Assignment
Perhaps best known for its beloved mail-order catalog, L.L.Bean was recently placed near the top of Photobrand's list of New England's most powerful brands, beating Ethan Allen and Yankee Candle. L.L.Bean has grown from its founding as a one-product firm in 1912 to a national brand with 14 stores in 10 different states and a thriving online store. Net sales are over $1.5 billion a year. Marketing communications are more sophisticated now than they were when Leon Leonwood Bean created his first product, a waterproof boot, and publicized it with a homemade brochure. In its early days, the firm thrived on word-of-mouth communication about its reliability and the expert advice of its founder, himself an avid outdoorsman. Determined to build his company and his mailing list, Bean poured all of the company's profits into advertising and talked about the company with one and all. Said one neighbor at the time, "If you drop in just to shake his hand, you get home to find his catalog in your mailbox." Now the company makes use of marketing database systems to manage and update its mailing lists.
The L.L.Bean catalog swelled in size in the 1980s and 1990s, but it has slimmed down as the company's Web site has taken over some of the task of promoting the company's products. The catalog, still a major communication tool for the firm, is also a multiple-industry award-winner. The company uses computer-modeling tools to help it identify what customers want and sends them only the catalogs they desire. Still, says the vice president of stores, "What we find is most customers want some sort of touch point," and the catalog remains very popular. Online orders recently surpassed mail and phone orders for the first time in the company's history. The relationship between the catalog and the Web site is complicated. As L.L.Bean's vice president for e-commerce explains, customers have begun to shift much of their buying to the Internet, but they still rely on the catalog to browse, plan, and get ideas. Customers take their L.L.Bean catalogs "to soccer games, they read them in the car," she says.
"What's changed is what they do next"-often they go online to find more details about an item or to place an order. L.L.Bean still places print advertising, sometimes small ads that simply offer a free catalog or remind customers that they already have the catalog at home. Since the catalog is expensive to produce, the company tries to support it with other marketing media so it doesn't get lost among all the other messages demanding customers' attention. A big and growing area for the company's promotion efforts is the Internet, where it uses banner ads on popular sites like Hulu. com allowing customers to click through to the L.L.Bean online store. It also maintains a Facebook page, a Twitter account, and a YouTube channel. The company invests heavily in television advertising as well, particularly around the holidays.
Local TV ads are concentrated in the areas around the company's retail storesL.L.Bean doesn't take the wide familiarity of its brand for granted. It also promotes its name through partnerships with environmentally conscious companies and organizations and through charitable giving, mainly to organizations committed to maintaining and protecting Earth's natural resources. The company recognizes, however, that a good product is at the heart of its success. "We really want to sell a good product, and we really guarantee that product," says the company's vice president of e-commerce. "We want to keep . . . the customer happy and keep that customer coming back to L.L.Bean over and over.
Questions
1. What are the ingredients of L.L.Bean's promotion mix?
2. L.L.Bean is reaching into "alternative" promotons, including outfitting Weather Channel meteorologists around the United States and emblazoning its name on the tarp used by the Red Sox baseball team to protect the field during rain delays. What other kinds of promotional activities do you think would suit the company's outdoorsy image?
3. Do you think L.L.Bean's Web site will ever entirely take the place of its mail-order catalog? Why or why not?
The response should include a reference list. Double-space, using Times New Roman 12 pnt font, one-inch margins, and APA style of writing and citations.