Lululemon Athletica Inc: A Case Study on Business Strategy and Growth

This case study examines the business strategy of Lululemon Athletica Inc., focusing on key issues such as a damaged public image, the need for enhanced brand awareness, competitive pricing and product quality, and the lack of product category diversity. The analysis prioritizes these issues based on their short-term and long-term impact on the company's performance. Recommendations include restoring the company's image through social support campaigns, increasing brand awareness via promotions and social media, improving product quality through stringent quality control measures, ensuring competitive pricing, and diversifying product categories to target a broader customer base. The study emphasizes the importance of these strategic adjustments for Lululemon to effectively compete in the athletic wear market and maintain customer loyalty.

Running head: BUSINESS STRATEGY 1
Business Strategy
Student’s Name
Institutional Affiliation

BUSINESS STRATEGY 2
Lululemon Athletica, Inc.
The CEO of Lululemon, as well as the top management, is supposed to
view the following issues as the top priority. Even though Lululemon has tried to
create and develop a strong brand image, they have to improve their marketing
strategies to increase the client base (Agnihotri & Bhattacharya, 019; Sousa, 2016).
The company’s quality control is poor and needs to be addressed. These issue of
quality control is limiting the growth of the brand image as well as limiting brand
recognition. The company should increase along with spreading out their focus
to reach the rest of the world since they are missing major markets such as
Europe, Asia, South America, and even Africa (McIntosh, 2018). Based on the case
study, I believe that the top management, as well as the CEO of Lululemon,
should consider the following issues. The problems have been arranged in order
of priority based on the effect they have on the performance of the company
both in the short term as well as long-term basis.
Problems in terms of Priority
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managementat LululemonAthletic mustensurethat the mainobjectiveof the companyis to do
. , ,damagecontrol This is necessaryafter the damagedoneby the founder ChipWilson blamedpants
. ,malfunctioningon womenhenceoffendingthemAs a result the firmriskedlosinga largeclientTTTT TTT TT TTTT TTTTTTTTTTTTT TTTTTT.
 There is a need to enhance Brand Awareness. Even though Lululemon has
a good brand image now, increasing their brand awareness will enable
them to successfully expand and reach most of the markets in North
America (Sousa, 2016).
 The company has to ensure that they put in place competitive pricing and
improve the quality of products. Lululemon, as a multinational company,
should focus on improving the quality of their products to increase the
chances of them charging a premium price on all their products. In

BUSINESS STRATEGY 3
addition, they have to focus on their competitor's pricing and ensure that
their prices are competitive.
 The product categories of the company are not diverse. Lululemon has to ensure that its
product categories have been expanded by adding new items s as well as marketing the
current products towards other specific sports, which would efficiently enable the firm to
compete favorably with other competitors who are market leaders in high-performance
athletic wear.
Recommendations
Based on the above-noted issues affecting Lululemon Athletica Inc., the
following ideas should be implemented in order to ensure the firm is competing
effectively. Most of the market leaders in the Sports attire industry are focused
on creating a brand name that is reputable and can be associated with most of
the sports across the world. However, Lululemon Athletica suffered severe image
damage, which affected their sales as well as market rich (Seijts, Crossan, &
Carleton, 2017). Therefore, the first thing to do by the CEO, along with his
management team is to restore the image of the firm.
The CEO Laurent Potdevin, along with the Management at Lululemon,
needs to increase the public image of the company by doing some damage
control. This can effectively be done through a social support campaign that is
perfectly planned. For instance, since the damage done affected mostly women,
the CEO together with the top management could aim at establishing women’s
safety campaigns by targeting organizations dealing with such issues as well as
setting up gender equality campaigns. Therefore, rules and regulations should
be put in place to ensure that there are no other instances where a company
employee or even the owner could insult potential employees, as was the case
with the owner (Horvath, 2016).

BUSINESS STRATEGY 4
The CEO and management must increase brand awareness. I do
recommend the best and faster way of increasing brand awareness is through
enhancing promotions through various channels as well as social media
platforms (Cawsey & Rowley, 2016). Furthermore, the company has to intensify on
their advertisements both in social media and through the mainstream media.
The company should focus on the production of quality products through
quality control to create as well as maintain loyalty among its client base. In fact,
through the production of quality products/item, the company could fetch great
prices and increases competitiveness. Poor quality is an issue that led to the
company losing customers hence focusing on this problem will ensure a strong
and loyal customer base.
Finally, the company should diversify its product category to target more
customers. However, the company must first determine the markets that will
offer the greatest benefits after diversifying the sources of revenue. The
company can increase the channels of distribution since most of the customer
prefer having options while purchasing or picking the products from the market.

BUSINESS STRATEGY 5
References
Agnihotri, A., & Bhattacharya, S. (2019). Executive Crisis at Lululemon: Who Is Responsible
for Establishing Company Culture?. SAGE Publications: SAGE Business Cases
Originals.
Cawsey, T., & Rowley, J. (2016). Social media brand building strategies in B2B
companies. Marketing Intelligence & Planning, 34(6), 754-776.
Horvath, N. (2016). The Role of Language in the Creation and Development of Corporate
Culture: A Case Study of the Lululemon Culture.
McIntosh, H. (2018). Organizational Crisis Communication Translated in the Networked
Society (Doctoral dissertation, Université d'Ottawa/University of Ottawa).
Seijts, G., Crossan, M., & Carleton, E. (2017). Embedding leader character in HR practices to
achieve sustained excellence. Organizational Dynamics, 46(1), 30-39.
Sousa, S. (2016). Lust for Lulu: An Examination of Lululemon Athletica's Marketing
Authenticity and Branding.