Business Strategy

 Analysis of the Five Forces

Competitive Strategies

                                          Differentiation           Industry-wide

Ralph Lauren, as a premium lifestyle brand, provides better product and service across the industry. The product line of ranging from clothes, accessories to furniture. Also, the purchase power of Ralph Lauren’s customers is relatively high, and the customers have a loyalty towards the brand because of its unique style in American fashion and lifestyle. 

To address the threat from the five forces, Ralph Lauren does several things to make itself solid in the market.

Ralph Lauren has cultivated strong brand loyalty, so the customers have established the connection with the brand, which reduces the switching costs for the company. Additionally, the customers in its target market are relatively low sensitive to the price. Therefore, to avoid high bargaining power of customers, Ralph Lauren set up a membership and VIP service. To address the threat of substitutions, company strengthens the unique style of American Classic in its products’ design, which can prevent from substitutions’ replication. Also, to avoid its customers from flowing to the fast fashion stores, like ZARA and H&M, it launches sub-brands of different price ranges. The product design of Polo sport is launched for the change of lifestyle in tendency. Ralph Lauren establishes production bases in multiple countries to avoid over-reliance on a single supplier to reduce the influence of the supplies’ bargaining power. For the new entrants, with its history and brand story, the threat of new entrants is low to moderate. However, Ralph Lauren still has their strategies to address it. It has strong intellectual property protection, which includes the trademark and designs, etc. The rivalry threat is high, so Ralph Lauren pays great attention to reduce the negative impact on the profit. Improving the innovation of shopping service with high technology is one of the plans. For example, it develops an AR fitting to make it more convenient for customers and enhanced the shopping experience. Also, the customized services offer customers more choices. For some brand with similar position and style, such as Tommy Hilfiger and Lacoste, Ralph Lauren expand its product line from Purple Label to Polo Sport, covering different price ranges for customers to choose. 

Value chain and Business Processes

figure 2.7

In Figure 2-8 some of the business processes mentioned are Materials Orderings Process, Manufacturing Process, and Sales Process. We picked Manufacturing Process and sales process and the Marketing process.  

Examples of Information System (IS)

Ralph Lauren, a variety of information systems are used to support both structured and dynamic business processes.

For structured processes, one example is the Point of Sale (POS) system, which is used in retail stores to process customer transactions, handle returns, and track inventory levels in real time. Another structured process supported by information systems is Supply chain and inventory management, where enterprise systems like SAP help monitor product movement from manufacturing to distribution centers and store shelves. On the human resources side, Workday is used to manage payroll, employee benefits, and HR records, ensuring consistency and accuracy across the organization. For dynamic processes, Ralph Lauren relies on systems that allow flexibility and customer engagement. For example, Instagram and Facebook are used in marketing to run campaigns, collaborate with influencers, and directly engage with consumers. Collaboration platforms such as Microsoft Teams or Slack support communication between design, merchandising, and retail teams, making cross-department projects more efficient. In addition, customer relationship management systems like Salesforce help Ralph Lauren personalize customer experiences through loyalty programs and targeted marketing. Together, these information systems support the company’s ability to efficiently run structured processes while remaining agile in dynamic, people-driven areas of the business.

Product or Process Implementations

Figure 2-12 shows us ways companies can beat their competitors or implement ways to improve their business. 

Ralph Lauren has different forms of IS that give it a competitive advantage over its competitors or other stores that are trying to gain an advantage. For example, Ralph Lauren has implemented its own app with a rewards system, this app is only available for the main store itself; stores such as outlets don't have an app. This is because the main store has the main components and offer their own services and products while the outlets usually have merchandise that is past its prime and is on discount ready to sell to consumers who are looking for a more affordable alternative. Additionally, Ralph Lauren is beginning to implement AI into their websites/app in order to analyze customer behavior and analyze data gained from their website. This would allow them to cater to specific customers and their needs by analyzing patterns.