Fashion Channel
The Fashion Channel is a well known cable television network dedicated to fashion only. CEO Jared Thomas founded the network in 1996 and had seen constant growth in sales, revenue and profit since its beginning. Thomas understands that in order to stay aggressive the company needs to strengthen its competitive position. Thus, Thomas hired Dana Wheeler, an expert in marketing. Dana needs to prove that her recommendations of spending more than $60 million in national and affiliate advertising, promotion, and public relations will help keep The Fashion Channel a step ahead of its closest competitors Lifetime and CNN. After Dana compiled all of the research, she and her coworkers felt that advertising was a key part of The Fashion Channel’s growth opportunity. In 2006, The Fashion Channel carried a 1.0 rating which means that on average at any given time 1,100,000 people were tuned in to The Fashion Channel. Because The Fashion Channel is solely dedicated to fashion, the ad buyers are usually more interested in buying ratings and demographics which makes those ad dollars more difficult to come by. The Fashion Channel is a niche market that caters to mostly women 18 to 74. The Fashion Channel had become successful through the 35-54 women viewers without having to articulate and detailed segmentation, branding, or positioning strategy (Stahl, 2007). Dana understood that The Fashion Channel would have to increase viewers and increase advertising pricing. In order to create a successful marketing plan, Dana Wheeler knows that the correct identification of consumer segmentation is critical to her success. Dana needs to identify and pursue the consumer groups that will bring in the most revenue over time to The Fashion Channel. Dana has created three scenarios with different consumer segmentation options. In scenario one, Dana considered maintaining a broad appeal to a cross segment of Fashionistas, Planners & Shoppers, and Situationalists. These are mostly women aged
References: Recklies, Dagmar (2001, October). What makes a good change agent? Retrieved October 13, 2008, from Management Portal Web site: http://www.themanager.org/Strategy/change_agent.htm Stahl, Wendy (2007).The fashion channel. Harvard business school publishing. 2075, 1-12. Yankelovich, Daniel, Meer David (2006 February). Harvard business review. Retrieved October 11, 2008, from Rediscovering market segmentation Web site: http://www.hbr.org/hbsp/hbr/articles/article.jsp?articleID=R0602G&ml_action=get-article&print=true