Love your clothes campaign is a campaign that has been established in conjunction with the industrial organizations so as to help change the people of the UK consuming behaviour, the usage of clothes that they buy and as well as the manner in which they dispose of their clothing. This campaign was mainly launched so as to reduce the environmental impact of the clothing industry across the country. It was also meant to influence a circular approach in regards to clothing globally. This particular campaign is coordinated by WRAP, which is a non-profit organization. This campaign followed a textile market situation report, and it aimed at assessing the flow of textiles around the world. In the report, it was founded that 336000 tonnes of clothing went to the landfill or incineration as at 2015-17.

With the rising population growth and the consumption level, there is an increased impact on the environment according to WRAP. This impact is also accelerated by the fact that there is an inadequate collection infrastructure. The UK alone spends 60.5 billion euros on clothes alone yearly.

It is a program aimed at providing a sustainable clothing action plan, which is through sustainable clothing action plan (SCAP). This plan brings together all the stakeholders, which include the suppliers, retailers, brands, recyclers, charity groups, academic bodies, brands, and public sector bodies. All these partners are supposed to help reduce the carbon, waste and water impacts on the environment. SCAP, together with its signatories, aims to reduce the environmental impact of water and carbon by 15 % by 2020. They also aim to reduce the amount of waste sent to the landfill by the same percentage. These signatories are again required to reduce the waste arising from clothes by 3.5 per cent per tonne.

It is estimated that if these targets are met, the waste produced could reduce by 16000 tonnes and in addition to this; enough water will be saved, which can fill 170000 swimming pools. Some of the strategies laid out by WRAP to meet these targets include; increased use of low impact fibres such as cotton, reuse of clothes so as to extend their useful life, and lastly increasing the recycling rate. These signatories are advised to consult the SCAP footprint calculator. This device helps in the clothing companies to calculate the water, carbon and waste footprints of their materials portfolios. Additionally, it helps the collectors and recyclers measure the impact of water, carbon and waste on their processes and as well as the impact of changing waste destinations.

This campaign is centred on encouraging the public to think the way they buy, use and discard the clothing. This is an essential campaign because according to research, 30 per cent of clothes that are bought are not worn. It is to this reason that the campaign is calling on consumers to look back at their suitcases and wardrobes and check any unworn clothes, and they are advising them to donate, reuse or recycle them.

This campaign also has an official website which they are encouraging consumers to visit so as to learn on how to reduce the cloths environmental impact by ways such as using laundry methods that use less energy, secondly, to provide their view on how to make most of any clothes bought, and lastly to share their ideas and advice on what they can do to clothes they are no longer using, or they don’t need. Integrated marketing communications will be used to spearhead this campaign.

The target audience for the IMC campaign

IMC is an approach that organizations use to brand and coordinate their communications strategies. It evaluates the strategic role of various communication disciplines and combines them to provide maximum communication with clarity and consistency. This strategy provides a unified experience for consumers across marketing mix aspects. The target audience for this particular campaign is broad, and it includes the retailers, suppliers, brands, recyclers, charity groups, academic and public bodies. Mainly these form the consumer’s body, and therefore the target audience will be the consumers in Scotland and Liverpool parts of the UK. This is because Liverpool and Scotland are considerable fans in these campaigns.

The campaign will be aimed at looking at and assessing consumer behaviour. By this, the organizations will be able to work together and understand how the consumers could be influenced to act towards reuse, repaired and sustainable clothing fabrics. The consumer will be educated on the importance of buying second-hand clothing. Understanding the behaviour in which these consumers wear and care for clothing is central to meeting the SCAP 2020 action area. If organizations get the feedback from these consumers, they will be able to understand on how they can extend the life of the clothing they make, design for end life and find ways to recycle the end of life clothing. Through understanding the behaviour of consumer sustainable clothing guide will be provided to the organizations so as to give them guidance on the approach, they can use to encourage consumers to increase the lifespan of their product.

The rationale behind choosing this target audience is because there exist an already laid out plans in both Liverpool and Scotland. These two encourage the recycling of clothes, and this campaign could increase the success rate. They are also encouraging reuse and donating g to countries that need those clothes instead of dumping. For example, in Scotland, WRAP has partnered with zero-waste Scotland in the love of your clothes campaign. These consumers will be reached through social media such as Twitter, Facebook, Instagram. Also through publications such as journals, newspapers such as evening express and Glasgow times in Scotland, daily post and Liverpool echo in Liverpool and televisions channels such as BBC two and Liverpool TV.

