Introduction
Effective marketing strategies that are designed and implemented by smart marketers focus on the consumer behavior. In particular, successful fashion brands pay attention to the consumers’ perception of their own selves. Self-concept defines the consumer choice of apparel, shoes, and accessories. Without knowing the consumers’ perception of their own selves, it would be hard for the fashion marketers to position the products in the market successfully. The paper analyzes the role that the knowledge and understanding can play in implementing effective marketing strategies. There is also a brief comparison between the marketing strategies of Tommy Hilfiger and Nike, to generate an understanding on the brands’ understanding of consumer self-concept.
What is Self-Concept?
Understanding self-concept and its relevant terms is crucial to understand their role in successful marketing strategies. One's self-idea (likewise called self-development, self-character, self-point of view or self-structure) is an accumulation of convictions around oneself that incorporates components, for example, scholarly execution, sex parts and sexuality, and racial personality. For the most part, self-idea encapsulates the response to "Who am I?". One's self-idea is comprised of self-blueprints, and their past, present, and future selves. Self-idea is discernable from mindfulness, which alludes to the degree to which self-information is characterized, steady, and presently material to one's demeanors and auras. Self-concept additionally varies from self-regard: self-oncept is an intellectual or illustrative segment of one's self (e.g. "I am an aggressive person"), while self-regard/self-awareness is evaluative and stubborn (e.g. "I can be aggressive at time").
Self-idea is comprised of one's self-blueprints, and cooperates with self-regard, self-information, and the social self to shape the self as entirety. It incorporates the past, present, and future selves, where future selves (or conceivable selves) speak to people's thoughts of what they may get to be, what they might want to wind up, or what they fear getting to be. Conceivable selves might work as motivations for certain conduct.
The discernment individuals have about their past or future selves is identified with the view of their present selves. The worldly self-examination hypothesis contends that individuals tend to keep up a positive self-assessment by removing themselves from their negative self and giving careful consideration to their positive one. What's more, individuals tend to see the past self less positively (e.g. "I'm a better person than I used to be") and the future self all the more absolutely (e.g. "I will be better in coming years than I have ever been").
Use of Self-Concept in Marketing
Self idea characterized is 'the composite of thoughts, sentiments and demeanors that a man has about their own personality, worth, capacities and restrictions'. An individual might have a contrary self-idea despite the fact that a great many people see them in a constructive light or the other way around. The apparent self thus impacts their view of their general surroundings. Whether self-idea or observation is overwhelming is up to the person. Self-idea is further separated into three characterizing elements. These are mental self-view, perfect self and self-regard. Mental self-portrait is the manner by which an individual sees his self in the public arena and who they think they are. Mental self-view generally includes social parts, self-perception and identity characteristics. Perfect self then again is the sort of individual somebody might want to be, this perhaps marginally or enormously unique in relation to their mental self-view. The bigger the distinction between mental self-view and perfect self the lower an individual's self-regard.
In terms of marketing and advertising, the identity is a key viewpoint in impacting purchaser’s decision. For instance, if an individual is more worried about his apparent persona, don't generally have an inner self and have an irregular super-ego dominating what he does; he would tend to settle on silly choices. Along these lines, this kind of individual would purchase things on the grounds when they have money and want to buy that product. In this way, they would not consider there budgetary circumstance or the impacts there activities might have on others. Further to this a man's identity can likewise be identified with the sort of brand and item they purchase. Self-concept and personality identity can help brand managers in assessing the consumer behavior and thus, can successfully influence consumer behavior by formulating and implementing strategies that are aimed at influencing the purchasing decision of the consumers.
Use of self-concept by Brand Marketers at Tommy Hilfiger and Nike
Tommy Hilfiger and Nike are two of the fashion brands that have been present in the modern fashion industry for decades. These brands have not only captured a significant portion of market, but these brands have created a strong image by understanding the psychology of the consumer, especially the perception of employees about their own selves.
Brands such as Nike use the elements of sincerity, excitement, competence, and ruggedness in positioning their products parallel to the consumer choice. Consumers who consider themselves to be rough-and-tough and sporty tend to prefer Nike over any other fashion brand for casual dressing. The brand has implemented marketing strategy by keeping in view the personality of their target customers, who are generally sportsman, workout freaks, or energetic young and amateur soccer players. The advertisements by Nike depict an environment of roughness as the setting depicts in every advertisement as well as promotional campaign. The brand also endorses football and soccer players who hold the ball while supporting the Nike shoes. This creates a sense of ruggedness and excitement in the target customers.
