The Customer Insight

We are going to answer in this part who are the customers of The Kooples and Benetton. What are their key purchase drivers? what do they want to appear as?

The Kooples customers:

         The Kooples is a French brand created by the sons of the fashion designers of Comptoir des Cotonniers. The Kooples has really well interpreted the success of its mentor and reused it to create a new brand at the top of the fashion. When the Comptoir des Cotonniers has created clothes collections that mothers and daughters could lend to each other, The Kooples has concentrated on that couples who can exchange their wardrobes. Indeed, in a world in which the barriers between the two sexes are disappearing, The Kooples has created blazers for woman or cardigans for men. The brand is strongly linked to the British rock culture and to the renewal of the vintage.

The Kooples targets the urban youth with top of the fashion clothes with a top of the range positioning. The 25 to 35 are its core targets but the brand touché also people from 15 years old! Actually, since its launch in 2008, The Kooples has become the new phenomenon of the fashion in France. As its clothes, the targets of the brand are asexual. The gay community, for example, that is known to be healthy and interested in fashion, has become one of the main targets of The Kooples.

The major characteristic of The Kooples purchasers is their deep interest in fashion. This vintage and rock British style is new and makes that the customers are leaders. As we have said before, the customers are between 15 and 35 years old, healthy and self-confident.

Benetton customers :

The brand Benetton has a very large target. As their brand image, this target is a little ubiquitous and not precisely determinable. Indeed, we can associate their brand to the want of “shocking” people and an idea of engagement. But Benetton has failed to really implant its idea of its image in people’s mind. The brand has often been the target of a lot of criticisms for too ubiquitous adverts and for making money on sensitive subjects. But Benetton has always showed the same image and attracted the same type of customers. For instance, the motto has never changed, and the “United Colors of Benetton” still stands for the equality of races and the diversity of colours they sell.

Therefore we can state, firstly, that the Benetton consumers are not restricted by their age. Actually, they sell clothes for man, woman and kids. Their purchase is an act to show their difference and an adherence to the values of Benetton. For example, when we think about Benetton we think “colours” as they sell a lot of their clothes in many different colours. So, we can state that the people who wear Benetton want to shock or to show that they can wear colours, flashy colours or unusual colours. Moreover, Benetton clothes are not that expensive for a fashion brand, at the level of Zara for example. Therefore, Benetton represents a kind of classic fashion but with a strong personality respecting the competitors.

We can conclude that the typical Benetton customer is someone between 15 and 45 years old, who wants to wear fashion clothes but with a touch of impertinence, ubiquity and provocation. It also implies self-confidence from the customer who knows the scandals that has known the brand and assumes them.

Comparison:

         When the Benetton customers are more classic followers who just search a kind of originality and impertinence in their style, The Kooples is a top of the fashion brand, dedicated to leaders and to customers who want to appear as fashion people.