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Archives of Business Research – Vol. 10, No. 8
Publication Date: August 25, 2022
DOI:10.14738/abr.108.12816. Marui, J., & Jing, S. (2022). A Brand Concept Strategy Model of T-Shirts for Young People Using Selected Conjoint Analysis. Archives
of Business Research, 10(8). 49-61.
Services for Science and Education – United Kingdom
A Brand Concept Strategy Model of T-Shirts for Young People
Using Selected Conjoint Analysis
Junpei Marui
Department of Social Engineering, Nagoya Institute of Technology, Japan
Sun Jing
Department of Social Engineering, Nagoya Institute of Technology, Japan
ABSTRACT
Today's T-shirt market of young people is very competitive. As the brand of T-shirt,
UNIQLO、GU、Nike、Adidas、AZUL are known. This paper aims to propose a
method of designing an optimal brand concept for T-shirts. In the modern highly
competitive business world, marketing strategies are required to meet the
increasingly complex and diverse needs of customers. Therefore, it is very
important for companies to have a brand strategy in order to increase their
competitiveness in the market. On the other hand, a general decline in consumer
confidence among young people has begun to appear since the early 2000s. The
Nikkei Regional Industry Research Institute's "Youth Attitude Survey" also shows a
decrease in the ownership rate of famous foreign brand clothing in 2007 compared
to that of 2000. Kuga's analysis of the Ministry of Internal Affairs and
Communications' "National Survey of Consumption" also indicates that young
people's interest in fashion has declined. In 2017~2019 years, GDP of Japan was
increasing. However, GDP decreases greatly in 2020 because of COVID-19. In the
market of Japan, Young person's spending intention in recent years continues
decreasing. In this paper, we consider the case of launching a new T-shirt brand for
university students of Japan. Also, we study the marketing strategy of T-shirts for
young people who are considered to have decreased their interest in fashion, taking
into account the complexity and diversification of their needs, using a choice-type
conjoint analysis.
Keywords: New product concept; Brand strategy; Fashion
INTRODUCTION
In recent years, the fashion retail industry in Japan has been expanding its business due to the
globalization of the economy, with distributors from all over the world entering the Japanese
market and opening new stores. Numerous companies have opened stores, ranging from world- famous haute couture brands such as Chanel, Yves Saint Laurent, and Christian Dior to fast
fashion brands such as ZARA and H&M, which are popular among young people. On the other
hand, UNIQLO, GU, UNITED ARROWS, BEAMS, etc. are developing their stores while creating
their own originality. Thus, the battle in the fashion retail industry is intensifying day by day.
The fashion retail industry is also undergoing major changes in marketing strategies, such as
SNS-based advertising and online shopping. Therefore, it is important for a company's brand
strategy to increase its competitiveness in the market. Especially in the global market,
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Archives of Business Research (ABR) Vol. 10, Issue 8, August-2022
Services for Science and Education – United Kingdom
marketing strategies are required to meet the increasingly complex and diverse needs of
customers.
Under such circumstances, a general decline in consumer confidence among young people
began to appear in the early 2000s. The Nikkei Research Institute for Regional Industry's
"Survey of Youth Attitudes" also shows a decrease in the ownership rate of famous foreign
brand clothing in 2007 compared to 2000.
Kuga's analysis focuses on the Ministry of Internal Affairs and Communications' "National
Survey of Current Consumption" until 2009, and reports a decrease in expenditures on
"clothing and footwear. However, he attributes this to the appearance of inexpensive products
rather than a decline in young people's interest in fashion, as there were changes in the
purchasing environment in the late 2000s with the arrival in Japan of foreign fast fashion
brands such as H&M of Sweden in 2008 and Forever21 of the United States in 2009. In the
second half of the 2000s, there was a change in the purchasing environment.
