Ch. 8 – Segmenting and Targeting Markets

In order to really succeed in the fierce game of competition that constitutes business today, smart companies must understand exactly what kind of consumers their target customers really are. To accurately understand the identity of these customers many companies use market segmentation. Market segmentation is aggressively implemented by today’s top market researchers to help companies understand, as well as possible, the various potential sections of their consumer base.

Vogue Magazine has adopted its target markets based on geo-demographic segmentation indicating that those who are truly interested in fashion and beauty are most likely upper class women. The contents of Vogue don’t just deal with beauty and aesthetic concerns, but also addresses the topics of contemporary art and social issues as they concern the specific target market of upper class women.

To answer increasingly diverse customer demands and accommodate expanding markets, Vogue has worked hard towards publishing editions in 18 countries around the world. These various editions are written in the target geo-demographic native language of each target region. Vogue has also diversified magazine content in new editions aimed at emerging segments of the market via publications such as Teen Vogue, Vogue Living, and Vogue Entertainment + Travel. Furthermore, each country’s respective Vogue office continues to establish even more target market specific editions of Vogue within those various countries, that cater to the unique needs and demands of their own even more region specific local domestic consumer types. This ensures that Vogue Magazine reaches more and more readers in countless market niches the world over as market researchers continue to better understand the millions of potential customers waiting out there, along their varied and uniquely diverse consumer needs. 

Ch. 11 – Developing and Managing Products

 

Many companies pour great energy into new products that maintain growth, and increase revenues and profits. New product strategies allow companies more competitive positions in the markets.

In order to satisfying customer needs, companies must continue putting new products out to customers either with tangible products or intangible products. Along these lines of thinking Vogue magazine has developed invisible ways to reach new customers such as expending their market position and also target marketing.

Conde Montrose Nast originally offered the new-product line ‘Vogue’ to the public over a century ago. The results were both tremendous and very sensational. More recently, Vogue magazine has continuously been developing their new intangible assets, the editors. For example, documentaries about Vogue magazine that showcase and highlight these highly skilled female editors have been made numerous times. Consumers continue to take a way each month the wisdom, experience, and enthusiasm Vogue magazine continues to offers from the heart of its 17 exceptionally skilled editors which will each contribute their own thoughts and writings to the collectors edition Vogue culture book soon to be published in celebration of the magazines 120^th anniversary.

Regardless of it being a women’s fashion magazine, Vogue allots much effort to introducing explorations into diverse and rich cultural interests such as music, art, drama and even philosophy. Not only does Vogue magazine trail blaze into other cultures and regions with decisive, thoughtful editorials of growing global connectivity while instigating deeper and deeper cross cultural customer demand, it also is exposes new thinking and invaluable information to customers who base their lives and careers on the fashion industries continued vitality. Thus Vogue magazine fights very hard and with great dedication to maintain strong relationships with its loyal customers while also actively expanding its influence and market presence into more new directions every month. 

Ch. 16 - Integrated Marketing Communications

In order to really maintain successful market presence, products and services must make effective use of promotional strategies. A good promotional strategy constitutes an optimal combination of advertising, public relations, personal selling, and sales promotion. The primary goal of promotional strategy is to give products and services a competitive advantage over the competition.

Vogue Magazine has invested consistently over the years in both advertising and public relations in order to firmly establish and maintain their persistently effective promotional strategy. Through a diverse regimen of advertising that has included newspapers, magazines, direct mail, billboards, transit cards, and more recently web sites and blogs, Vogue has persistently raised customer awareness of its hard copy and on line publications. Most recently, Vogue has been revamping word-of-mouth PR concepts by creating a network of over 1,000 top fashion and beauty experts who closely follow trends in consumer preference and online activity. These insiders operate as a sort of international focus group network that shares valuable thoughts on new collections, Vogue events, and product samples with their own respective audiences and also with other interconnected networks of fashion minded consumers. 

Through continued campaigns to fund, promote, and organize diverse fashion events the world over, not to mention continued activism in supporting young talent and various charity efforts, Vogue’s PR regimen has proven highly valuable in keeping the magazine’s overall reputation at the top end of public opinion. At the heart of Vogue’s PR success lies the culturally open, participatory nature of these programs. Fashion royalty such as top designers and celebrities are often brought together at these events with younger designers, students, and even underprivileged youth aiming at careers in fashion and fashion journalism.

Sales promotion efforts through long term subscription discounts, promotional gift items, and other customer incentives also help garner quick surges in overall sales for Vogue.

These three components of Vogue’s promotional strategy play critically important roles in the magazine’s overarching marketing communication system. By operating as effective tools of mass communication at many levels of the consumer market, advertising, public relations, and sales promotion push through to a vastly diverse array of customer “receivers” who help propel Vogue to consistently high levels of market success, a testament to the continuing flexibility and effective impact of the magazine’s dynamic marketing communication strategies.

