Ch. 18 - Sales Promotion and Personal Selling

Uniqlo does not emphasize much on Promotion Sales, Instead they focus more on advertising and promoting new products. Whenever Uniqlo launches a new product, they make sure that, that product does not goes unnoticed.
One of the latest and clear example of this is the advertising and promotion of their under ware products for both women and men. In the launching of this new product, the selling price was set to as low as 5.99 U.S dollars! Advertising Ads and billboards were visible all through out New York City, advertising and promoting this new product. A main location in which these billboards were posted were in the MTA Train Stations, mainly in Times Square.

 

Times Square is one key point of transportation to any New Yorker and tourists. When a particular train line is out of service most people are pushed to make a train transfer at Times Square. Knowing this, Uniqlo has kept Times Square as a key point to expose their advertising and promotion ads for people to see.

A reason why Uniqlo, launches their products at such a low price is because they are confident in that once the attracted customer purchases their new products, that they will be satifisy with the benefits and quality of the product. Once this objective is accomplish, Uniqlo believes that people would come back again and buy the same or more products. Yet this time, the price of the product might not be as low as when the product was launch, gathering a higher profit.

Chapter 15 - Retailing

When you first step into a Uniqlo retail store in New York, you feel welcome and free. Contrary to other retail stores, Uniqlo offers an independent shopping experience for their customers. By this I mean that, you won't be bombarded by employees asking you if you need any help. This clearly gives the customer a sense of freedom and therefore they perceive a friendly welcome. 

In my visit to the 5th avenue store, I was greeted by an employee who welcomed me with a Hello and friendly smile. I knew that I was there to do the class assignment required for my blog, so I headed straight to business. In my arrival to the women's section I headed towards the Hello Kitty T-shirts display. If you guys can recall from my "Ethics and Social Responsibility" blog, Uniqlo had join forces with the Hellosmile organization to raise awareness regarding cervical cancer. In my arrival, I saw an employee who was re-stocking the hello kitty shirts and so I asked her a few questions.

From my conversation with this particular employee, I can tell that Uniqlo strives high to teach their employees about their products. This particular employee was able to tell me the what's and why's behind the Hello Kitty Shirts. Without any hesitation she was able to tell me that part of the sales would go towards the Hellosmile organization. She also knew what Hellosmile was about and told me that, they're an organization that seeks to raise awareness about cervical cancer.

In this particular day (Friday March 09), the 5th Avenue retail store was holding an event to commemorate the first anniversary of the Japan earthquake and tsunami. Milk bar threats were given out in the third floor, and from my experience these threats were quite tasteful and not too sugary. This experience also allowed me to learn more about the Japanese culture throughout their delicious treats.

Chapter 6 - Consumer Decision Making

Need Recognition- The External Stimuli; Advertisements throughout New York City's public transportation. Big billboards, advertising the grand opening of the 5th Avenue and Herald Square Uniqlo stores were seen all through out the five Boroughs of New York during the fall of 2011. The positive impact was reflected when large amunts of people showed up both openings. Lines of people went all around the block in which the 5th avenue flagship store is located. I know this because I was one of the people waiting to shop in the opening day.

 

Information Search-  Marketing Control Information Source; One of the products that was highly promoted during this period of time, was Uniqlo's HEATTECH shirts. Throughout New York City's public transit, there was a widespread of billboards depicting shirts, that according to Uniqlo' will keep you warm during the fall and upcoming winter. This ad was clearly 'On Point' because we were in fall season and winter was soon approaching.



 

Evaluation of Alternatives and Purchase-  New Yorkers hardly had to do any research or even think twice about purchasing Uniqlo's products. A main reason for this was their price advertisements that covered NYC from early August to early November. In this ads, price listings showed New Yorkers that Uniqlo was literally GIVING AWAY clothes! A clear example of this is the prices that Jeans were being sold for. Jeans that regularly sold for 59.50 were being sold for 9.90 dollars. These clearly showed that the Grand Opening of both stores was something that you couldn't AFFORD TO MISS.

 

Purchase- The low prizes and high quality of clothes from Uniqlo, freed New Yorkers from having to worry about paying methods. New Yorkers knew that this type of offers were rare to find, specifically in high quality clothes. Therefore they were easily persuaded to pay with their credit cards, knowing that they might be at risk of debt or even worse, knowing that they're in debt.

Postpurchase Behavior- To guarantee customers that they had made a wise decision in buying a Uniqlo product,  Uniqlo gave away bags to each customer that exited the store with a shopping bag.