The thought of a brand identity has just turned into the fundamental component of drawing in clients lately. Initially brands were item based yet after some time advanced into being deals based, market based, advertising based and in the long run brand based. A brands identity is an aftereffect of two fundamental elements, the brands personality and the present business sector and buyer patterns. This thus impacts the brands promoting technique and conduct. Why does Nike marking work effectively? Nike promoting is brimming with energy and everything that makes a decent donning products advertisement, yet Nike advertisements are almost special in how great they are. So what is the arrangement with Nike advertising procedure that makes them so extraordinary? The message is contained in Nike advertisements and each bit of Nike marking that goes out. Nike promoting rotates around a solitary, widespread feeling that is felt the same by about everybody on the planet. The thought of battle and determination is the thing that gives Nike ads their flame. What's more, every bit of Nike marking rotates around this thing.
Nike marking, similar to their name (based on Greek goddess for victory) is as old as the Greek history. Greek classic works rotate around the prime example of the legend. The legend is somebody who confronts an incredible adversary, one who is apparently inconceivable, and through devotion and determination, wins. Nike brand system genuinely hails from the season of the old Greeks, and there's a reason despite everything it works. This is on the grounds that the emotions that Nike plugs inspire are sentiments that all people have. The legends in Nike promoting are general heroes, paying little mind to age, race, sexual orientation, or whatever else.
Nike ads demonstrate a wide range of tore, young fellows and ladies stretching themselves as far as possible against an enemy, however what are Nike advertisements truly depicting? They're depicting you and me. Nike brand system realizes that everybody sees the saint in themselves. Nike marking comprehends that despite the fact that we aren't killing winged serpents or saving princesses, simply getting up in the morning to go to the rec center, to work, to class, or whatever else, is as trial all by itself, and Nike advertisements are everywhere on that.
Nike marking depends on a five-stage equation to truly drive the Nike promoting system home in Nike ads. Nike advertisements, with not very many special cases, take after this five stage recipe in somehow. The five stage equation in Nike publicizing is the way they demonstrate the different stages that the saint must experience so as to satisfy his journey. Nike marking essentially channels the tale of the legend, one that has been told for centuries, into Nike advertisements and watches the brand blast. Nike advertisements tend in any case somebody being the first to the test, first to the plate, the first up. This is the way Nike brand system exhibits first to the test. Nike marking then demonstrates the individual in the zone, buckling down at whatever it is they're doing, and after that comes the uncertainty and enduring. It's as of right now in Nike promotions that we are uncertain if the fundamental character is going to endure, however then Nike advertising technique kicks back in with rededication. The character rededicates herself to the objective, and achieves triumph.
On the other hand, Tommy Hilfiger that is a designer brand to offer fashion products to the consumers on a mass level. It is interesting to notice that brand competes with retail apparel brands such as GAP and Aeropostle, despite its affiliation with ‘designer’ designs. The company clearly uses self-concept and personality to the extent of massive sales as brand does not focus on one psychological aspect of its consumers as Nike does to focus on sportsmen and young players. In terms of self-concept, it is hard to interpret and understand the designer’s desire to offer oversized garments to the target consumers, as relating loose-fitting dresses with self-concept can be a subjective effort to understand the role of consumer psychology in the brand’s marketing strategy. The oversized jeans have been embraced by the rap stars and pop artists, creating a new market for singers and artists in the postmodern era. This is to say that Tommy Hilfiger understands that its target market would appreciate the changes the brand will introduce to the line, including offering low jeans. So, what Tommy Hilfiger has done is entirely different than Nike as the former focuses on the ‘manipulating’ the self-concept of its consumers, by letting them embrace new fashion as introduced by the designer label. In this manner, the brand strategy for Tommy Hilfiger is more complicated than that of Nike, which adopts sporty and straight-forward approach to match the self-concept of its consumers (Mooij, 2004).
Conclusion
As far as marketing is concerned, self-idea is as valuable as/or maybe considerably more helpful than identity and personality. Advertisers can utilize self-idea to speak to buyers to purchase items that will typically speak to the perfect self that they might endeavor to accomplish. However focusing on these buyers is just helpful if the shopper is despondent with his mental self-portrait as well as have a low self-regard. Promoting more self-idea is additionally helpful as far as brand review. The explanation for this is promoting that is like a person’s self-idea can build the level of brand review as it might speak to their mental self-portrait, level of self-regard and perhaps their optimal self.
It is interesting to see the difference between the advertisement campaigns and promotions based on the consumer’s self-concept on two fashion brands as Nike and Tommy Hilfiger. One brand focuses on improving the self-esteem of its target market, and the other tries to manipulate the self-image of its consumers. This also implies that understanding the consumer self-concept does not guarantee effective marketing strategies, as many companies lose their path to success by succumbing the self-concept and offering products or advertising them in a manner that tends to yield no positive impacts on the self-concept of the consumers, such as Tommy Hilfiger. On the other hand, Nike is well-aware of its consumers’ mind and only advertises the things that match the consumers’ self-concept of ruggedness and excitement. Tommy Hilfiger does not focus on one dimension of the self-concept/self-idea, but aims at massive sales, which requires simple marketing strategy but smart execution of the marketing plan.
REFERENCES
Mooij, M. (2004). Consumer behavior and culture. Thousand Oaks, Calif.: Sage Publications.
