Department Store Marketing

I don't know about you, but I love a good department store-- Nordstroms, Bloomingdales, Macy's, they are my idea of a good time on a Saturday. I also find it interesting how my decide to market their stores because they sell such a wide range of items. The main way they advertise is through mailing booklets and emails. These show what new products they have in store, and how much the products are.

Apparently these stores are being overlooked by teenagers lately, thus their sales are not doing as well as they would like them to be. Teenagers would rather shop at trendier stores like Forever 21 or H&M and feel like department stores are for older people. The stores have realized this and have started changing their merchandise to be more "fast fashion" trendier clothes to keep up with these other stores (source).
Learning this information was interesting to me especially because I am interest in fashion merchandising as well. I think that this is a good move on the department stores part because they sometimes do have a stigma to them as being more traditional. Hopefully they can start gaining younger loyal shoppers to support their sales numbers.

How does Apple do it?!

Apple is such a well known company that when most people hear the word "apple" the first thing they think of is a silver computer or their phone that is most likely resting in their hand as opposed to the fruit that many people love to snack on. Apple has a way about them that makes people remember their products. For the release of the original ipad they actually did no marketing at all and left it all to user recommendations. "Apple decided not to pay for any advertising during a brief period after the device was introduced in January 2007 and when it went on sale later in the year." (source) As crazy as that sounds, it worked! Many people went out and sought after the device even without seeing any advertisements with it. The company totally relied on this hype around their device to push sales until later they finally came out with advertisements. If only every company could be like Apple and have such great brand recognition and loyalty.