Introduction
I.AM.GIA was founded in 2017 by Alana Pallister. Pallister’s idea came about when she thought of Gia Carangi being the first supermodel in her generation. This inspired Pallister to create a ‘virtual character’ to model her clothing brand and to be the name of her new trendy clothing brand (Kim Duong, 9th Nov 2017).
Target Market
I.AM.GIA has a young target market as the likes of Bella Hadid, Selena Gomez and Kylie Jenner are seen to be in the new trendy clothing brand. Pallister made sure that the clothing range would be affordable for young people to purchase which is why all I.AM.GIA’s garments are under $150. To ensure that Pallister was to target the young, she made sure that it was a heavy social media brand which took a hit with the celebrities within the first six months of the business. Below show two typical persona’s;
Customer Journey and Touchpoints
Website analysis
I.AM.GIA’s website has the latest trends that are shown through individual bold pictures on their home page. The website uses neutral colours throughout with bold writing making it easy to use for consumers. The categories are listed at the top of the website which avoids consumers having to scroll through all items to find a particular item. As I.AM.GIA was originally founded in Australia, all items when going into the ‘checkout’ page automatically turns into the Australian Dollar. For example, a coat on the site will say £63 GBP then will change to $110 AUD. This may cause customer’s confusion when purchasing an item as they may believe that they have to pay more than the original £63 due to the bank charging an exchange rate fee.
Missguided and Pretty Little Thing (PLT) were compared to I.AM.GIA’s website. Missguided and PLT were almost identical to each other as they both used bold colours, promotion list at the top of the page and even listed all social media sites such as Facebook, Instagram, Twitter, Youtube etc. The main difference that was discovered between Missguided and PLT compared to I.AM.GIA’s website was the lack of plus sized models. I.AM.GIA does not offer customers a plus size range and all models are seen to be very thin. This can be seen as a negative, as today’s society is encouraging big retail brands to release plus size ranges. This is mainly due to many unhappy customers that are above size 16 saying that they found it hard to find fashionable clothing (Rose Otieno, Chris Harrow, Gaynor Lea-Greenwood 2005). I.AM.GIA also have a page on the website which is dedicated to their Instagram page with the #IAMGIA on every photo. However, they have not publicised any other social media accounts that they have.
Overall, I.AM.GIA has many of the same website features of its competitors (Missguided and PLT) as they all adopt iconic fashion trends, easy to use websites and places where customers can back to purchase items which is known as a wishlist. However, the main difference is the fact that I.AM.GIA does not have a plus size range meaning that they could potentially lose out on these particular customers which will end up on their competitor’s sites. Looking at these three websites it is clear that they all have a young target market due to the style of clothing, pricing and the way the website is set up. Below is a Youtube site which shows 12 eCommerce marketing strategies tips which would most certainly help I.AM.GIA’s website page.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7HgGiCK33ow
References
- InStyle (2018) [Online] <https://www.instyle.com/news/i-am-gia-label-designer-interview> [accessed 14/11/2018]
- eCommerce Marketing Strategies – 12 Killer Tips, 2017 (Video File) Available from: <https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7HgGiCK33ow> [Accessed on 10/12/2018]
- Otieno, R., Harrow, C. and Lea-Greenwood, G. (2005). The Unhappy Shopper, a retail experience: Exploring fashion, fit and affordability. International Journal of Retail & Distribution Management [Online] 33 (4), pp. 298-309. Available at https://www.emeraldinsight.com/doi/abs/10.1108/09590550510593220 [Accessed 08/12/2018]
