https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2TJU1r2mazU

Fun aside, Abercrombie and Fitch is a retailer who is greatly involved in the unethical marketing technique called select marketing, in which it decides who should and should not wear their brand. A&F markets and sells their clothing to people who they believe are “conventionally beautiful,” which basically translates into “we only sell clothing that thin people can wear because we believe that they are more beautiful than larger people.”  If you look at A&F’s size chart on their website, women’s sizes XL and XXL do not exist; and the largest size for tops is a 10, while their bottoms range from a size 10 – 12.  This is just blatant market exclusion, which leads me into my next point: how A&F’s unethical marketing exclusion is actually a detriment to their current and future sales.

In the previous year, plus-size clothing was worth $17 billion in sales – sales that Abercrombie and Fitch were not receiving due to their exclusiveness.  Who were those retailers receiving those sales?  Two of their biggest competitors – H&M and American Eagle. Both of these retailers have followed the demographics of the clothing market and have realized that the trend of the average dress size has increased from a size 8 to a size 14.  As a result, H&M introduced a plus-sized line for women, while American Eagle now provides sizes up to XXL for both men AND  women. However, it’s not just the clothing market which has started to try to break this trend of market exclusivity; Dove started their “Campaign for Real Beauty” to widen society’s definition of what is beautiful.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XpaOjMXyJGk

With the current trend of the average clothing size increasing, I believe that Abercrombie and Fitch are inhibiting their own sales by selling their merchandise to an exclusive market which is shrinking.  The market is constantly changing, and if retailers such as A&F do not adapt, then they will not be able to reap the additional sales and lose out on potential profit.