Student’s Name
Institutional Affiliation
Observation Paper: Macy’s Store
The store visited for this paper is a Macy’s store, a fashion and clothing franchise line. The store stocks and sells products that appeal across the divide of all ages. However, the store is sensitive on the youth consumerism and has a number of strategies and messages to appeal to this demographic. According to Macy’s Store (n.d), the store has a customer base of all demographics, but with the young elite adults being dominant loyal consumers. The ability of organizations to capture the attention of the consumers, especially younger consumers are an advantage in the competitive environment (Blackwell, 2006). This is the main reason why Macy’s store includes promotional features and messages for the youth, despite being a general store that does not specifically target the youth.
Despite the sale of cloths and fashion products that appeal across the demographics, the store makes deliberate efforts to appeal to parents and children as well as the teenagers. The store has promotional messages that target the parents through the appeal of the children. For instance, the store includes gift packs for some of the products it sells, targeted to parents, while the gift packs targets the children and teenagers. In addition, the store tries to appeal to all generations through their promotions and arrangements at their premises. Even though the physical arrangements of fashion products at the stores are highly appealing, they are able to establish a normal attraction of the attention of both the old and the young.
Consumerism plays a significant role in the life of the youth in modern marketing and consumption environment. Consumerism protects the youth from untruthful and extremely appealing promotional messages from stores and suppliers. Moreover, consumerism gives the youth awareness to differentiate the extremes of promotional messages by the stores and their consumption needs. To the young people, consumerism means the measures that the government and consumer agencies put across to prevent them from getting fancy and extreme information on products; it means this because they do not understand the need for their protection from stores and manufacturers. In relation to the Macy’s Store, their promotional messages reflect what they really sell and do not exceed the limits of consumerism.
The store seems to affect the youth through the life aspect of fashion. As a fashion store, the store stands at the main aspect of life that directly relates to the modern youth. According to Foxall (2005), the modern consumer, especially the young people change their tastes and preferences as the fashion and trends in the market changes. Through the understanding of the changes in the market trends and the preferences of younger people, stores have strategies and promotional plans that are targeted at getting the choice of the trendy age group. Therefore, the store tries to appeal to the youth by stocking products that are meant to attract the young people.
The stores are designed, attractive messages to the youth to woo them to the stores. In particular, the stores prepare messages that link their products to the activities for the youth. For instance, they use sports people to label their fashion products, so that the clothing lines can invoke the love for various sports loved by the youth. For Macy’s store, it uses models to advertise their products. This way, the youth cannot escape the coolness appeal that comes along with the messages.
References
Blackwell, M. (2006). Consumer Behaviour (10th Ed.). New York: Thomson Learning
Foxall, G. (2005). Understanding Consumer Choice. London: Baingstoke. Palgrave Macmillian,
Macy’s Store, Retrieved From, <http://www1.macys.com> June 2, 2014,