Victoria's Secret Pink and Target Markets

I am sure by now consumers have heard of Victoria’s Secret and in recent years Victoria’s Secret Pink as a line of lounge wear clothing targeted to high school and college age girls. Victoria’s Secret was originally established by a man who had difficulty shopping for his wife and decided to launch the store which has progressed amazingly since then. The original idea of the store was to portray classy yet risqué lingerie and clothing that is inspired from the Victorian period. The original sites target market is a loyal customer base of women at the age of 20 at the earliest to women in their 50’s and 60’s. Their most common target market is women between 30-50. The original idea of the store was to cater to the ‘sophisticated women’ noted by Barbra La Planca.

La Planca is also outraged by the Pink line stating that she is a loyal customer who is over 40. She also indicates she has more money to spend at the store and the company is driving away loyal customers that could create and drive more revenues than college girls could. La Planca also adds that the numbers in the baby boomer generation can provide this company among others as a large asset where the younger generation cannot.

Victoria’s Secret admits their marketing fault by indicating in the Wall Street Journal that their ‘efforts to target younger customers may have disenfranchised their core market’. The store was described before as;

“In the 1990s, professional women shopped the pastel-painted stores for colorful, European-inspired lingerie, supplementing underwear wardrobes previously filled with black, white and beige styles. Soft music played in the background while saleswomen discreetly offered help.”

http://www.grokdotcom.com/2008/03/03/victorias-secret-marketing/

It should also be noted that the Pink line applies more aggressive marketing campaigns than the ‘Mother brand’ as it is referred to in a student’s business blog of the Pink brand. Pink much like many companies have targeted social networking on Twitter and Facebook. The student suggested that the company could serve itself better if the larger organization did that as well. It would be interesting to find out of this marketing procedure would help the company and gain back their original and loyal customer base.

http://www.ignitesocialmedia.com/victorias-secret-social-media-marketing-example/

In my opinion the company got greedy and counted on keeping their loyal target market while gaining another thinking it would all work out and make the company better but they lost loyal customers and a price cannot be put on that because they keep coming back because they have built up that loyalty over years or decades. The company simply did not count on this backfiring but it did. Now the company is picking up its pieces and trying to solidify the situation but the brand Pink will have to stay because it was successful but not in the numbers of customer that they lost. Only time will tell to see what path the company will go down next.

Do you think that the Pink line has marketed too much to drive the original customer base away? Do you think it is right for the company to shift their target market this way? Does it hurt or help the company?