Marketing Report: Ralph Lauren Corporation and Women's Polo T-shirts

This report analyzes the marketing strategies employed by Ralph Lauren for its polo products, with a specific focus on the introduction of women's polo t-shirts. The report begins with an introduction to the importance of marketing and its role in attracting customers. It then delves into a literature review, exploring the marketing concepts, particularly the product and social marketing concepts, utilized by Ralph Lauren to target women consumers. The report also examines the purchasing decisions of women consumers, outlining the five stages involved in the decision-making process: need recognition, information search, evaluation of alternatives, purchase decision, and post-purchase decision. The analysis incorporates insights from various sources to understand how factors like brand recognition and product quality influence consumer choices. Finally, the report provides recommendations for Ralph Lauren to enhance its marketing efforts, including a focus on production and sales concepts to improve profitability. The report concludes by summarizing the key findings and emphasizing the significance of marketing concepts in driving business success.

Marketing Principles &
Practice

Table of Contents
INTRODUCTION...........................................................................................................................1
Literature review.........................................................................................................................1
A. Marketing concepts used by Ralph Lauren corporation.........................................................1
B. Purchasing decision of women consumer .............................................................................2
CONCLUSION................................................................................................................................4
REFERENCES................................................................................................................................5

INTRODUCTION
Marketing is essential for each and every organisation or business to promote its products
and services. It is important for each and every company to advertise their goods or services in
the market so that maximum number of customers can be attracted. The present report is based
on the marketing concepts and customer purchasing power that influence sales of Ralph Lauren
and polo products. Ralph Lauren corporation is introducing polo t-shirts for women which will
replace Blue label category of clothes by polo. The report will discus various concepts that the
company will use for marketing of their new product. Furthermore, it will also discuss the
purchasing behaviour of women consumers while buying polo products.
Literature review
A. Marketing concepts used by Ralph Lauren corporation.
According to Villeneuve and Pasquier (2017), Ralph Lauren corporation identified that
there is need to develop a new or unique product in order to attract women consumers. The main
target of women polo t-shirt are the women between 16 – 60 years of age, but mainly the young
girls who lives in down-town and needs to wear branded clothes on weekends. The company
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Illustration 1: Ralph Lauren store
(Source : Ralph lauren factory story. 2018)

utilised and implemented product concept to market their products and attract customers. As per
the view of Homburg, Jozić and Kuehnl (2017), Product concept is one of the most effective and
successful marketing strategies that help an organisation to attract customers by providing
improved products with high quality and new features. The company identified the need of
introducing and offering a new product to the women consumers who are attracted towards
branded clothes. They need to pay high cost to purchase clothes to wear at weekends. In order to
target and attract these women consumers Ralph Lauren corporation introduced polo women t-
shirts that can be purchased at a reasonable price. The quality of the product is meeting the level
of customer satisfaction level and brand name also played a major role in attracting the women
demanding branded clothing. Product concept of marketing was a successful approach used by
the organisation along with the social marketing concept. The organisation promoted its new
polo women t-shirt on its websites, social media platform such as Facebook, Twitter and
Instagram to attract maximum number of women consumers. However, the product concept was
not much successful due to intense competition in the market but due to the marketing concept
Ralph Lauren Corporation managed to attract customers in wide range of markets. Therefore,
company successfully achieved good level of sales mainly in women clothing.
B. Purchasing decision of women consumer
According to Kyambalesa (2017), every individual has a different method of buying a
product or service. There are various factors that influence the purchasing decision of the women
consumers while buying polo t-shirts. The process of purchasing decision includes five stages as
described below -
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Need recognition – The first stage of buying decision making includes the recognition or
identification of needs or wants. In this phase an individual determines his or her needs that can
be fulfilled by a product or services. It is the major stage in that creates or start the process of
purchasing.
Information search – Giampietri and Finco (2018) states that after identifying the needs, each
and every individual seek to obtain information or data related to products as much as possible.
They surf internet, use social media platforms, interact with other consumers in order to achieve
most relevant and essential information to find out the most suitable option that can satisfy their
needs.
Evaluation of alternatives – After gathering information customer evaluate each and every
option of alternative available for them in the market. There are various organisation offering
similar products and services to the customers, hence they evaluate every product in order to
compare them on the basis of price, quality, availability and reviews of previous consumers. This
stage helps to identify the best option for satisfying the needs. Polo product ensured that its new
t-shirt is high in quality and has a attractive price.
Purchase decision – It is the stage in which purchasing is done, the most critical phase of
making a purchasing decision. According to Kyambalesa (2017), this stage gets affected by two
factors, firstly the negative reviews or feedbacks and second motivation to accept feedbacks in
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Illustra
tion 2: Decision making process
(Source:Fundamental of marketing. 2018)

order to satisfy the needs. Ralph Lauren corporation has a good market value that promotes
women to purchase their products.
Post purchase decision – This is the last stage of purchasing decision making process, although
it does not affect the already purchased product or stages of decision making. But may affect
decisions for purchasing a product or service in future. This stage involves the comparison of
previous expectations and actual satisfaction level received by using a product or service.
RECOMMENDATION
The cited organisation needs to focus on other concepts of market as well as such as
production and sales. It can help the company to achieve more profit by minimising the cost. The
production concept can help Ralph Lauren corporation to improve their manufacturing function
by using most appropriate methods of production and selling concept can assist in targeting the
potential customers in the most profitable markets.
CONCLUSION
The above report concluded that marketing concepts are very important for each and
every business or organisation in order to attract more and more customers as well as increase
sales by introducing new products with attractive attributes. This report identified that Ralph
Lauren used product and social marketing concept in order to promote its new polo women
clothing. In addition to this the decision making process is also described in the above report.
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REFERENCES
Books and Journals
Villeneuve, J.P. and Pasquier, M., 2017. Marketing management and communications in the
public sector. Routledge.
Homburg, C., Jozić, D. and Kuehnl, C., 2017. Customer experience management: toward
implementing an evolving marketing concept. Journal of the Academy of Marketing
Science, 45(3), pp.377-401.
Kyambalesa, H., 2017. Marketing in the 21st Century: Concepts, Challenges and Imperatives:
Concepts, Challenges and Imperatives. Routledge.
Giampietri, E and Finco, A., 2018. A Theory of Planned behaviour perspective for investigating
the role of trust in consumer purchasing decision related to short food supply chains.
Food Quality and Preference, 64, pp.160-166.
Online
Ralph lauren factory story. 2018. [Online]. Available
through:<https://www.greatlakescrossingoutlets.com/stores/polo_ralph_lauren_factory_store>.
Fundamental of marketing. 2018. [Online]. Available
through:<https://julieaskewblog.wordpress.com/marketing-principles/competitive-advantage/>
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