Brands must keep up with current trends for survival

Fashion can be a definitive factor for brands as they try to keep up with ever changing social trends, with a single shift in what is trendy able to change a market at speed, as has been proven by the world’s razor makers as they have faced declining sales caused by the resurgence of beards.

“The number of times some men are shaving is decreasing,” said a Proctor and Gamble spokeswoman in an interview to American financial new website, The Street, as she explained the continued decrease in sale of its grooming products in 2015.

Proctor and Gamble, which controls 60 per cent of the global grooming products market, according to business magazine, Fortune.com, reported a 10 per cent decline in sales for the three months ended March 31, 2016. It owns shaving companies Gillette and Braun.

For brands seeking to ride the change, “the best way for an industry to survive in the market in this age is by understanding the media the people consume,” said Odanga Madung, the data science lead at Odipo Dev, an analytics firm.

“Consumers tend to follow, or, rather, they are influenced by celebrities that they like, or by what they see on social media. So if a company wants to have authority in a market, they need to design/ influence what people wear or use by extensive research and development in your target market interests at that moment. The manufacturer needs to hook the consumer with their products while at the same time monitoring the current trends in order to always stay in the lead.”

In this, the decline in men’s grooming industry is not a unique case, with the women’s hair products industry also now suffering a slump following the revival of natural hair.

Black women opting to keep their hair natural instead of straightening it using chemicals has led to an 18.6 per cent drop in relaxer sales from 2013 to 2015, according to a research titled “Black Consumers and Haircare-US” by marketing research firm, Mintel.

In this case, too, “the target market is key”, said Odanga. “ If the target market is millennials, you need to understand the characteristics of this market: they are consumers who constantly follow thus their purchase decisions are influenced by the latest trend, so if a brand is late to respond to a particular trend, they will face a decline.”

However, fashion is not the only player in market sustainability, price can also lead to industries adopting alternative options in order to survive in a changing market.

A case in point is the oil industry, following the recent slump in oil prices; conglomerates have seen a sharp drop in their financial fortunes, with many of them reporting huge losses.

This has led to them looking for alternative ways to survive in the market, increasing their investments in new technologies and renewable energies, which they have been against for years.

An example is Shell, which has now invested $1.7 bn in forming a new company division aimed specifically at developing renewable energy and low carbon power, while Total has spent $1bn buying a battery manufacturer, Saft.

It has also bought a majority share in a leading solar company, SunPower.

This is a change in marketing strategy by the oil companies in a bid to survive in a dynamic market. “The international oil companies cannot assume that, as in the past, all they need to survive is wait for crude prices to resume an upward direction,” said Prof Paul Stevens, a senior researcher at Chatam House thinktank and the author of the paper, International Oil companies: The Death of Old Business Model in an interview with Climate News Network.

“The oil markets are going through fundamental structural changes driven by a technological revolution and geopolitical shifts. The old cycle of lower prices followed by higher prices can no longer be assumed to be applicable.”

Thus, as fashion and prices on products continue to change, the survival of producers themselves will continue to depend on their skill in adapting what they produce in order to survive the market.

-African Laughter