How Did GU Win Consumers' Favor?

Yes

You may not be familiar with this brand, but its parent company is fast selling group and sister brand UNIQLO.

I am sure you are familiar with it.

In 2013, the first Chinese store opened in Huaihailu Road, Shanghai, and became the first shop outside Japan.

In August 2015, it officially entered Tmall.

Different from others

The company launched its overseas business, first made a physical store to start fame and then expanded its electricity business. GU has taken the pioneering marketing strategy of the electricity supplier for its rapid expansion. In fact, GU has only 2 entity shops in China.

As we all know, UNIQLO is characterized by the sale of basic clothing, and also has a low evaluation on the comfort of clothing.

However, its fashion has never been valued by young consumers. Young consumers rarely find their bright designs there.

This has made UNIQLO lose its fashionable consumer group, and the emergence of GU just fills this shortcoming.

So how did GU do that?

01 less exaggerated fashion

GU clothing has both fashion design and impressive highlights, but it is not overly exaggerated. It is both fashionable and elegant.

At the same time, the Japanese brand "sweet", "lovely" design elements into the clothing.

02 enhance its popularity with UNIQLO

Due to the short time to enter the Chinese market, there are some problems in operation and commodity plan, and it is a group with UNIQLO, and has directly followed its operation process and data system.

At the same time, using the brand awareness and credit of UNIQLO to help GU establish its brand, the official flagship store of GU is interrelated with UNIQLO, and one of two shops in China also chooses to build a building with UNIQLO.

03 love selling content

In the Chinese market like the cloud, GU has impressed many consumers with content marketing.

In 2015, Tmall flagship store played a "broad leg trousers" on the day of its opening, invited fashion bloggers and star celebrities to participate in the wide leg pants. At that time, GU wide leg trousers exploded in the social circle.

And this year is continuing to ferment. "5 nights 9" plays the role of the heroines strip and trousers, so that consumers can compete to imitate. The reading volume of related topics reaches 1w+.

At the same time, the "G.paper" in social media will guide consumers through clothing matching.

What do Chinese consumers think?

Crowd attributes

Among the crowd attributes, 20-29 years old accounted for the highest proportion, followed by 30-39 year old consumers.

In fast fashion, the price of UNIQLO has been counted as "close to the people", but the price of GU is lower than that of UNIQLO on average 20%~30%, and it is more fashionable, so it attracts younger generation of consumers more.

Moreover, the economic downturn has made consumers more rational, both fashionable and parity. Therefore, more and more consumers are starting to try fast fashion products like GU.

The willingness of male consumers to consume more than women shows that the MEN series of GU is also popular with consumers. If a user portrait of this part of the consumer is made, the precise delivery of its product advertising or new clothing news will help to further expand the consumer group and increase the activity of the user.

In addition, GU has launched the KIDS series, which is fashionable and cheap, and can meet the needs of consumers' parent-child dress.

Media attention: far away from UNIQLO

GU's media attention is much higher than that of UNIQLO, because GU often uses itself as a medium to guide the fashion trend.

The content marketing of wide leg pants wins the recommendation of major fashion bloggers, and then leads to the pformation and sale of goods. This makes GU a lot of trial and error. They try to fashion a column G.paper, and even open a full content channel plan. From the perspective of consumers, they plan hot topics to increase the brand exposure rate, such as the recent "caution!"

In order to continue to expand the brand effect, Oyang Nana signed a new star in the first half of the year.

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However, the GU search index is still low, indicating that the consumer's brand awareness is not high. Although it has attracted the attention of the media, it still needs further efforts to plate into consumer brand recognition.

Consumers now pay more and more attention to store experience. If we can give consumers more experience opportunities, we believe that there will be further breakthroughs.

Consumer attitudes

Micro-blog public opinion keyword cloud shows that consumers have a better overall evaluation of GU's clothing. According to some online data, consumers are more satisfied with the style, price and store service of GU, and have the trend of anti UNIQLO. This shows that GU has caught the needs of young consumers, and only pay attention to cultivating them into loyal consumers, which will be very conducive to the long-term development.

Conclusion:

GU insists on its unique brand personality, and makes "freer fashion" as the brand concept, striving to make consumers free to enjoy fashion through fashion costumes, people's price and reassuring quality, and more importantly, it satisfies the appeal of young consumers.

In XXX group, the brand and UNIQLO just complement each other.

In the current market environment, GU has adopted a more conservative measure. It is reported that GU has 315 stores in Japan, but there are only 2 in the country.

In terms of the current performance in China, although there has been a slight achievement in the past two years, if the next effort is made in China, will it be another scene? We will wait and see.