Sunshine, surfing boards, and sexy models are things immediately pop up when we mention the American apparel brand Abercrombie& Fitch. Its marketing strategy is using hot models to attract hot customers, which has made huge profit. While at the same time, discriminations on body and appearance take place, which violate business ethics and trigger criticism.
The CEO Mike Jeffries once commented that people who weren’t good-looking should not wear A&F. He refused to manufacture women clothes larger than size 10 and L. This exclusive marketing strategy does attract many teenagers who are hot or want to be popular, however, it also loses lots of consumers who are in relatively bigger size. This marketing encourages division between people, and things like bullying and bias are likely to occur, especially deal with immature kids. People may argue that it’s only an apparel brand, but it creates disconnection and affects values and unison of the society.
In 2013, A&F fired an employee who refused to take off hijab during work time, and this scandal made the sales dropped by 10% comparing with the last quarter. This shows that discrimination also exists on employees. A&F invests money in hiring good-looking models standing in the stores more than needed instead of advertising its clothing. As a former brand representative in A&F, I notice that most sales are inexperienced and some even have bad attitudes towards customers, thus hurt the reputation and working effectiveness.
Overall, under economist Milton Friedman’s opinion, A&F is a successful company because it maximizes profit. However, as Jeffries’ mean comments were reported, consumers began to lose interest in this brand. The sales/revenue has decreased from 4.16b to 3.52b since 2012 and is experiencing a declining trend. In a microeconomic perspective, demand decreases and A&F has to increase discount to solve the surplus. This phenomenon reveals that the public does care about morals rather than just being ignorantly fashionable. A&F should apologize for its discrimination and change marketing plans in exchange of long-term profit. More importantly, the society should gain conscious on embracing each other rather than emphasizing the gap.
Source: CNN
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