After Kuga's analysis, the 2014 results of the National Survey of Family Income and Expenditure
were released. Looking at the changes in the average monthly amount of "clothing and
footwear" in 1999, 2004, 2009, and 2014, the largest amount for single person households
under 30 years old was 9,285 yen in 2009 for men, and the largest amount for women was
22566 yen in 2004. However, in 2014, the amount for men was 5124 yen and that for women
was 9114 yen, showing a marked decrease compared to the previous three surveys. However,
the consumer price index for "clothing and footwear" was 102.2 in 2014, when the base year
was 2000 (100.0), showing no decline. In other words, Kuga's interpretation that there was an
overall decrease in purchases is not valid, although there may have been a phenomenon in
which prices fell due to the availability of inexpensive products in some areas. It is more
reasonable to assume that young people's interest in fashion has declined [1].
Based on the above background, we will study the marketing strategies of fashion brands to
young people, whose interest in fashion is considered to have declined.
In this paper, we study the marketing strategies of fashion brands using a choice-type conjoint
analysis. Selective conjoint analysis has been used in various studies. Conjoint analysis was
developed in the field of quantitative psychology in the 1960s and has been widely used in the
field of marketing since then. The reason for its popularity in the field of marketing is that it can
estimate consumers' evaluations of the level of each attribute because it combines multiple
attributes and levels of a product and can directly present a concrete image to consumers as a
hypothetical situation in advance. In other words, this method is considered to be suitable for
linking the needs for each level obtained from consumers to technology when companies are
developing products.
In fact, selective conjoint analysis has been used in a wide range of research fields, such as
estimating the brand power of fruit and vegetable production areas [2], examining the
sequential effects of environmental risk information [3], evaluating multidimensional
management of agricultural technology [4], and evaluating the attributes of rice produced in
Hokkaido [5].
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Marui, J., & Jing, S. (2022). A Brand Concept Strategy Model of T-Shirts for Young People Using Selected Conjoint Analysis. Archives of Business
Research, 10(8). 49-61.
URL: http://dx.doi.org/10.14738/abr.108.12816
The most referenced previous study in this study is "A Study of Marketing Strategies for Late
Entrants in the Tea Market Using Selective Conjoint Analysis" by Ouyangni [6].
The purpose of this paper is to consider the marketing strategy of T-shirts for young people
who are considered to have decreased interest in fashion, taking into account the complexity
and diversification of their needs, and using a choice-type conjoint analysis.
Therefore, in this paper, we consider a marketing strategy for a hypothetical case where a new
T-shirt brand for students is to be launched.
The paper is organized as follows: Chapter 1 describes the social background, previous studies,
and objectives of this study. Chapter 2 presents the mathematical model of choice-type conjoint
analysis, the calculation method of marginal willingness to pay, and the orthogonal table. In
Chapter 3, we describe the method of designing an optimal brand concept for T-shirts. In
Chapter 4, a choice-type conjoint analysis is conducted based on the results of the questionnaire
for choice-type conjoint analysis, and the utility values for each attribute level, the total utility
value and choice probability for each product concept, and the marginal willingness to pay are
calculated. In Chapter 5, marketing strategies are presented based on the results of the choice- type conjoint analysis conducted in Chapter 4. Finally, Chapter 6 provides a summary of this
study.
MATHEMATIC MODEL
The mathematical model of choice-type conjoint analysis is shown below.
The total utility gained from the purchase of a given good is
� = �!�! + �"�" + �#�# +...+�$�$ + � (1)
�$(� = 1,2,3,...) are the attributes of the goods, � is the coefficient parameter of the attribute,
and � is the stochastically varying error term.
Then, the total utility �!and �" of commodity 1 and commodity 2 with different attribute levels
are
�! = �!�!! + �"�"! + �#�#! +...+�$�$! + �! (2)
�" = �!�!" + �"�"" + �#�#" +...+�$�$" + �" (3)
If � is a variable that takes 0 when product 1 is chosen and 1 when product 2 is chosen, then
the relationship between the magnitude of utility and product choice is
� = /
0, if �! ≥ �"
1, if �! < �"
(4)
� = /
0, if ∆� ≥ 0
1, if ∆� < 0 (5)
In addition, ∆� is expressed as
∆� = �!(�!! − �!") + ⋯ + �$(�$! − �$") + (�! − �") (6)
∆� = ∑ �%��% $
%&! + ∆� (7)
In the present model, since the error terms are independent and identically distributed, the
density function and distribution function of �$are respectively
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Archives of Business Research (ABR) Vol. 10, Issue 8, August-2022
Services for Science and Education – United Kingdom
�(�$) = �'(!�')"#! (8)
�(�$) = �')"#! (9)
And ∆� = �$ − �* is the logistic distribution
�(�$) = )#
!+ )# (10)
then the selection probability is
�(�|�) = -./01+2�$4
∑ -./ !
