Expansion and Capture of New Markets

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Introduction

Within the recent years,the e-commerce retailing market is rapidly growing and maturing. Creating the specialized website, Superdry has penetrated into the e-commerce market successfully. At the same time, the design of the website requires further improvements as well integration of the social media options for the purpose of attracting new customers and retaining the old ones. The peculiarities of the spheres of the e-commerce and the clothing market need to be taken into consideration for assessing the associated risks.

Research findings

According to the results of the recent market research, Superdry not only obtains all the necessary characteristics of a successful retailer, including high quality product, strong brand name and recognizable brand identity, but also looks for new opportunities for penetrating new markets and utilizing new channels by re-assessing their digital strategy.

Superdry as a clothing brand remains popular among various demographic groups (Cotter “Is Superdry Still Fashionable?”). The tactic which was chosen by the designers, namely the combination of the features of Chinese and American street-wear styles was rather risky but appeared to be successful (Phong “Brand Pofile: Street-Wear Label Superdry”).

Realizing the benefits of the penetration into the e-commerce market, Superdry pays attention to improving the customer’s interface and incorporating new options into the e-commerce retailing site of the company for the purpose of increasing the customer’s satisfaction with the services and attracting the continuous customers.

The analysis of the market

Within the recent years, a tendency for the rapid growth in the sphere of the European e-market has been observed with more than 25% of growth in sales per year. For example, in 2009 the e-market sales in Europe reached $307, 1 billion as compared to $ 196.9 billion in 2007 and $ 255.7 billion in 2008.

According to the forecast for the e-sales in the year 2011, it is expected to be more than $ 400 billion (“European E-Commerce to Reach 323 Billion Euros in 2011”.) This statistic data and the experts’ forecast for the future growth demonstrate that the investments into the sphere of e-commerce are expected to be profitable.

Graph 1 (Adapted from Marketing Charts Website)

Though the clothes are one of the products requiring trial fittings with the emphasized importance of the color integrity, the clothing is one of the most successful spheres of e-commerce (“The E-Commerce Market: Size and Trends”). With the quick maturation of the e-market, companies cannot rely on the prolonged period of its development and should pay proper attention to the development of the sphere in a timely manner (Rigby “Social Commerce Set to Be Key in 2011”).

The criticism of the interface

The success of the e-commerce strategies depends upon the convenience of the interface of the company’s web site. In that regard, the design of Superdry website is not consumer-friendly, limiting the opportunities for filtering the products by colour, price and style.

Another restriction of the layout is the lack of the option of viewing all the products on one page. With the high competition in the sphere, the customer’s convenience is crucial and the disadvantages in the layout can have a significant impact on the customers’ choices and preferences. The poorly designed website can even have a negative impact on the company’s off-line reputation (“How to Be an E-Commerce Success”). Being induced to scroll the long lists of the unfiltered products, customers can decide to switch the service provider.

Proposal for the improvement of the Superdry website

The major directions for the improvement of the Superdry website include enhancing the customers’ convenience in working with the site and incorporating the social media options into the website layout.

Developing the segmented databases for processing the data on the products can be beneficial for increasing the customers’ satisfaction with the interface and even increasing the e-sales of Superdry.

Providing customers with opportunities for printing newsletters and generating their awareness on the loyalty programs would be beneficial for generating the consumers’ awareness of the available products and existing options.

Including the elements of the social media into the interface of the website could be helpful for enhancing its effectiveness. It is possible to start from the automated communications such as welcome, birthday messages for the registered users and proceeding to more complicated options such as creating the links with the social networks.

The experience of installation of the specialized cameras in the fitting rooms for providing customers with opportunities to share photos with their friends on the Facebook and ask them for a piece of advice has increased the company’s sales (Rogers “Integrated Experience Design”). Adoption of this experience and developing the idea of incorporating the social media options into the retail e-commerce can be beneficial for Superdry.

Recommendations for Superdry

For the purpose of creating a competitive edge and enhancing the effectiveness of the retail e-commerce website, Superdry should focus on the customer-friendliness of the website interface as well as generating the consumers’ interest by making some special offers, such as vouchers, discounts, gifts packaging. One of the major recommendations is providing customers with opportunities to find exactly what they were looking for by integrating the filtering options into the website interface (Jody “Superdry, Superbrand!”).

Along with working on the layout of the pages and enhancing the convenience and satisfaction of users, the Superdry web designers should aim at creating the opportunities for receiving customers’ feedbacks and taking them into account for making the desirable improvements. Providing customers with an opportunity to express their opinion concerning the work of the website and the quality of the service in general would produce the impression of the involvement into the company’s progress.

