Social Media Monitoring - Abercrombie & Fitch

In social media monitoring project, I choose the brand Abercrombie & Fitch as a target to monitor how it uses social media to manage its market and make recommendations on its social media marketing strategy.

Background

When I in China, I heard a lot about Abercrombie & Fitch: super handsome and sexy sales assistants in the store which just like a nightclub that filled with an alluring fragrance. Even I can't buy it in China, I still crave it. In China, only stars and celebrities have the way to get it. So it's definitely a fashion icon. But, when I finally came to U.S., Abercrombie is suddenly not as glorious as before.

This year, Abercrombie announced that it will shutter 71 U.S. stores in its most recent fiscal year, and will close another 180 stores until 2015. And based on the report from Bloomberg Business Week, Abercrombie & Fitch’s skin-filled ads and nightclub style has delighted American teenagers and infuriated parents. This once-edgy retailer has lost a third of its market value in the past year as it grapples with falling sales in Europe and the U.S. At Abercrombie & Fitch, sex is no longer sells.

Brand Introduction

 

Abercrombie & Fitch, also known as A&F, is an American retailer that focuses on casual wear for consumers aged 18 to 22. It has about 300 locations in the United states, and is expanding internationally. The company also operates three offshoot brands: Abercrombie Kids, Hollister Co., Gilly Hicks.
A&F is known for its racy marketing photography. It is rendered to grayscale and features outdoor settings, usually with semi-nude males and females for an increased tone of sexuality.

 

 

The Abercrombie & Fitch brand image is heavily promoted as an international near-luxury lifestyle concept. The company began cultivating an upscale image after 2005 opening of its Fifth Avenue flagship store alongside Prada and other upscale retailers. Having for years used high-grade materials in the construction of its merchandise and priced them at "near-luxury" levels, A&F has set up its trademark as "Casual Luxury". This upscale image has allowed A&F to open stores in international high-end locations and further promote the image by pricing its merchandise at almost double the American prices.

Business Analysis

Google Finance:

During the fiscal year ended January 28, 2012, the Abercrombie & Fitch operated 1,045 stores, which include 294 Abercrombie & Fitch stores, 159 abercrombie kids stores, 571 Hollister stores and 21 Gilly Hicks stores. A&F operates websites for each brand, both domestically and internationally. Aggregate total net sales through direct-to-consumer operations, including shipping and handling revenue, during fiscal 2011 it represented 13.3% of total net sales. During fiscal 2011, A&F purchased merchandise from approximately 170 vendors located throughout the world, primarily in Asia and Central and south America.

Income Statement

From 2008-2012 Annual Income Statement, we can find out that even through the revenue in 2011 and 2012 are increased, but the net income is declined and the profit margin is not as considerable as before.

Even in 2012, A&F has reached a higher revenue level, but the reason is in 2012 A&F opened its market in China that brought a huge income for A&F this year.

 

 



Cash Flow

From the cash flow sheet, we can see that A&F decrease its financial activities in recent years in order to keep balance.


 

 

 

 



Social Media Monitoring

Search Stream

Google Trends

Based on these two different search trends, we can know that people prefer to search Abercrombie at the beginning of the year. I guess it because people still interest in its campaign such as its new commercial advertising, its new representative. But the product search of Abercrombie is showed up at the end of the year. I think the reason is very obviously- the sale. At the end of the year, it’s a big sale season so that people want to find out what kind of Abercrombie’s product will have a discount. But actually, Abercrombie will offer several different sale promotions in a year, especially when the season changed. But from this product search trend, we can conclude that its promotions didn’t bring out the good result.

Web Search

Product Search

The Regional Interest Map shows that people in the U.S. and Europe are more interested in Abercrombie itself, while people in China and South America are more interested in its products.

 

Traffic Stats

Alexa

Abercrombie.com is the only offical online shopping website for Abercrombie. Since the online shopping revenue is a big part of its income, the website traffic stats will affect its sales volume.

From the Daily Traffic Rank Trend, Daily Reach and Daily Pageviews, we can see that the highest traffic stats are both showed up at the end of the year.

Audience Demographics

 

From the Audience Demographics charts, we can find out some interesting features. In the female aspect, the demography is match the orientation of Abercrombie. On the other hand, in the male aspect, the demography shows the different orientation. In general, based on the data, we can conclude that most male audience who visit Abercrombie are parents.Apparently, elder male are not the target customers for Abercrombie. I think the reason why they visit Abercrombie is to find out why their daughters are interested in Abercrombie.

Besides, from this demographic, I think Abercrombie should pay attention to target their male customers, especially the male who aged between 18-25.

Social Mention

From the Social Mention monitoring result, we can find out that the strength of Abercrombie is just 1%. The likelihood that people will discuss Abercrombie is unexpected low.

According to this result, we can find out that people only mention Abercrombie when they purchase it. All the Top Keywords and Top Hashtags are pointed to its products and sale promotion.

 

In addition, the result of Sources is extreme differentiation.The most popular sources that people like to use are Photobucket and Youtube. However, other popular social media like Facebook and Twitter are barely mentioned about Abercrombie. Thus, we can infer that people prefer to use visual content rather than using words.

Comments

Samepoint

Based on the Samepoint Monitoring result, the overall comments about Abercrombie are Positive. Samepoint analyses 200 comments relating to the term Abercrombie. The most discussed topic is Wall Photo. And Blogs are the leading source of information about Abercrombie.

According to the results from Samepoint, I suggest that Abercrombie should use photos to engage into social media. The below graph illustrates the breakdown of topics being discussed with social media as it pertains to Abercrombie. From this graph, we can find out that photos are the good lead to the Abercrombie.

When looking at the new social sources and social networks, we found the greatest concentration of comments happened in Blogs.

Based on the analysis from Samepoint, the best way to engage Abercrombie is Facebook.

 

 

Facebook

 

IceRocket

 

Based on the IceRocket Monitoring, the photos are the key that attract people to interact in Facebook.

Twitter

 

Samepoint
 

In Samepoint, the TweetTest reported that the most tweets about Abercrombie are positive. The social tone about Abercrombie is affirmative. Moreover, there are several positive words appear in tweets such as love, like, great, quality, etc.

 

 

Blog

 

IceRocket

 

This is the daily bolgs trend from August to October. In this graph, there are two highest percent happened in August and in October.

In August, Abercrombie opened its first store in HongKong, China. Abercrombie held a grand campaign in HK. And Abercrombie earned 1 million US dollars in the first week. It was a big news in August. While, in October, Abercrombie started its business in Dublin. It was also very attractive.

 

 



In conclusion, all the information listed above are my first social media monitorig about Abercrombie. From these data, we can get a general image about how Abercrombie use social media tools to active its business. In my nest blog post, I will organize all the social media monitorint data and give you a comprehensive cognizance about Abercrombie's Social Media Strategy.