The Importance of Brand Identity in the Clothing Industry

For a company to attract and retain more customers who can buy its products, it has to build a string brand identity. The clothing industry in the UK is among the major industries that contribute hugely to the country’s economy. In a competitive market like the clothing industry in UK, the decisions made by consumers play a significant role. As such, it is vital to analyze what factors determines these choices with reference to a particular brand in the market, given that various brands are available and there exists tough competition featuring the various brands in the same market (Tariq, Nawaz, and Butt, 2013, p. 347). Due to the various marketing and promotional techniques employed by various companies, consumers switch from brand to brand leading to low cases of brand loyalty. Wang, and Tsai, (2014, p.1230) argues that the inability by any of the brands to maintain its customer base over a longer period of time poses an economic threat both to the involved company, and to the countries which represent the brands in question as well.

It is therefore in the best interest of the companies and the countries to critically study the consumer behaviors and preferences towards various marketing and promotional techniques. To offer a comprehensive market research, a company may consider engaging the consumer in form of an interview to understand what specific promotional tools appeals to them the most, the media they can prefer to be reached through and their willingness to know more about the product (Tuškej, Golob, and Podnar, 2013, p. 57). The UK clothing market can be described by factors such as a quest by companies to develop their own brands, short product life cycles, tough competition, fluctuation of consumer requirements, as well as polarized marketplaces. According to Torlak, et. al (2014, p. 895) many of the textile retailers within the market tend to differentiate their products as a means of distinguishing themselves from the competition when it comes to price and designs. In as much as the UK clothing industry is overwhelmed by various fashions of brands, Suki, (p. 999) argues that the market still exhibits small magnitudes of product differentiation.

Aim of the study

The study aims at analyzing and discussing the effects of brand image on consumers, and how it affects their purchasing decisions in the UK clothing industry.

Research Objectives

The research will achieve the above stated aim by pursuing various specific research objectives which offer insightful aspects of the study. Thus:

I. To understand the effects of product branding as a factor in consumer purchasing decision

II. To identify the relationship between consumer purchasing and brand image.

III. To study how branding affects brand equity

Research Structure

The research study will be divided into six main chapters.

Introduction (Chapter 1) - consists of the background information relevant to the UK clothing industry, the aims and objectives of the study, and the research structure.

Literature Review (Chapter 2) - the chapter offers an analysis of consumer behaviors towards various brands from the perspective of the UK clothing industry.

Research Methodology (Chapter) - this entails the research approach and design.

Data Collection (Chapter 4) – the chapter analyses the data collected from the field with an aim of reaching the research objectives. Data was collected through interviews.

Data Analysis (Chapter 5) – the chapter analyses the results of the findings raised through the interviews and other sources of data.

Conclusion and Recommendations (Chapter 6) - The chapter draws conclusive remarks from the other chapters of the study, and use them to offer recommendations on the way forward.

Literature Review

Consumer behaviors include various activities like how people acquire, use, or dispose goods and services (Severi, and Ling, 2013, p. 766). This chapter analyses the literatures reflecting on the role of brand identity and equity are revisited. The review helps in the development of the theoretical framework that is analyzed later in the study.

Role played by a Brand

Brand is the image that comes in a consumer’s mind whenever a certain product or service is mentioned. An understanding of branding helps in the knowing of the characteristics and features of a brand and how such elements impacts on the market performance. The American Marketing Association defines a brand as “A name, term, sign, symbol, or design, or combination of them, intended to identify the goods and services of one seller or group sellers and to differentiate them from those of competitors” (Schivinski, and Dabrowski, 2016, p. 221). Besides the name, several other factors make a brand including the packaging style, the promotion, the product itself, advertising and the way the product is presented in the market. Basically, branding can be defined as the means through which a company differentiates its products or services from those of another. The differences may be rational, functional or tangible.

