Marketing Analysis: Examining Patagonia's Strategies and Approaches

This report provides a detailed analysis of Patagonia's marketing approach, focusing on its non-traditional strategies and commitment to environmental responsibility. The report examines the company's target market, value creation for consumers, and the types of value associated with Patagonia products. It explores how Patagonia builds customer relationships and adapts its marketing strategy to macro and micro environmental factors, including social responsibility trends. The analysis includes a discussion of Patagonia's green marketing initiatives, consumer-centric approach, and the influence of political and economic factors. The report also highlights the company's commitment to sustainability, transparency, and corporate social responsibility, supported by references to relevant academic sources and journal articles. The report concludes with an overview of Patagonia's marketing strategy and its impact on the company's success.

Contemporary
Marketing

Contents
MAIN BODY...................................................................................................................................3
Q.1) What marketing approach does Patagonia utilise? Justify your answer..............................3
Q.2 What type of value might consumers associate with Patagonia products? What are some..4
example of how Patagonia creates various types of value with consumers via building............4
relationships?...............................................................................................................................4
Q.4 Think about the macro and micro environmental factors that influence organisations. What
......................................................................................................................................................5
type of trends has Patagonia observed in the macro and/or micro level environments? How
have..............................................................................................................................................5
these trends influenced Patagonia's marketing strategy?.............................................................5
REFERENCES................................................................................................................................6

MAIN BODY
Q.1) What marketing approach does Patagonia utilise? Justify your answer.
Marketing approach refers to long term plan of achieving an organisational goal by
determining the needs of customers and thus creating distinct and sustainable competitive
advantages. The success of any company's product totally depends on the value that it creates to
the consumers that is only possible because of the marketing success. A privately held company,
Patagonia is headquartered in Ventura, California, USA. Patagonia utilises non-traditional as a
core of the company's marketing approach. Its market segment includes men and women aged
18-35 providing every level of satisfaction such as maintaining an active lifestyle, value quality
products, reasonable price that creates value to its product for the consumers. Patagonia offer
opportunities for consumers that involves in the value-creation process that is from the materials,
manufacturing processes, transport and logistics, communications, purchase and disposal of its
products. The company basically understands the consumer base who have the eagerness to
know about material of the product and providing such information offers a pathway to create
value by educating and sharing knowledge with customers in the pre-consumption phase
(Rattalino, 2018). Patagonia believes in delivering a quality premium product taking care of the
satisfaction level of the customers. Company even provides opportunities that create value with
customers at the disposal point of the consumption process which helps in building deep and
good relationships with consumers i, e., customers remain connected to the company making
Patagonia to consumer-centric and sustainable marketing approach. Eco-friendly customers can
also be counted in the list of typical consumers of Patagonia as they are concerned with
environment and the company itself show the efforts made in protecting the environment. This
type of donation leaves to expand the functional product's life, optimising investment
sustainability, products that can be recycled – resulting in fulfilling the environment
responsibility of a company. “Build the best product, cause no unnecessary harm, use business
to inspire and implement solutions to the environmental crises”. Since the chosen business is
quite sustainable, Patagonia has begun using the advanced concepts of green marketing in its
products by making them as sustainable as possible. One of the best ways in which the company
has managed to apply this approach is through the concept of green product and branding and
this is evident in the way in which the company displays the materials used to make this product.