Applications of concepts and consumer behaviour theories

The theories give a prediction on how consumers make purchasing decisions of goods and services in the marketplace and show marketers how to optimize the use of capital on predictable behaviours. Though other aspects, such as impulse buying, are also significant in influencing consumer patterns, decision-making patterns are the primary factors in consumer behaviour that affects the marketing theory. The theories emerged in the year 1960, established by different economists and psychologists. Concerning the IMC campaign, the theories examine how WRAP consumers are affected and how they eventually make their decisions on buying using and disposing of their clothes. Similarly, the theories also focus on preconceived ideas among consumers on clothes usage and disposal. Four theories explain how consumers make decisions; hence all marketers in the field should understand the same. The theories of consumer behaviour applied during the IMC campaign are discussed as follows;

Psychoanalytic theory

The theory can be traced to Sigmund Freud, the founder of psychoanalysis. He explains that human beings cannot fully understand the motivation behind what they want since psychological factors are the determinants of the decisions they make. However, the psychological factors that dominate the unconscious mind results in strong desires for a particular commodity (Freud, & Strachey,1964) The desires can sometimes be shameful and makes them guilty if their surface them and therefore they decide to suppress them. In the WRAP’S IMC campaign, it was observed that the people could purchase many clothes due to such behaviours. This is because it was found that some people had so many clothes that they could not explain why they decided to buy them and some had turned out useless. The theory, therefore, supports the fact that the consumers make specifications by using their conscious mind, which is often influenced by psychological factors.

The theory of Pavlov

The theory was formulated by Pavlov, a Russian psychologist who suggested that people’s consumption behaviour results from conditioned responses where they consume goods that are brought near their presence. When suppliers, as well as retailers, consecutively avail certain types of goods to the market, the consumers will eventually get used to the product and becomes part of them (Stewart, 2012). Therefore, the IMC campaign uses the strategy, especially by using the marketing sector, to regulate the clothes in the market place to change the purchasing behaviour of clothes among the people. With time the people got used to the absence of some particular types of clothes in the market, hence reducing the overall rate of purchasing new clothes. Similarly, the application of this theory in making the supply chain regularly, supply second-hand clothes in the market to make the people change their attitude towards second-hand clothes.

Social Psychological Model theory

The model can be traced to Thorstein Veblen, an economist that suggests that human beings are creatures that often conform to their specific subgroups’ traditions and cultures. The economist focused on the members of the society who don’t buy commodities because they need it but because of the prestige that they want to achieve in the end. The theory suggests that marketers should understand the influences of the social set up that may affect the consumers to understand the demand for the product (Veblen, 2005). The WRAP’S IMC campaign used the theory by trying to change people’s views and general behaviours on clothes usage and disposal. By creating a philosophy that reused clothes are the best for use, the IMC movement led to a general change and off the consumers’ perceptions. Eventually, it made them develop a genuine reason for purchasing the product.

Tools and Approaches during the IMC campaign

In the event of planning for promotional strategies in organizations and movements, it is essential to have marketing tools and strategies to aid the entire event. IMC tools refer to the various forms of marketing that aid communication of and retaining of the message among the target audience of the product.

Advertising

Advertising is a marketing communication tool that has been in use for long due to its efficiency. It is a marketing technique that involves paying space to promote a product. The main goal of an advertisement is to inform, persuade, and remind customers of a product’s existence in the market. This makes up the three types of advertising also; persuasive advertising, informative as well as reminder advertisement. However, there are advertising methods, including radio, TV, the Internet, Journals, and New (Mehta, 2000) sappers and others. This mode of promotion has some limitations since some target audience may not be able to access the information. This is because advertisement is only limited to those who can afford TV and the other possible channels. During the WRAP’s campaign advertisements were done through the various channels to pass the information concerning the clothes movement. However, advertisements increased the rate at which clothes were reused, reducing the issue of dumping on the land.

Digital Marketing

Digital Marketing is the use of technological devices such as mobile devices, social media platforms, websites as well as other channels to reach the consumers of a particular product. It can be traced back to the year 1971, where Tomlinson sent the first mail, and after that, his technology allowed the people to exchange files through various machines. The primary role of digital marketing is to enable the business to collect new leads and sales by reaching the customers who are looking for the product of the company (Chaffey, & Ellis-Chadwick, 2019). The primary factor facilitating such marketing is the use of online platforms since it is more efficient and faster. Similarly, the marketing strategy enables the reach of a broad target audience in the marketplace. The IMC in the WRAP’s campaign employed a Digital marketing strategy to reach the target audience who were the local users of the clothes, suppliers, retailers, and manufacturers. With the use of this strategy, the impact was significant that many of these target audiences in the UK changed behaviours.

