A Study of how Repeat Customers can Affect Brand Image in the Fashion Industry

Abstract: The fashion industry is one of the most exciting and fast-moving industries in the worldand the companies within the fashion industry are driven by the reputation of their brand.(Hines and Bruce, 2001) Some celebrities and athletes use their names as a label so that the wearer associates the clothes with the person, and therefore that brand takes on the image of the celebrity. This research is concentrated on the customers of a particular fashion company, Björn Borg. In the fashion industry, it is not only important who is wearing the brand, but also who is not wearing the brand, which leads to the aim of this paper: Can a company sacrifice its brand image if it holds on to all of its customers,including those outside of its target market? From our research, we were able to draw the following conclusions: The customers within the target group associate the brand with some of the characteristics of customers outside the target group and, thus, the image of Björn Borg is slightly different from what the company would like their image to be. Our analysis reveals that there are many who associate the brand with older people. In a way, the older customers may influence the younger ones into thinking the brand is for an older age group. Also, many associate the brand with the “average joe” and with the tennis player despite the efforts of the company to create a special brand, not average, that stands apart from the tennis player, Björn Borg. Therefore, our study indicates that a company can sacrifice brand image if it holds on to all customers including those outside their target market.