At the same time, the analysis of the customers’ feedbacks is a valuable source of information on the existing demands of the target customer population. It is important to incorporate particular revolutionizing options for ensuring the user that the company provides the unique opportunities of making reservations in store schemes and trial a click and collect, for example.

Growth opportunities and integrated digital strategy

The main opportunities for the growth of the company include refining the Google adwords, integrating the social media options with the e-commerce retail options and working on the multi-language campaigns for broadening the customer database and targeting at multi-language audience.

For the purpose of optimizing the work of the search engine, Superdry asked for help of Rice Media, the digital agency which had worked on the improvement of the Superdry online marketing strategy and increased the number of visitors of the website by 15% (Cowan “Superdry Appoints Rice Media for Online Drive”).

Social media options, including the design of the mobile-friendly site and providing customers with opportunities for socializing inside of the site on the forums and through the link to the most popular social networks, are expected to attract wider audience and increase the chances of repeating purchases.

The website contains the information on the policy concerning the company’s motifs for collecting the personal information which is believed to enhance customers’ sense of security (“Privacy Policy”). Creating the links to the social networking websites would motivate users to create the authorized accounts and consequently provide the administration of the website with their personal information which can be used for developing future marketing strategies.

Engagement path

The achievement of the customers’ involvement into the dialogue with the company retailer is a gradual process including the four major stages of awareness, evaluation, conversion and engagement.

The stage of awareness presupposes enhancing the customers’ awareness of the brand and increasing its popularity for generating the public interest. On the stage of evaluation, customers analyze their experience, making the conclusions which would have impact on the following process of decision making.

On the stage of conversion, customers are supposed to make a choice between the various existing tools and decide on the most suitable of them. After the completion of the three previous stages, when an individual has got certain experience and has evaluated it, the engagement of the customers into the dialogue with the company is more probable.

Methods of influencing the individual buying phases

With the recent shift to the customized approach to the e-commerce, the retailing companies have to develop strategies for retrieving the information on the customers’ preferences, processing it and choosing the appropriate methods for influencing the customers’ buying phases.

After attracting the customers’ attention with promotions and advertisements, the company should concentrate on retaining the attention. It is important to provide customers with all the necessary support, ranging from the technical support in navigating the site to the opportunities of price comparison.

While making the purchase, customers should be provided with the information on the price reductions and discounts. Proper attention to the after-sale phases would increase the chances of the repeating purchases. Companies need to take into consideration the delivery and guarantee terms as well as stimulation for future purchases such as bonus and invitation for the sale events.

Conclusion

The penetration into the e-commerce retailing market provides a number of opportunities for Superdry though the peculiarities of the quickly growing market need to be taken into consideration by the company for evaluating the existing risks. The success of the e-commerce retailing market is associated with the technical integrity and convenience of the website interface as well as the optimization of the search engine, thus, requiring new specialists (“Managing Risk in E-Commerce”).

At the same time, considering the peculiarities of the sphere of the clothing retailing which requires trial fitting of the products, the refunds and exchanges are a separate category of risks which need to be taken into consideration (Budania, Sunil. “E-Retailing – A New Strategic…”).

Works Cited

Budania, Sunil. “E-Retailing – A New Strategic…” Sunil Budania Blog. Web.

Cotter, Gary. “Is Superdry Still Fashionable?” Buzzle.com. 16 October 2010. Web.

Cowan, Katy. “Superdry Appoints Rice Media for Online Drive”. Creative Boom. 13 July 2010. Web.

“European E-Commerce to Reach 323 Billiopn Euros in 2011”. Marketing Charts. n.a. 9 August 2010. Web.

“How to Be an E-Commerce Success”. A-K Strategic Business Solutions. n.a. n.d. Web.

Jody, Leon. “Superdry, Superbrand!” Pondering’s of a Digital Marketer: Industry News, Trends, Strategy and Insight. 30 June 2010. Web.

“Managing Risk in E-Commerce”. Business Link. n.a. n.d. Web.

Phong, Luu. “Brand Pofile: Street-Wear Label Superdry”. Fashion. Telegraph. 10 February 2010. Web.

“Privacy Policy”. Superdry Website. n.a. n.d. Web.

Rigby, Chloe. “Social Commerce Set to Be Key in 2011”. Internet Retailing. 12 Nov. 2010. Web.

Rogers, Teri. “Integrated Experience Design”. Think. Create. Deliver. Blog. 17 June 2010. Web.

“The E-Commerce Market: Size and Trends”. Global Merchant Services. n.a. n.d. Web.

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