Public relations

This is a marketing communication tool that maintains the right image of the company by building and maintaining relationships with other companies. The primary role of public relations is to create a brand, spread the organization’s positive message, and counter the negative publicity of the company (Wilcox et al.,2006). Similarly, Public Relations build trust between the business and the current clients as well as potential clients. The PR personnel always work towards increasing the credibility and the overall reputation of the company. For the IMC campaigns, it is necessary to have the public Relations personnel who act as the image builders of the movement for effective communication. Similarly, WRAP’s campaign employed the use of PR staff for them to have a good reputation in order to achieve the goals of the movement. The shortcomings of public relations are that it does not fully counter the negative stories of some individuals, hard to develop trustworthy stories, and it is hard to gauge the success of the entire activity. The significant advantage, on the other hand, is that; once a good massage has been developed, it smoothly flows throughout the society and may eventually become part of the culture of that particular society.

Personal selling

This is where a seller promotes a business through face-face communication with the potential customer. This communication tool requires the seller to promote the product through their knowledge and personal attitudes (Weitz, & Bradford, 1999). The approach aims to encourage the customer to purchase the product or take a trial of the product. The sellers use the persuasion skill to convince a customer to buy a product. The suitability of the promotion method is that it enables the building of relationships between the seller and the buyer. Such a relationship may be of benefit in the future setting for both the seller and the customer. However, the method is so limited since a seller can reach a few customers in a given time since it requires them to move from the company premise to the specific locations of the customers, whoever lengthy the distance maybe. The entire process of personal selling is progressive, and therefore the seller should understand the essential steps. These steps are; identifying a potential customer, preparing for the presentation of the product, approaching the potential customer, presenting the product, overcoming anticipated objections from the customer, closing the sale, and finally having a follow-up. The success of personal selling relies on the strengths of the seller. The greatest power that an individual seller should have is building a rapport with their clients as well as struggling to earn their trust. On the other hand, personality should be characterized by self-consciousness, modesty, and achievement and orientation. Besides, the ultimate functionality of the methodology depends on the trending issues concerning the product.

A detailed discussion of the creative execution of your IMC campaign

The IMC campaign is aimed at changing the manner in which the UK consumers buy, use and dispose of their clothing. This approach will be used to arrive at the objectives of the marketing campaign by use of various methods. This platform will help to link all communications and messages. This platform has numerous benefits since it will save on cost, time, and stress and boost the campaign. It will wrap conversation around consumers, and it will move them towards the stages involved in buying, using and disposing of the clothes. The organization will also be able to develop a relationship with their consumers. This campaign through IMC will have a high level of effectiveness because of the seamless communication platform. Through melding all aspects of marketing communications, there will be a unified force.

Through this approach, consumers will be able to interact as well as learn from this campaign across all media platforms. The good thing on this marketing strategy is the message is delivered to the target audience regardless of how they interact with the brand, and that is across communications platforms. In order to ensure this campaign is successful, we will provide the strategy is well analyzed. This by identifying the buying behaviour, the use and the disposition of cloth products. Secondly is by having a consistent message within the framework of the campaign. This applies across all channels. The branding should connect with the information intended to be passed out. Thirdly there needs to be a guarantee to the consumers that they are on point by doing the things you are proposing. After all this preparation, the right channels should be used to pass the message and to be on safer side exhaust all of them so as to reach all your target audience.

Consumer buying behaviour in the UK

Consumer behaviour refers to the response at both personal and organizational behaviour. It involves a study of what to buy, how and where to buy, and why people are buying (Chen, 2013). When it comes to online shopping, which makes up 20 % of the total sales, it is saturated with retailers. The buyers mostly are women, although men also have a considerable percentage. Given this wide range of retailers, there is a broader choice to the consumers of the UK. This platform cannot be separated from physical buying, and therefore, it cannot be overlooked. It is because of online shopping that clothes buying in the UK is going out of fashion.

The online shift is not the only cause but also the drop in profits in the industry among the most prominent retailers. This is by 4.4 % in the past six months. The volume of clothes purchasing has gone into decline for the first time after 20 years. According to the research, it’s because of the consumer habits, with people now preferring to spend more on food, and holidays. According to national statistics, the retail spending in the UK grew by 4 % in August compared to the same month back last year. However, the expenditure on clothes from high streets shops and their websites dropped by 4 %. Change of weather is also affecting the buying behaviour due to its unpredictability they are waiting for winter or summer heatwave to materialize before buying.

People are also diverting their spending on eating and holidays. According to research by Delloite recreational services are growing to a more significant percentage than retail clothing. Parents are still buying clothes for their adult children who have shown a decline in purchasing behaviour themselves. These young people, mostly under 25, dropped out of the market to an extent it cannot be reached by older people even though there purchase level is increasing.

The Consumer usage behaviour in the UK.

A study shows that UK shoppers own clothes worth 10bn that are not worn. 25 % of the respondents said the clothes were not worn because the owners were waiting to lose weight so as to fit them. Another 10 % said they were waiting for the clothes to come back into fashion. However, the main issue remains to be most people make irrational decisions when buying these clothes, and that’s why they end up not using them. UK consumer sends approximately 3000000 tons of textiles each year to landfills as of 2018.