Q.2 What type of value might consumers associate with Patagonia products? What are some
example of how Patagonia creates various types of value with consumers via building
relationships?
A California, USA based private company is an American retailer of outdoor clothing. It is
renowned for designing a high-quality outdoor clothing and equipment for sports such as
snowboarding, skiing, mountaineering, rock climbing, surfing, hiking and fishing. They also
offer an online store with its full variety of products that can be ordered from anywhere in the
world. The efforts of Patagonia reflect that they are contributing to protecting the environment by
extending its value of proposition beyond the functional value proposition that high quality
outdoor clothes and equipment’s have. Customers, thus believes that by purchasing the products
of Patagonia, they are contribution to the highest environmental standards (Visser, and et.al.,
2019). As a result, environmentally concerned customers rely on this concept of that Patagonia
stands for a higher purpose than making money therefore, they are emotionally inspired to
support the brand which incorporates their values. With strong view, Patagonia attracts the like-
minded customers that are not bounded by marketing triggers of price, promotion or other factors
rather than this, it binds itself to customers through emotional triggers. Company offers
opportunities creating value with customers at the disposal point of the consumption process
which helps in building deep and good relationships with consumers. Patagonia is currently
available in almost every country, each dealing in their different political factors (Korschun, and
et.al., 2020). Patagonia's marketing strategy is different and one of a kind. It offers a wide range
of long-lasting products but never fails to keep their words in times of environmental crises. It
urges sustainability and the promotion of used Patagonia goods is working and its overall profit
increases. One of the major pillars upon which Patagonia has gained success is building its
marketing initiative around transparency which is evident from the full freedom granted to their
customers in terms of enquiry about the material breakdown and supply chain structure of the
products. The overall marketing strategies used by Patagonia are consumer centric rather than
being market oriented. They have taken this initiative as they understand that by keeping their
clothes in use for 9 additional months can contribute to environment safety from carbon, waste
and water footprints by 20 – 30%. Thus a high proportion of the product's material are basically
made from recycled fabrics consisting of its polyester, nylon and wool. This chosen business

model will have key role in determining the company’s market positioning as green products
have been receiving increased prominence among customers.
Q.4 Think about the macro and micro environmental factors that influence organisations. What
type of trends has Patagonia observed in the macro and/or micro level environments? How have
these trends influenced Patagonia's marketing strategy?
There are various micro and macro environmental factors that affect the functions of the
working environment as well as at the growth of the organisation. Micro factors include
stakeholders, employers etc. and the macro environmental factors include political, economic,
technological, social and etc. Most important trend observed in micro and macro environmental
factors are social responsivity that increases sales, escalating the risk of non-compliance, that
helps in strengthening the adherence and self-binding to social commitments. It uses various
technologies while creating new from used products. Patagonia is currently available in almost
every country, each dealing in their different political factors (Korschun, and et.al., 2020).
Patagonia's marketing strategy is different and one of a kind. It offers a wide range of long-
lasting products but never fails to keep their words in times of environmental crises. It urges
sustainability and the promotion of used Patagonia goods is working and its overall profit
increases. The company follows the business model that is manufacturing and selling high-
quality outdoor premium clothing products by both channels – distributors and direct to
consumers this helps Patagonia to focus on creating social and economic value through its
business. A fashionable and conscientious customers are identified as an ideal customer for the
Patagonia. The consumers willing to spend more money on quality premium products that can
even list of typical consumers of Patagonia as they are concerned with environment and the
company itself show the efforts made in protecting the environment. This type of donation leaves
to expand the functional product's life, optimising investment sustainability, products that can be
recycled – resulting in fulfilling the environment responsibility of a company. “Build the best
product, cause no unnecessary harm, use business to inspire and implement solutions to the
environmental crises”. Patagonia has established the sustainable Apparel Coalition of

organisation and also has performed well. Patagonia also provides consultation services to
companies such as Nike which wanted an advice on enhancing its CSR. The company performed
various programs – one of that is “Worn Wear” that allows the customers to buy as well as trade
in and fix their gear. It is regarded as a leader in corporate social responsibility which helps in
achieving both directly through donations of its profit and internal sustainability initiatives and
even indirectly by increasing awareness for environmental issues. Patagonia asks its customer to
buy only when they need, repair it when it breaks and recycle it when you're through (Huggard,
and et.al., 2020).

REFERENCES
Books and Journals:
Gonzalez-Padron, T.L., 2022. Environmental Marketing. In Handbook of Environmentally
Conscious Manufacturing (pp. 223-231). Springer, Cham.
Huggard, and et.al., 2020. Conclusion and future directions: How fashion brand communication
shapes culture. In Communicating Fashion Brands (pp. 156-161). Routledge.
Korschun, and et.al., 2020. Marketing’s role in understanding political activity. Journal of public
policy & marketing, 39(4), pp.378-387.
Rattalino, F., 2018. Circular advantage anyone? Sustainability‐driven innovation and circularity
at Patagonia, Inc. Thunderbird International Business Review, 60(5), pp.747-755.
Visser, and et.al., 2019. Customer acquisition: digital branding. In Digital Marketing
Fundamentals (pp. 162-208). Routledge.