Market Research: Compare and Contrast

After doing market research and looking at stores from High End, Middle and Low/Mass markets it had given me a greater understanding into what garments I need to design and also the quality in which the production and fabrics of my garments need to have in order to fit into my chosen market.


When looking at the low/mass market stores/brands, like Glassons, Supre and Dotti, I can see that these clothes are targeted to a broad range of people meaning that they use less quality fabrics and finishing to keep costs down in order to have an extensive range of clothes in their stores. In contrast, the high end stores/brands, such as Kate Sylvester, Zambesi and Starfish, have a much smaller clientele, allowing them to have less range that is extremely high quality in terms of fabrics and finishing details. This makes the clothing more expensive and of high quality which appeals to their market and targeting customers who value the lifetime of clothes and like to keep an item for a long amount of time.


Low/mass market stores have a younger clientele who are more interested in cheap, on trend clothing that just get thrown away as soon as a new trend/season comes in. Because of this the brands have the ability to choose cheap fabrics etc and instead focus their costs on having bigger stores, in more places to fit all of their stock in. Compare this to the high end stores who have smaller and less shops but high quality, high value stock made from beautiful and expensive fabrics.


Stores/brands in the middle market, such as Country Road, Witchery and Max have bits of both low/mass markets and high end markets coming through into their shops and clothing. They tend of have some garments which are made from less quality fabrics to appeal to their lower market clientele, much like the low/mass market, but also in the same store have garments which are of higher quality but still quite affordable for the market they are in. The shop sizes of the middle market brands are similar size, if not smaller than low/mass market but have less stock, much like the high end stores. 


Overall, all the stores I visited have one thing in common. This is the fact that no matter what market they are in, low/mass, middle or high end, all brands have their own identity which is reflected through their stores and clothes and they all have a huge understanding of the target market clientele.