In response to my classmate, Taylor Fabbi’s Blog post on “Holt Renfrew for the holidays”, she mentioned the luxurious products that Holt Renfrew sells and the store holds a prestige brand image. However, she argues that Holt Renfrew is trying to reach out to a broader target market of customers, by firstly promoting the holiday season of Christmas by decorating the department store with a “northern noel” christmas theme. Secondly, making their windows interactive to captivate consumers to target their attitudes to make them FEEL like they are a part of Holt Renfrew.

Not only does Holt Renfrew have to worry about attracting new customer, they have to maintain and keep their potential customers because earlier this year, in the central shopping district of Vancouver Downtown, Sears was shutdown in summer. Nordstorm, a primary competitor of Holt Renfrew is opening in Sears’ old location. Much like Nordstorm, Holt Renfrew being a high-end Canadian department store means competition is coming its way. However, from a customer’s perspective, this is good news as we now have a broader variety of choice when shopping and more accessible products from both stores.

Despite Nordstorm hasn’t even opened for business yet, Holt Renfrew has already taken actions new promotional acts in response to the emergence of a new competitor. Holt Renfrew has been actively promoting itself to attempt to retain their current customers by increasing sales and promotions to attract buyers with lower income to captivate a wider range of customers. Holt Renfrew is currently pushing strongly on their promotion for Black Friday, of a sale up to 40% on selective items.

Further promotional strategies Holt Renfrew are acting upon is gaining customer informations, such as asking for customer’s phone number and name after a purchase in the store to keep record. With this information, they can now use social media to send mass emails of their upcoming promotions or a $10 discount card if you refer a friend for example. Overall, both firms excellent but Holt Renfrew is taking strong actions to gain a competitive advantage over Nordstorm before their opening while they have the opportunity to do so at the moment.

Talyor Fabbi’s Blog Link: https://blogs.ubc.ca/taylorfabbi/