brand, by adding more value in products and re-establishing business
by creating new vision, will aid Burberry to gain higher position then competitors in following
way –
Repositioning Map
High Price
Low quality
High
Quality
Low Price
Burberry
Plc
GUCCI
Primark

Task 3
Methods for repositioning the business
As Burberry Group of Plc deals in luxury market, where it offers trendy and high-quality
of fashionable clothes and other accessories. Therefore, for repositioning brand, a change needs
to be done first to prevent sales from continuing down, by identifying reason behind same. After
identification of reason, company needs to create new vision and align the same within its luxury
positioning. In this regard, first method for repositioning that marketers of present firm can adopt
is introducing a new logo which is evoked with new spirit of brand and must inspired by
something amazing thing like heritage, which attracts targeted audience. While another method
for repositioning is image-oriented, that helps in staying relevant and keeping-up changes in
business with latest trends in fashion industry (Donnelly, Gee and Silva, 2020). Under this
process, involving customers in improving their experience and taking their feedback, will help
in addressing the areas which affect existing sales of company. Through customer engagement,
Burberry Plc can also earn loyalty of targeted audience and gain their retention more easily, for
long time growth of business and profitability. Among both of the two methods, viz. creating
new vision by changing logo of business and customer engagement, first one seems to be better
for Burberry Plc, as this would help in increasing higher satisfaction of targeted audience, which
ultimately leads to enhance its sales in both developing and developed nations. Along with this,
management of this firm also needs to concern on not doing the same mistake that it’s one of the
branch Mulberry has done, i.e. focusing only attracting the customers of particular segment.
Therefore, it must focus on each segment (young, adult, male and female) for offering its luxury
products.

REFERENCES
Books and Journals
Roy, A. (2020). Studying positioning and repositioning of brands using multidimensional
scaling. Journal of Education for Business. 95(1). 53-58.
Hu, F., & Trivedi, R. H. (2020). Mapping hotel brand positioning and competitive landscapes by
text-mining user-generated content. International Journal of Hospitality Management.
84. 102317.
Donnelly, S., Gee, L., & Silva, E. S. (2020). UK mid-market department stores: Is fashion
product assortment one key to regaining competitive advantage?. Journal of Retailing
and Consumer Services. 54. 102043.
Khamis, S. (2020). Branding Diversity: New Advertising and Cultural Strategies. Routledge.
Zhan, M. & et. al. (2020). Identifying market structure to monitor product competition using a
consumer-behavior-based intelligence model. Asia Pacific Journal of Marketing and
Logistics.
Preiksaitis, K. D., & Dacin, P. A. (2020). Consumer responses to strategic customer
extensions. Journal of Product & Brand Management.

INTRODUCTION
1