Innovative Marketing Strategy for Missguided: A Case Study

Missguided is a UK-based women's fashion e-tailer that has gained popularity by catering to a diverse customer base of young and ambitious working women, highly spirited adventurous women, and determined dreamers. The company's innovative marketing strategy, including social media presence, consumer incentive plans, and customized products, has contributed to its growth. To maintain sustainability, recommendations include creating a separate page for customer queries and complaints, incorporating new technologies like 'Virtual Room' to allow customers to digitally try on clothes, and collaborating with fashion bloggers and enthusiasts.

Running head: RETAIL TRADE
Retail Trade
Name of the Student:
Name of the University:
Author note:

1RETAIL TRADE
Table of Contents
Introduction...................................................................................................................... 2
Discussion........................................................................................................................2
Development of Brand Identity as a Competitive Strategy of Misguided......................2
Interactive Social Media Strategy and Customer Engagement Plan in Missguided.....4
Marketing Position of Misguided as a Competitive Strategy.........................................5
Innovative Marketing Strategy......................................................................................7
Recommendations and Conclusion.................................................................................8
Reference List................................................................................................................ 10

2RETAIL TRADE
Individual Assignment:
Introduction:
Founded in the year of 2009, by the entrepreneur Nitin Passi, Missguided has
emerged to be one of the most recognized brands in the online retail industry
(Missguided.co.uk 2017). Despite being a new player in the fashion retail industry, there
is no gain stating that Missguided has succeeded in establishing itself as a popular
company, by simply adding 150 new products every new week, and shipping them
across different parts of Europe, Australia and the United States (Missguided.co.uk
2017). The company incorporates the brand attributes of style, fun and innovation in
each of its promotional campaigns, and the same has contributed to its highly
differentiated and cohesive brand image. Although the company does encounter serious
competition from established retail stores such as H+M that have also extended their
retail service to the virtual domain, the company is indeed experiencing a high rate of
growth, ensuring the long-term sustenance of the brand. The effective use of social
media, an aggressive digital promotion strategy, clearly defined target audience and an
improved brand image over the years, are some of the chief factors which are heavily
contributing to the unprecedented growth of the company. Considering the fast-paced
growth of Missguided as one of the most recognized fashion e-tailor companies of UK, it
is important to critically analyse the business strategies of the company and evaluate
how the same adds to the competitive strength of the company in a highly competitive
market.

3RETAIL TRADE
Discussion:
Development of Brand Identity as a Competitive Strategy of Misguided:
One of the most effective strategies through which Missguided has succeeded in
standing out of its competitors, is by establishing itself as the most appealing brand to
the target audience. The most impressive aspect of the company’s marketing policy is
that it developed its brand image in compliance with the personality traits and basic
needs of its well-defined customer base. Most of the companies offering retail products
online in UK, are so busy in offering a variety of products, that their brand image is
getting forgotten. Missguided is well-aware of the integral role the brand image of a
company plays in determining its product sales, and hence it has invested the most on
creating a powerful brand image, that is relevant for the target audience it sells its
products to. After setting its foot in the fashion business, the company could produce
any apparel suitable for the women of any age group. However, this would have easily
ruined its brand image. Hence, it targeted the women belonging to the age group of 16
to 25 years, and carefully analysed the most quintessential traits of the consumers
belonging to this age group. The brand accordingly incorporated the traits of style,
independence and freedom, in each f its apparel. The brand image is not just developed
by creating dresses, that have the bold, carefree look, but is rather reinforced through
each of the promotional films and adverts, it uses for endorsing its products. This is the
reason why each of the pictures shared by Missguided on its Instagram account, is
magnificently bold, rebellious and adventurous. Besides, the pictures shared on its
website, also show fiercely independent women, sitting on the long-stretched sofa, or
wearing horns as their crowns, or strolling around places, that illustrate the brand

