Abercrombie and Fitch is a clothing retail company that focuses on casual wear for customers aged 18-22, Recently, A&F has been critizised for not offering size XL and XXL in women’s collections,

Confronted with the clothing size problem, Mike Jeffries, CEO and Chairman for Abercrombie & Fitch, respond that they:” only attract cool American kids with a great attitude and a lot of friends….You don’t alienate anybody, but you don’t excite anybody, either.”

Jeffries then went on to say about his employees, “we hire good-looking people in our stores. Because good-looking people attract other good-looking people, and we want to market to cool, good-looking people. We don’t market to anyone other than that,”

These arguments bring up a major issue of ethics, brand association and poor perceived value.

Brand association reflect Mental links that a customer make between a brand and its key product attrbutes, Firms always want to develop a good personality for their brands, A&F in this case, trying to build a cool, friendly and good healthy skinny look to their customers, which they think will attract more potential young customers who wish to be like that. However, Jeffries have touch the bottom line of ethics issue that his speech about cool kids at school may hurt the feeling of their potential young customers, who is the typical not- so-cool kids but loves their clothes. A&F have also build a poor perceived value to their young customers that Jeff’s speech might catalyzed an ouslaught of disapprocal from unpopular costmers. The negative affect from the quote will not only drive down sales for A&F, but also give them a poor reput