Does One Size Fit All? Branding Strategies for Plus-Size Labels in the Fashion Industry

Sammanfattning: Purpose: With increasing obesity rates and the change of beauty ideals within society, the plus-size fashion market currently enjoys a massive upturn and many established fashion retailers realise the opportunities within this ever more important segment. However, the integration of plus-size brands can be challenging as being plus-size is still connected to a stigma. Therefore, it is surprising that current literature, and even less brand management literature, has not sufficiently regarded this recent development even though the choice of brand strategy is one of the main drivers of brand equity and further influences the image and reputation among customers. Hence, the purpose of this thesis is to investigate the phenomenon of plus-size branding in the fashion industry from a customer and company perspective. Therefore, the aim of this research is to analyse different brand architecture strategies in the context of plus-size branding to guide brand managers in the choice of strategy when entering the new segment. Methodology: This study examined the viewpoints of companies and plus-size and straight-size customers, the former through four in-depth interviews with current or former employees of leading fashion retailers, namely Dressmann XL, Hugo Boss, Marc Cain and a German fashion retailer. Moreover, we conducted in-depth interviews with six plus-size customers and referred to the findings of four interviews with straight-size customers conducted during the course Qualitative Research Methods and supplemented the results with social media observations. Findings: Our results have shown that there is no ‘One Size Fits All’ plus-size branding strategy and that every strategy has benefits and drawbacks which mainly refer to three aspects and can guide brand managers in their decision. Firstly, brand managers need to consider the existing resources such as store space, the mother brand asset as well as business operations since certain brand strategies require enormous commitment in terms of investment. Secondly, the brand’s target group is a crucial factor to take into account as preferences vary among different age groups, size ranges and shopping types. Those preferences especially refer to the labelling of the brand, the store and website concept and the use of models. Finally, brand managers have to consider their brand’s concept, mainly the specialisation of the product offering and the positioning and identity of the brand. Hence, we found that straight-size shoppers mostly support the inclusion of plus-sizes through a branded house strategy. In contrast, it appears that a sub brand strategy is the least favorable plus-size branding strategy among company representatives, plus-size as well as straight-size customers and branded house strategy and endorsed brand strategy were more commonly preferred. Original/value: Within the branding literature the topic of branding strategies for the plus-size market has been, to our best knowledge, neglected so far despite its massive importance due to the growing target market. Hence, this thesis is the first of its kind to analyse branding strategies within the plus-size fashion industry. Keywords: Plus-Size, Brand Architecture, Brand Strategy, Fashion Branding, Brand Portfolio Limitations: The sampling is the main limitation of the study. Further research should include the perspectives of different kinds of customers in terms of age and buying behavior and companies in terms of positioning, target groups and plus-size brand strategies.