%&' (1+2�%) , ∀� ∈ � (11)
When the multinomial logit model is applied to the brand selection model, the maximum
likelihood method is usually used to estimate the parameters.
In the maximum likelihood method, the probability that product � is selected from among �
products is first formulated as equation (11), and the results of � selections are assumed to
have been observed. Let �8
9 = 1 if product � is selected on the � th selection opportunity, and
�8
9 = 0 otherwise. Furthermore, let �8
9 be the marketing variable vector of product � at the � th
selection opportunity, and let �t (�|�) be the selection probability in equation (11)
accordingly. The likelihood � under which �8
9 and the corresponding marketing variable vector
�8
9 are obtained is
� = ∏ ∏ �9(�|�)
:$
( $
9&! ;
8&! (12)
With �8
9 and �8
9 obtained, � in equation (12) is considered to be a function of the parameter
vector �. The value that maximizes the likelihood function � of � is the maximum likelihood
estimator of �.
The estimation method of the marginal willingness to pay is shown below.
Here, we consider the following main effect model for the utility function.
�8=�8(�8, �8) + �8 (13)
�8 is the attribute vector of commodity � and �8 is the price of commodity �.
�(�, �) = ∑* �*�* + �<� (14)
� is a parameter estimated by the multinomial logit.
Here, the total differentiation of equation (14) yields
∑ =>
=�)
* ��* + =>
=< �� = �� (15)
Assume that the utility level is fixed at the initial level (�� = 0) and attributes other than
commodity attribute �! are also fixed at the initial level (��* = 0 , � ≠ 1). In this case, the
marginal willingness to pay when commodity attribute �! increases by one unit is
�����' = @<
@�'
= −
*+
*�)
*+
*-
= − 2'
2-
(16)
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Marui, J., & Jing, S. (2022). A Brand Concept Strategy Model of T-Shirts for Young People Using Selected Conjoint Analysis. Archives of Business
Research, 10(8). 49-61.
URL: http://dx.doi.org/10.14738/abr.108.12816
The result can be obtained by the above equation.
RESEARCH DESIGN
In order to conduct a conjoint analysis, it is necessary to select the attributes and levels to be
measured and to set the combinations to be evaluated. There are many ways to select
attributes, but in this study, we conducted a questionnaire survey of students and set attributes
and levels by referring to the results of the survey. The results of the survey are shown in Table
1 below.
Table 1: Results of the responses to the Attribute Questionnaire
The percentages of the responses selected as very important and important are shown here.
The results of this survey were used to determine the attributes and levels as shown in Table 2
below.
Very Important Important Sum
Price 42.47% 46.58% 89.04%
Easy to wear 32.88% 39.73% 72.60%
The quality and functionality of the clothes 24.66% 38.36% 63.01%
Be yourself 12.33% 41.10% 53.42%
Can be worn for a long time 20.55% 31.51% 52.05%
TPO 12.33% 39.73% 52.05%
Eyes from the opposite sex 9.59% 39.73% 49.32%
Don't stand out too much from the people around you 2.74% 43.84% 46.58%
Eyes from the same sex 6.85% 36.99% 43.84%
Don't Suffer with People 15.07% 21.92% 36.99%
word of mouth 5.48% 21.92% 27.40%
Being a trend 4.11% 23.29% 27.40%
Brand 2.74% 21.92% 24.66%
Brand Visibility 2.74% 20.55% 23.29%