4RETAIL TRADE
attributes its consumers would like to identify with (Priporas et al. 2017). In its effort to
sell its products, the company is not rushing to capture any woman, but is rather
appealing to the young consumers, by incorporating brand attributes that will best
appeal to them. The dresses offered by the company also carry the brand attributes
promoted by it- it offers edgy, trendy, fun, flirtatious dresses only.
While analysing the competitive strength of the company, it is important to state
that the basic competitors of Missguided are Miss Selfridge and River Island, which
have extremely poor social media presence, and low intensity advertising campaigns.
Effective promotional strategy, discreetly chosen to appeal exactly to the target
audience is integral to the marketing plan of Missguided. Unlike its competitors,
Missguided does not believe in simply endorsing its products on the official website, as
they are aware that most of the consumers find no time to regularly check on the new
arrivals from the website. This is why, the company keeps on updating the consumers
about the new arrivals through interesting visual designs promoted via social media
tools (Kissel and Buttgen 2015).
Interactive Social Media Strategy and Customer Engagement Plan in Missguided:
An organization does not attain competitive edge over its rivals by simply
introducing the strategies, but also ensuring that the strategies are able to tap consumer
attention as well. Maggy London and Nasty Gal Limited are two of the important
competitors of the company as well, and these companies also enjoy strong social
presence. However, what still renders competitive advantage to Missguided is its
increased engagement with the customers. One of the most impressive features of

5RETAIL TRADE
Missguided, is that the company continually keeps on researching on the consumer
base, and focusing on their needs. As soon as the company discovered that 75% of its
consumers are using smart phones, it introduced the mobile app. Similarly, as it
became apparent that there was a huge bias toward iOS, with 82% of mobile sessions
coming from Apple devices, the company has recently decided to launch its Apple Pay
as well (Barney 2014). Besides, since the other companies were also offering the
opportunity of in-app purchase to its consumers, the company has introduced the
distinguishable feature of user experience lab in its app. Hereby, the consumers can not
only make purchases, and rate the clothes, but can also offer personal, qualitative
feedback to the management directly. This has helped the company increase its
engagement with the customers as well. In order to create greater customer
engagement, the company keeps on updating its app services as well, introducing new
features of sharing purchased products, or shelving the products on wish-list (Habibi et
al. 2014). Even though many other online retail platforms have already introduced a few
of the above-mentioned features, the company is still introducing more innovative
options, such as thumb-print payment option, as well as visual search option. Thus,
personalization is an important strategy that has been incorporated by the company in
its social media strategy.
Marketing Position of Misguided as a Competitive Strategy:
The market positioning of a brand is highly important for any company, if it
intends to achieve competitive growth. This is especially because, the market position
strategy helps a company occupy a clear and unique position in the consumer’s mind.
The market positioning of a brand also determines how the consumers will perceive the

6RETAIL TRADE
brand to be. Misguided has succeeded in positioning itself as a highly affordable,
fashion retail brand, that helps the consumers dress in the most attractive way, without
losing out much money. The low price strategy offers the brand a commercial
advantage over the rival brands. It offers products at as low a price as £2.99 to
maximum £74.99 (Inslay and Nunan 2014). In order to create and maintain a distinct
brand image in the minds of the customers, suitable retail positioning is important.
Although Missguided is a reputed online retail company, it is well-aware of the serious
competition it encounters from some powerful brands. Hence, it attracts the consumers
of those brands by offering moderately fashionable clothes at comparatively cheaper
rates. The positioning strategy of the company can be illustrated below, with the help of
the diagram:
Figure 1: Market Position Strategy of Missguided
Source: (Created by Author)

7RETAIL TRADE
On the one hand, there are expensive fashion brands such as Miss Selfridge and
Topshop, which are known for offering exclusively fashionable high street retail products
at high prices. Since the quality of the retail products produced by Misguided is not as
high as these brands, the company follows a low price strategy that helps it attract
consumers with limited purchasing power. On the other hand, companies like Boohoo
and Miss Pap offer cheap retail clothes, often compromising with the quality.
Missguided is positioned in between the two competitive brands. The company does not
offer the best quality apparels in the market, and yet its positioning strategy enables it to
offer the best quality clothes as per the reasonable prices the consumers get to buy
them (Holloman 2016). Neither too cheap to question its product quality, nor too
expensive to afford, Missguided comes within a reasonable price bracket, making it
most suitable for the customer base it targets.
However, while discussing about the positioning strategy of the company, it is
equally important to note here that the company has recently conducted a research and
has discovered that a mere 15% of consumers find the brand to be up-market, high
street fashion brand, and that most of the fashion-conscious consumers are moving
towards Zara and Warehouse (Holoman 2016). This is the chief reason why the
company has modified its consumer segment strategy, and has introduced three fresh
sub-categories of target consumer base- the connected creative group which comprises
of highly-spirited, adventurous group of women, the determined dreamer (15 to 18
years) enjoying the peak of youth and the stylish professional comprising of young,
ambitious, working women. The diversification of consumer-base is expected to help the

