Friday, September 7, 2007

HW 4: What Are Your Clothes Promising You?

In response to reading “The Voice of the Customer,” in David Kline and Dan Burstein’s Blog! How the Newest Media Revolution is Changing Politics, Business, and Culture I noticed a pair of Gap jeans laying a cross a chair in my room. I got to wondering what sort of promises the Gap company has made to me, the consumer. It must have made an impression because I shop there a lot. I think the idea originally with the Gap was nice, trendy, up to date clothing at a reasonable price maybe intended for the upper lower class and middle class, the upper class could perhaps get away with buying their basic necessities there like white t-shirts or socks. It was an affordable way to wear a “name brand”. Now it’s a little different, they are trying to up their image by getting the likes of John Mayer and Sarah Jessica Parker to model for them and in doing so have cut out some of us upper lower class and lower middle class folks from being able to afford them. I went to their web site and here’s what I observed. Everything was very classic, grays, whites, and black lettering with clean lines. Most of the models were white they were all extremely thin and tall and they all gave me the impression of not being wealthy per say but definitely not broke. A quote I saw, “Our design collection is relevant in many different contexts, yet always true to the Gap Brand Essence” made me think they are trying to target scholarly people, those who have an education. So basically what they are promising is that they will keep up with the trends but you will always be able to find clean and classy lines there, not to mention other people just like you will all be wearing the exact same thing.

www.gap.com

1 comment:

Tracy Mendham said...

Well done. I like the parallels you've found between your view of the product line and customer base and the style and content of the website.