Yay, Student Discounts!

by


Hi friends, I’m sure you are all familiar with a very popular online store – ASOS. Well, for those of you who aren’t, you should really check it out where you can discover the latest in women’s fashion, men’s clothing, beauty and much more. A little bit of history here, ASOS.com is a British online fashion and beauty store founded in June 2000 by CEO Nick Robertson. At the rate that ASOS is growing, they’re own-label creations are actually setting celebrity fashion trends – from Rihanna, Kim Kardashian and Kate Hudson. (Carter, 2010)



ASOS - Discover the latest in Women's fashion and Men's clothing online


This online wonderland of bits and bobs is primarily aimed at young adults where the company adapts to social media technology to generate organisational value. These value levers tie into the 10 Social Technology Value Levers by McKinsey & Company in 2012 where I will be discussing Marketing and Sales and Customer Service in relation to the company.

Customer Care


ASOS is coming first in the competition of e-commerce where they have won an enormous number of awards for their clever social strategies, gaining millions of fans and followers in the process. Unsurprisingly, ASOS staff members are friendly and very quick at responding and monitoring their Facebook page about inquiries.





Not only does ASOS have Twitter, the clothing retailer ASOS maintains two separate Twitter accounts for fashion updates and an official feed for customer care queries. Again, pulling another value lever in their flawless business model.





The company strives to build relationships with their consumers to learn more about their target market, gathering that important information to improve on their services and product range. They even have a Premier club, offering free, unlimited express shipping, free returns and more VIP perks for only $39 a year. This doesn’t make their increase in sales rising 34% to £482m, attracting 2.2 million new customers very surprising. (BBC, 2014)


Did you say discounts?

Not only does the company run successful Facebook and Twitter pages, ASOS has also been quick to experiment with many other types of social media platforms.

Vine – offering prizes to customers who posts videos of unpacking their orders using #ASOSUnbox




Pinterest – pinning inspirational products and people where all pins contain the brand name and a majority of the pins link directly to the ASOS website.




Google+ - where they post at least one visual update a day.




ASOS also connects with their main market, being university students where they create temporary pop-up stores at university campuses such as UQ St Lucia, QUT and many more. They have also teamed up with UNiDAYS, a website that offers university student discount codes – but that’s another story.

Seriously, the ASOS business model ticks all the business model levers. What do you think?

References

Carter, K. (2010, June 24). How Asos took over the world. theguardian.com. Retrieved August 12, 2014, from http://www.theguardian.com/lifeandstyle/2010/jun/24/how-asos-took-over-world

News, B. (2014, April 2). Asos salesrise 34% on customer gain. BBCNews. Retrieved August 8, 2014, fromhttp://www.bbc.com/news/business-26847584