8RETAIL TRADE
company gain greater consumer attention through personalization of each product they
are offering.
Innovative Marketing Strategy:
Another important factor that has actively contributed to the growth of the
company is its innovative marketing strategy. The company’s social media presence is
accompanied by consumer incentive plans, which help in increasing the consumer
traffic to its website. For example, the company recently introduced an incentive
scheme whereby any consumer liking its Facebook page will be offered 10 discounts on
its next purchase (Pelat and Cabot 2016). Again, in order to ensure consumer
satisfaction, the company keeps on modifying its filter options as well. For example, it
has introduced the new “ Shop by Celebrity Style” option, whereby the shoppers can
select a specific celebrity style and buy clothes belonging to that style only. The
company’s ability to offer customized products as per the needs of the customers is also
adding to its brand identity.
Recommendations and Conclusion:
The company’s presence on all the social sites, such as Facebook, Instagram,
Facebook and Tumbler as well as its focus on well-defined customer base, is largely
helping the company achieve immense popularity amongst its consumers. In fact,
Missguided is one of the most popular UK based women’s fashion e-tailer, that is
successfully operating within a highly competitive online shopping environment and yet
enjoying a period of continuing growth. However, in order to ensure its sustainability in
future, a few useful recommendations can be suggested. First of all, the company is still

9RETAIL TRADE
at its growth phase, and hence it is receiving a lot of negative feedback on its social
media pages as well. Since the company is yet to reach the stature of brands like Zara,
where negative reputation cannot ruin the brand image, it is recommended that the
company runs a separate social media page for all kinds of customer queries as well as
complaints. This will help it ensure that only positive, constructive feedback and
engaging content are being allowed on its social media sites. It is undoubtedly true that
the company has been able to develop customer-friendly apps, and highly interactive
website, that intend to reach out the customers in the beast way. Yet it cannot be
denied that as an e-tailer company, Missguided also faces the issue of customers not
being able to try on clothes for themselves whilst deciding to buy a cloth, as it happens
in case of a traditional retail shop. To solve this problem, Missguided should try to
incorporate new and innovative ways of informing potential customers as much as
possible of what exactly the item they are interested to buy, is like. Accordingly, it can
update the mobile app so that they can digitally try out the clothes on their bodies that
will help them get a preview of how they will look after its acquisition. The ‘Virtual Room’
technology has already been utilized by Skullcandy, and Missguided should not lag
behind as well. It is also recommended, that in order to get higher visibility, the company
can also collaborate with fashion bloggers and enthusiasts.

10RETAIL TRADE
Reference List:
Barney, J.B., 2014. Gaining and sustaining competitive advantage. Pearson Higher Ed.
Habibi, M.R., Laroche, M. and Richard, M.O., 2014. Brand communities based in social
media: How unique are they? Evidence from two exemplary brand
communities. International Journal of Information Management, 34(2), pp.123-132.
Hemsley-Brown, J., Melewar, T.C., Nguyen, B. and Wilson, E.J., 2016. Exploring brand
identity, meaning, image, and reputation (BIMIR) in higher education: A special section.
Holloman, C., 2016. How to Sell Online: The experts’ guide to making your business
more successful and profitable online. Pearson UK.
Insley, V. and Nunan, D., 2014. Gamification and the online retail
experience. International Journal of Retail & Distribution Management, 42(5), pp.340-
351.
Kissel, P. and Büttgen, M., 2015. Using social media to communicate employer brand
identity: The impact on corporate image and employer attractiveness. Journal of Brand
Management, 22(9), pp.755-777.
Missguided.co.uk., 2017. Women's Clothes | Fashion Shopping Online - Missguided.
[online] Available at: https://www.missguided.co.uk/ [Accessed 12 Sep. 2017].
PELAT, C. and CABOT, M., 2016. Blogs as a new tool of communication and promotion
of fashion brands: How do fashion companies make use of bloggers as a new tool of
communication to promote their brands?.

11RETAIL TRADE
Priporas, C.V., Stylos, N. and Fotiadis, A.K., 2017. Generation Z consumers'
expectations of interactions in smart retailing: A future agenda. Computers in Human
Behavior.
West, D.C., Ford, J. and Ibrahim, E., 2015. Strategic marketing: creating competitive
advantage. Oxford University Press, USA.