Marketing Strategy and Competitive Positioning pdf ebook

CHAPTER 6
Luxury fashion group to 
target millennials with 
‘flash’ events and online 
collections
Moncler, the luxury goods com-
pany behind €1,000 puffa jackets, 
is closing its twice-yearly catwalk 
shows as smartphones revolution-
ise the industry with consumers 
clamouring to see new fashions 
more frequently online.
The decision by Remo Ruffini, 
founder and chief executive of 
Moncler, who in 10 years turned 
Moncler from a bombed-out 
French skiwear brand into a com-
pany with a market value of near 
€6bn, also will result in the exit 
of designers Thom Browne and 
Giambattista Valli.
In an interview with the 
Financial Times, Mr Ruffini, 56, said the pair had 
done ‘an amazing job’ in the past eight years but 
consumers’ changing shopping habits meant he 
needed ‘a new and different energy’.
After ending the Gamme Rouge and Gamme Bleu 
catwalk shows following this winter’s collections, 
Mr Ruffini said his biggest stores would become the 
venues for more frequent launches of new designs, 
as often as every two months.
‘I believe in creating a new energy for the con-
sumer at the sales points and communicating as 
fast as possible,’ said Mr Ruffini at Moncler’s newly 
Moncler scraps catwalk shows for the social 
media generation
By Rachel Sanderson in Milan
Instead of fashion shows, Moncler will stage one-off spectacular events that target
social media
Source
: © Reuters.

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141
INTRODUCTION
Introduction 
The attractiveness of opportunities open to a firm depends on the resources available to 
exploit them. Organisational resources include both tangible and intangible assets, capa-
bilities and competences. This is the base from which organisations build their competi-
tive position, and any marketing strategy needs to be firmly grounded in these resources. 
Strategies that are not built on resource strength are unlikely to be sustainable in the longer 
term, and under-utilised resources represent potential wastage. To succeed in a particular 
market, the firm will need specific resources – the key factors for success in that market. 
If it does not have these, or cannot acquire them, the strategy is likely to fail at the imple-
mentation stage. 
This chapter is structured around the following issues, which provide a framework for 
assessing organisational resources: 
● 
the role of marketing resources in creating differentiation;
● 
insights from the resource-based view (RBV) of the firm, and in particular the more 
recent emphasis on dynamic capabilities;
● 
creating and exploiting marketing assets;
● 
deploying dynamic marketing capabilities;
● 
developing and exploiting the resource portfolio.
This is shown schematically in Figure 6.1 , starting from the most general issues and 
moving progressively to the more specific.
opened flagship store in Milan, which is designed to 
feel like an Alpine chalet. 
Instead of fashion shows, Moncler will stage one-
off spectacular events that target social media. The 
group is holding a ‘flash art’ event in Hong Kong 
this week, which will see 12,000 Moncler mascots in 
different locations around the city. The event has 
been organised with Instagram and other social 
media in mind. 
Mr Ruffini said he was also considering plans to 
create the ‘kind of energy’ found in upscale multi-
brand stores such as Los Angeles-based Maxfield 
and London’s Dover Street Market, ‘where you 
find designers one next to another’. Nonetheless, 
he denied market speculation he plans to acquire 
luxury rivals. 
Mr Ruffini, a university drop out, built Moncler’s 
success by spotting the trend for luxury casual wear. 
‘Casualisation’ is one of the main trends driving 
growth in the €250bn luxury industry, according to 
Bain & Company. 
The move by Moncler follows a week of C-suite 
turmoil across the industry as brands seek new 
managers to adapt their businesses to millennial 
and Generation Z shoppers, who it is estimated will 
make up nearly half of luxury consumers by 2025. 
LVMH, the world’s largest luxury goods group, last 
week announced the exit of Sidney Toledano, long-
time chief executive at Dior, to bring in Fendi chief 
Pietro Beccari; at Italy’s Tod’s, billionaire founder 
Diego Della Valle handed over operational manage-
ment to former LVMH and Bulgari manager Umberto 
Macchi di Cellere; and Swiss group Richemont ele-
vated Jerome Lambert to chief operating officer 
and named Emmanuel Perrin, a former director at 
Cartier, as head of distribution for its watch brands. 
Mr Ruffini says one of the biggest tests for the 
industry is adapting to the Chinese social media 
platform WeChat, where shopping is integrated 
within the chat platform. If technology in the US 
and Europe is moving fast, ‘in China they are going 
incredibly fast,’ he said. 
Source : from ‘Moncler scraps catwalk shows for the social media generation’, Financial Times , 13/11/17 (Sanderson, R.).
Discussion questions
1 
Why is Moncler closing its twice-yearly catwalk?
2 
What have been, and are, the implications for the company’s resources?

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