Benetton Research Paper

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1. Bargaining Power of Buyers In Porter’s Five Forces Model, the bargaining power of buyers (customers) reduces firms’ profits through price reduction by forcing companies to compete, demanding higher quality, more services and lower prices. With tremendous competition in garment industry, Benetton is facing extremely high buying power from its highly informed and price sensitive customers that can easily switch for competitors’ brands. The following characteristics of Benetton’s customers increase their buyer strength and, thus, influence company’s ability to achieve profitability: * Buyers are represented by an enormous size of consumers; * Consumers are price sensitive; * Consumers are well educated about the products; * Substitutes are available; * Buyers’ switching costs are very low; * Consumer purchases comprise very large portion of Benetton’s sales. The fact that Benetton has created a unique image associated to its brand (mainly through unconventional advertising that created specific buyer profile for open-minded people) and created lines of differentiated products, has allowed the company to become competitive in its industry. However, according to Adreiadis (2004) recent Benetton’s sales stagnation happened because it lost the “cutting edge” that differentiated its products from competing brands by changing advertising direction from “shocking institutional campaigns” that made it famous to “mass appeal” that changed brand image, which pushed their target customers to search for new brands with more defined identity. As Adreiadis (2004) recommends, Benetton must restore an element of “must have” and sense of identity and fashion to the brand in order to not allow high bargaining power of its customers to weaken company’s position further. 2. Bargaining Power of Suppliers In Porter’s Five Forces Model

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