Marketing Analysis Of Lululemon Athletica
The analysis of the 4 Ps of marketing namely, Product, Price, Place and Promotion of the famous Canadian Athletic Apparel retailer, Lululemon Athletica reveals that this brand is yoga inspired and sells products that are basically for yoga, running, fitness training, swimming & other sweaty pursuits. This brand offers a wide range of products under apparels and accessories for men, women and girls to satisfy the need of the customers looking for good quality products that matches the need of the people engaged in physical workout. For example, this brand provides women with stylish gears that they can wear while workout or even when they are going out for lunch. The Prices of the products offered by Lululemon are generally high because of their superior quality and stylish look. Lululemon believes that it offers a significant value to its customer and therefore it prices them accordingly. For example, the Lululemon wears range from $40-$200 (approximately).
Lululemon products are available in a limited variety in their stores or the customers can place online orders at its official websites only. Lululemon has good public relations and therefore it helps in promoting the new products offered by the brand. Moreover, it always launches its products with improved and upgraded fabrics due to which its customers are willing to buy its products even if they have to pay more for it.
The SWOT analysis of Lululemon reveals that the strength of Lululemon is the high-quality products that it offers to its customers with improved material with every new launch whereas its weakness is that the products provided by the brand are quite expensive, not affordable by everyone. Lululemon has its presence over 415 locations worldwide but it has maximum stores (335) in Canada and United States only. Therefore, it is lagging behind from its competitors in terms of international expansion to reach the potential customers around the globe and hence this describes it has the opportunity to study the markets in different countries and expand accordingly. Companies like Under Armour, Puma, Nike, Abercrombie & Fitch, etc. have always been a threat to Lululemon as its potential competitors provide almost same variety of products and services more effectively and efficiently than Lululemon.
Furthermore, the five external factors also affect the business of Lululemon. Considering the competitiveness factor, competitors like Under Armour, Puma, Nike, etc. can affect the business of Lululemon by attracting its customers by providing better products and services than Lululemon. Further, regulatory factors may include Competition Act by Federal legislation that maintains and encourages Competitions along with preventing businesses from anti competitive practices and hence Lululemon can perform more efficiently.
Economic factors like Inflation in the economy of nation can have adverse effect where the prices of the products offered by Lululemon will increase, simultaneously the purchasing power of customers may decrease, hence slowing down the rate of sales and profits of the brand. Social factors like values, beliefs and attitudes of the customers can affect the business of Lululemon. Basically, Lululemon offers physical workout wears and gears, its business can grow more efficiently if more and more people have a positive attitude towards fitness maintenance. Lululemon would get a great proportion of consumers in its target market. The technological factors like smart clothing, that can track the pulse rate as well as monitor the emotions like that introduced by Nadi X Yoga Pants can affect the performance of Lululemon where the customers can get more attracted towards the latest technical wears. Moreover, Lululemon can also work on providing wears and gears with updated technology and materials.