Brand equity

Product and brand management begins with the building of a strong brand. A strong brand will earn the organization higher revenues both in the short and long terms. As such, strategic brand management in an organization should feature the building of brands that would last for decades, and ones that have ability to be leveraged in different contexts of markets and product categories. Many theories have come up in the effort to explain how brands affects the purchasing decision in consumers. Among these theories is what Sallam, (2014, p. 1110) calls the customer brand equity model. According to (Malik et. al 2013, p. 6124), brand equity is a set of assets and liabilities linked to a brand, with the potential to offer beneficial or detrimental effects on the factors like revenue arising from the product or service. Resultantly, brand equity is an asset to any organization that seeks to excel since it bears economic value. Linking the brand equity to the consumer leads to the term consumer-based brand equity. Consumer-based brand equity can be defined as the value that a product is accorded by the consumers (Yu, Lin, and Chen, 2013, p. 776). The consumer based brand equity can be gauged through parameters like brand loyalty, brand awareness and the perceived quality.

Consumer Buying Behavior

A detailed understanding of the consumer behaviors is of essence to a firm for a number of reasons. Dehghani, and Tumer, (2015, p. 909) argues that the consumer behaviors has the potential to influence the economic health of a nation. Buil, Martínez, and Chernatony, (2013, p.2454) defines consumer behavior as how people willingly use their resources such as money, time and effort to make a decision with reference to certain product or service. Consumer behavior study does not inform a company on the patterns and trends exhibited by a certain consumer group, but it can also be used to tailor-make advertising, marketing and promotional techniques that would meet the consumer needs (Malik et. al, 2013, p. 7876). Further, harmed with the same information, a company stands a chance to manufacture goods that would satisfy the consumer needs to facilitate repeat purchases. This study seeks to establish whether the consumer purchase patterns of clothes in UK is affected in any way by the brand image.

Research Methodology

The research employs the qualitative research method in which semi-structured interviews were the main data collection methods. The fact the research study aims to gauge the consumer feelings, attitudes and opinions about various clothing brands within the UK market made the Qualitative research design a suitable method. Researches which focuses on in-depth responses and opinions about a phenomena usually employs the qualitative research design (Lien, Wen, Huang, and Wu, 2015, p. 87). Anselmsson, Vestman, and Johansson, (2014, p. 977) defines Qualitative interviews as the interaction between an interviewer and interviewee as they engage a topic featuring a particular order of words exchanged through questioning and answering. The interviewer will be forced in many of the instances to probe ambiguous answers provided by the interviewee for clarity issues.

The benefits of using qualitative research for the study are varied. For instance, the researcher has more likeliness to probe the respondents to get in-depth feelings. Similarly, the Qualitative research focuses on describing processes of defining problems and variables in our daily living which is an advantage to the researcher in return (Hutter, Hautz, Dennhardt, and Füller, 2013, p. 350). A major weakness of Qualitative research though is the lack of quantitative data to back up deductions made by the study. Moreover, Aaker, and Biel, (2013, p. 446) argues that there is the possibility that transcribed data or video-recorded data will miss out on small but viable bits that could inform decision making.

To accomplish the interviews, a sample size of 10 shoppers will be picked randomly from the common textile outlets in London, UK.

Sampling

The research will feature non-probability sampling, in which quota sampling and convenience sampling methods will employed for the exercise. He, and Lai, (2014, p. 660) defines convenience sampling is defined by its accessibility to the researcher by its convenience, while quota sampling refers to the extraction of a relative portion of the entire population with responds chosen to represent different ethnicity, gender, age groups, residence and socio-economic groups.

All the 10 shoppers chosen for the study will be of British origin aged between 25-35 years. The group will comprise of 6 females and 4 males. No discrimination in terms of religion, or whether students or not.

Interview Format

The interview will feature closed and open ended questions. The essence of the open-ended questions is to offer room for the respondents to express their opinions adequately (Huang, and Sarigöllü, 2014, p. 999). The interviews will be conducted at the different brand outlets, due to the necessity of a convenient atmosphere. Permission will be sought from the shop owners some days before the interviews begin.

Ethical Issues

The interviewees’ consent will be sought with reference to the MP3 recording of the interviews for data analysis. Confidentiality forms will therefore be filled in before the exercise. All interview elements will be explained to the interviewees before engagement.

Time table

The dissertation development window is 4 months. The 16 weeks will therefore be divided as follows.

Task

Week

Finding Research Topic and getting approval for the same

1

Conducting library based research to gather the appropriate literature for the study

2 & 3

Preparation for the data collection exercise, procurement of the right tools and equipment

4

Data collection exercise takes place

5-11

Data analysis

12

Compiling the final report

13

Proofreading for typos and errors

14

Binding the work in a booklet

15

Presenting the work

16

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