Fashion Marketing (3rd ed.)

Citation

Barnes, L. (2009), "Fashion Marketing (3rd ed.)", Journal of Fashion Marketing and Management, Vol. 13 No. 3, pp. 471-471. https://doi.org/10.1108/13612020910974564

Mike Easey's text has been an enduring feature of scholarly studies of fashion marketing and associated undergraduate courses. It adequately fills the gap of academic texts relating to the study of fashion marketing which have a UK context and this 3rd edition provides an updated version of the original text. The content is largely similar to the 2nd edition although the 3rd edition provides a more global perspective – crucial given the changes in the fashion industry in the last few years, supported by a much needed modernisation of the presentation and styling of the book – it is a book about fashion after all!

The book emphasises the “fashion” in fashion marketing, firmly grounding each of its chapters in the context of fashion marketing rather than a more generic marketing text with simple fashion examples, and it does this rather well. Despite this, the text does follow a similar structure to any generic “principles of marketing” textbook starting with some contextual chapters, in this case “Understanding Fashion Marketing” followed by some attention to the marketing environment, market research and target marketing, culminating in several chapters applied to the fashion marketing mix: pricing, promotion, products, place etc. However, this structure provides a useful underpinning in designing a first year (or similar introductory level) module in Fashion Marketing and indeed has stamped its mark on the planning and delivery of many of my own Fashion Marketing modules.

Each of the chapters features contributions from key UK academics in the field of fashion marketing, drawing on the expertise of each. Some chapters have more updates than others. Of note is chapter 2 on the Fashion Market and Marketing Environment by Christine Sorensen which provides significantly more emphasis on ethical and green issues in the fashion marketing environment than in the 2nd edition. Gaynor Lea‐Greenwood's chapter 9 on Fashion Marketing Communications also has some relevant updates in relation to celebrity marketing as well as introducing an interesting new perspective on visual merchandising by proposing the concept of “visual marketing” a theory that proposes aspects of visual merchandising cannot be separated from the rest of the marketing mix due to the nature of the fashion industry.

Fashion Marketing provides a good introductory level text, most appropriate for first year undergraduate students. It is excellent in serving this purpose providing a good introduction to the key theories and concepts of fashion marketing in an easily accessible style. Its use at higher undergraduate levels and postgraduate level is questionable since it lacks sufficient evaluation of advanced theoretical concepts. Nevertheless, Fashion Marketing is a great book which has been invaluable to me and many of my colleagues. The 3rd edition is much welcomed.