Disposing of clothes in the UK.

The environment is a vital matter that all should put concern on, and it extends to both the consumers and the businesses. The carbon footprint of every cloth that is dumped has an environmental impact on one health. Some of the ways in which clothes could be disposed of include;

Wash and care

The responsibility of disposing of clothes begins when you first own them. Enough care should be taken when washing these clothes so as to avoid damage and replacing them so quickly. This is by simply following the instructions provided in the clothes, and this will ensure proper care. The regularity of wear should also be considered such that cloth is not overused, again this reduces damage.

Donations

Donations are very suitable, especially if you are disposing those garments that are small, too big, or have no use any longer. Charity shops are more happy and willing to accept these donations provided they are of reasonable quality to resell. By this, we reduce the amount of waste going to the landfill by increasing the value of clothing since it’s going to be used by someone else. The places where one can donate are not limited but also include the homeless shelters, family members, friends, among others.

Repurpose

Old clothes or even torn clothes could be used to clean, to prepare animal beddings and any other reuse. In this, there are endless possibilities such as turning old shirts into bags, scarves, creating blankets, cushion covers and other crafty skills.

Recycling

There are metal banks designed to recycle damaged garments. However, this should be the last option, and the above options should be tried. These recycling plants are not readily available, but if you search for them keenly, you will find them.

Conclusion

As the gap between the poor and rich continues to enlarge, it’s still evident that there is always a significant challenge in the manner people use or dispose of products. For instance, there is a great concern on the manner in which consumers in Scotland and Liverpool use their cloths and expose them. It is due to this that organizations such as WRAP have launched campaigns to improve the manner in which consumers use and dispose of their clothes. WRAP’s ‘Love your cloth” campaign launch seems to be the best remedy for this problem. The campaign is primarily meant to identify the manner in which consumers of clothes in Scotland and Liverpool use and dispose of their clothes. The campaign has been made easy due to the integration with the communication marketing channels. As a result, several campaigns such as “love your cloth’ have applied IMC to enhance communication between the consumers and retailers. Hence, marketing communication is essential because it creates brand awareness and helps to determine how consumers behave towards while purchasing, using and disposing of their products. The promotion methods are very crucial for helping to make a product known to consumers as well as understanding how consumers purchase and dispose of the company’s products.

Moreover, identification of the target audience is essential during this campaign. They include the population the company is aiming at availing information related to brand and get feedback concerning the brand or management. Setting up a manageable population will make it easy for the company to attain its goals. In this context, the target audience for IMC was aimed at significant market hotspots which ere Liverpool and Scotland.

In the execution of the campaign, various consumer concepts and theories have applied the theories included; reason action theory, motivation needs theory and stern impulse buying theory. These theories, alongside other marketing tools and communication tools, are essential when implementing the promotion strategy. Successful company leaders usually strive to ensure that they have the best marketing strategies in place. Some of the critical strategies for the WRAP’s campaign include; personal selling, advertising, public relation and public relation (Wilcox et al., 2006). Managers in WRAP usually undergo several challenges when trying to identify the most effective IMC method. As a result, adequate planning must be conducted to ensure that there is no error in the method chosen.

Lastly, several pieces of research indicate a shift in consumers’ behaviours. The rate at which people purchase clothes has been on a constant drop in the UK markets. People are diverting from buying clothes to other products such as food and electronics. Additionally, it is evident that a larger population in the UK purchase clothes due to irrational decisions. Most of them do not end up wearing these clothes. With time, the clothes are disposed to the environment causing environmental population. Based on the several effects caused by this exposure of cloths to the environment, there is a need to have better ways of managing unused clothes. In the first place, worn-out clothes can be recycled or reused for other purposes. Additionally, the clothes can be donated to the sparse population that has a challenge with clothing. This strategy can greatly help to save the environment as well as help someone meet the clothing needs.

References

Chaffey, D., & Ellis-Chadwick, F. (2019). Digital marketing. Pearson UK.

Freud, S., & Strachey, J. E. (1964). The standard edition of the complete psychological works of Sigmund Freud.

Mehta, A. (2000). Advertising attitudes and advertising effectiveness. Journal of advertising research, 40(3), 67-72.

Stewart, M. (2012). Understanding learning: theories and critique. University teaching in focus: A learning-centred approach, 3-20.

Veblen, T. (2005). Conspicuous consumption (Vol. 38). Penguin UK.

Weitz, B. A., & Bradford, K. D. (1999). Personal selling and sales management: A relationship marketing perspective. Journal of the academy of marketing science, 27(2), 241.

Wilcox, D. L., Ault, P. H., & Agee, W. K. (2006). Public relations: Strategies and tactics.

WRAP’S LOVE FOR CLOTHES CAMPAIGN

Pssst… we can write an original essay just for you.

Abstract

Introduction