Ch. 10 - Product Concept

A product is most often thought about as something physically tangible that the consumer owns and possesses such as a car, phone, or article of clothing. The true meaning of a product however is far more all encompassing and often includes less tangible examples such as ideas, services or even entire lifestyle or professional philosophies. The seemingly endless product concepts out there all fall under a specific product type classification meaning they can each be identified as a business product, consumer product, convenience product, shopping product, or specialty product. Vogue Magazine is somewhat unique in that it can be identified as almost all of these product types depending on who buys the magazine and for what purpose they use it. It is a business product in that it functions to perpetuate further sales through advertising and promotion of countless fashion and beauty goods. It is a consumer product because it satisfies individual wants and needs for many buyers. It is a convenience product in that it is inexpensive and calls for little shopping effort, and also in some cases a specialty product since many consumers rely specifically on Vogue for new fashion trends while often accepting no other magazine as a substitute. This clearly demonstrates the broad market appeal and unique flexibility Vogue has developed as a consumer product over the many years it has been in print.

Part of what keeps Vogue so firmly established as such a multifaceted product across the market is its iconic branding. For over a hundred years Vogue has grown exponentially thanks to the hard work of several gifted individuals that steered Vogue towards international recognition as a brand name in the fashion industry that continues to be an unflinching standard of excellence. This has built up tremendous brand loyalty on the part of Vogue readers and also from the many fashion and beauty businesses that work with vogue to perpetuate a high level of business synergy that keeps up the market buzz and excitement around both their products and Vogue Magazine. There is no doubt that the still expanding global branding strategies of Vogue will help maintain its strong position in the fashion market. As the fashion trade and developing economies continue to tighten mutually beneficial business futures there is little doubt that Vogue will expand its international branding presence even further into the global fashion arena.  

Ch. 18 - Sales Promotion and Personal Selling

Through sales promotion efforts a business can very quickly boost its profits by offering customers short-term incentives to purchase goods right away rather than waiting until later on to buy. Specific tools many businesses employ in their sales promotion strategies include coupons, rebates, frequent buyer programs, premiums, and sampling, but to name a few. 

The cover price for a single issue of Vogue magazine at the newsstand is currently 4 dollars, while for 20 dollars a full year’s subscription to both the digital online version and hard copy of the magazine can be purchased, coming to about 1.60 an issue. For 15 dollars a hard copy subscription alone can be purchased. Yet with the rising popularity of tablet readers along with easy internet accessibility to the full magazine, a notable surge in dual media subscribers has kept Vogue’s overall profit and growth surprisingly high these past years. By expanding the loyalty marketing technique of yearly, and often multi year subscriptions while continuing to expand and promote online marketing, Vogue is continuing to succeed in the face of declining customer loyalty and increasing difficulty to sell hard copies all across the magazine industry.       

Vogue also makes use of strategic sampling in an effort to broaden its loyal customer base. Free six month and even full year subscriptions of vogue are often packaged together with expensive cosmetics sets, certain perfume sales, and other beauty products. This arrangement can greatly benefits both Vogue and the partner beauty product company as customers will very often pay to further extend their subscriptions which in turn heavily advertise the various beauty products that introduce the magazine to customers to begin with. 

In contrast to sales promotion methods, which work well along side advertising to sell a basic, standardized product to a large customer base, personal selling focuses on more complex, highly specialized products that appeal to a very small, particular segment of the market. Products such airplane engines or prosthetic limbs would call for personal selling. Vogue magazine though relies almost entirely on advertising and sales promotion to reach its clientele, and not on personal selling. The fact that Vogue magazine has a relatively low value per issue, is a standardized product (on a monthly release basis), and has customers dispersed across very wide geographic areas means that advertising and sales promotion work especially well for its business model.

Ch. 17 - Advertising and Public Relations

Advertising plays a critical role in the success of most any business. Companies use advertising both to push their way into the market at a business's initial inception, and also to maintain market awareness and keep steady the brand's overall market presence.

 

By 1909 Vogue Magazine had already been in print for over twenty years. But it was from that same year that the Vogue Magazine we know today really began to take shape. In 1909 American publishing mogul Conde Nast took the reins of what had been a faltering magazine that was beginning to loose money for its major investors. Through the highly agressive PR and advertising campaigns Conde Nast brought to the center of his business agenda, Vogue was able to establish by mid 20th century an unbreakable foot hold as a de facto leader in the international fashion arena. Thanks to Nast's sustained advertizing efforts which catered primarily to wealthy, culturally conscious American elites, Vogue continues to reap very substantial market rewards even today. This is an excellent example of pioneer advertising, or advertising which stimulates across the market primary demand for a new product or service. As an innovator and trend setter in women's fashion journalism, in effect the first major fashion publication of it's kind, Vogue Magazine exemplifies pioneer advertising and continues year by year to reap the benefits of Conde Nast's agressive PR and advertising regimen which began to set things in motion for Vogue over a hundred years ago.

 
 Over these Past ten years all of Vogues many region specific editions have established very well designed multi-faceted web sites which continue to feature countless promotional events (both online and at brick and mortar venues) along with regularly updated fashion news and recent Vogue developments.

 
 Each year the Vogue September issue continues to attract more and more high fashion advertisers to its glossy pages, filling more pages every year with eye catching advertising regimens from all across the fashion world which greatly boosts Vogue's overall revenue. This past September's long-awaited Vogue Issue boasted over 900 pages, a veritable Bible of recent trends, fashion developments, and glamorous fanfare for readers all over the world. By building up the September issue's mystique and media buzz year after year, Vogue has created a roller coaster phenomenon that pulls the fashion world into its inescapable gravity with increasing vigor every Fall season without fail.