Chapter 10/ Product Concepts

When it comes to products, Vans offers its consumers a very large selection. The company has classic shoes for men, women and kids, helmets for skateboarding and action sports, clothing and apparel for everyday wear, accessories like watches, backpacks, hats and keychains. Vans even specializes in extended size sneakers for people with shoe sizes of 14-16. The company has a host of tangible products.

Vans also has an intangible appeal of being cool and hip to consumers. When a consumer buys Vans shoes, he or she can be sure that the product is widely popularity. In the last decade, the Vans brand has increased in popularity not just in action sports culture, but beyond. The brand can be seen throughout pop culture and has enormously increased its fan base from recent years.

An example of a product item is the “Greetings from Hawaii” Tee. It is a specific t-shirt that is unique from all other Vans products.

http://shop.vans.com/catalog/Vans/en_US/style/mhc.html?vcategoryId=CatZone&cm_vc=CatZone

An example of a Vans Product line is "The Vans X Yo Gabba Gabba" line. This collection has a variety of items based on the popular children’s show.

http://www.vans.com/microsites/yogabbagabba/

All Vans shoes are consistently packaged in a recognizable Vans shoebox. This shoe box helps protect the shoes from possible damage or harm when not in use and adds to the overall look and appeal of the shoes when opened. The box features a banner that states "Since 1966" which encircles it, and brings attention to its classic image.

Chapter 18/ Sales Promotion and Personal Selling

Vans does much of it's sales promotions through concerts, contests and events. The company knows the target market likes getting free merchandise and spreading enthusiasm for the Vans brand through word of mouth.

The Vans Warped Tour is a concert tour that showcases popular punk rock and pop artists throughout the summertime. Vans uses the popularity of the artists to attract youth and especially the target market of kids going back to school in the fall. Vans gives away free shoes, socks and merchandise to kids at the tour so they can recognize the brand when shopping for back to school clothing. The company realizes that they can make a huge amount of money in the back to school season. The brand wants to establish strong brand recognition in it's customers.

The VANS X ROCKSTAR TRIPLE CROWN OF SURFING SWEEPSKATES is used to create interest in youth consumers who may not know much about or be interested in Vans. The sweepstakes is also joined with Rockstar Energy Drink. Rockstar Energy Drink can build its brand recognition from joining with Vans on it's sweepstakes. The winner of the sweepstakes gets a $500 Vans gift card and a year supply of Rockstar Energy Drinks. Even though one will win, many will enter the contest and may develop growing interest for Vans and Rockstar Energy Drink.

The Vans Triple Crown of Surfing is one of the top competitions for professional surfers. Set in the North Shore of Oahu, Hawaii, the competition is for fans who are interested in seeing surfing and want to see the top athletes go for the grand prize of $820,000. It runs from November 12 through December 20. The event is designed to draw people to the Vans and Rockstar energy brands. The competition will showcase surfers with Vans flip flops, shirts, sneakers and many other products so the target market will be interested in buying Vans.

Vans has trade shows where the company does not stress personal selling but still does personally sell. In these trade shows, instead of concentrating on making orders, the company wants to communicate their direction as a whole through retailers, manufacturers and in their industry.

Chapter 17/ Advertising and Public Relations

When it comes to action sports culture and selling its products to youth, Vans is one of the best. Vans takes advantage of more than 40 years in business to analyze what its audience wants. Vans advertisements reflect the rebellious, free spirit of its youth audience and culture. The company's advertisements routinely feature professional athletes like Nick Remon and Anthony Van Engelen.

Vans uses frequent product advertising to consumers to sell their shoes, apparel and accessories. The company is built on selling action sports products and not much institutional advertising is used if at all. In the following product advertisements, Vans primarily uses pioneering and competitive images. Over the years, Vans has introduced many new products and competes against major action sports brands like DC for consumer attention.

This is a pioneering advertisement for Steve Caballero's "Half Cab II" sneakers which features a new design from his old model of sneakers, the "Half Cab". The ad provides information about the design of the sneakers and all of it's newer benefits to spark interest in its consumers.

This above featured competitive advertisement strikes the audience as "cool" and shows Vans shoes to be something that is in style. The ad's catch line is "Go Native" so the person who sees the brand can remember Vans as a brand that is native to California. Vans products identify with the Californian surfer/skateboarder lifestyle and the images in the ad are very similar to it. This is a great way to attract potential consumers.

Vans advertisements appear in magazines, on websites, at music festivals like the Vans Warped Tour, skateboarding competitions, billboards, mall posters, on action sports retailer websites and other places with youth traffic and activity.

Vans' public relations efforts can be experienced through their special events such as skateboarding and surfing competitions promoting the brand to targeted audiences, contests that draw customers to the brand by allowing them to win prizing and apparel, and phone applications like "Vans Hub" for the iPhone which helps hype products and direct consumers to local retailers. The Vans "Arts" page online features artists who work with Vans and creates a community of artists who are loyal to the Vans brand.

Chapter 15/ Retailing

Vans has great online and in-store retailing services. The Brand is high recognizable in the skateboarding pop culture market with competitors such as Pac-Sun, Zumiez and CCS. Vans uses it's retailers all across the country (and most recently in the New York City Area) to sell to its large youth audience. Van's retailers are specialty stores that have a great selection of action sports culture clothing, accessories and skateboards.

The Vans e-tailing site, Shop.van.com, has a large variety of products with customer review sections and well-organized product selections. It targets youth audiences with its collaborations with brands such as "Hello Kitty" and "Yo Gabba Gabba!" It uses its popular athletes like Geoff Rowley, Joel Tudor and Bucky Lasek to sell the athletes' signature sneakers online. The website also features product collaborations with rock bands like “Pearl Jam” and “Queen”. The online retailer also has helmets and protective gear for action sport athletes in its Pro-Tec product page. It has products for customers in sizes 14 through 16 on its website as well.

Vans also has a website for M-Commerce shoppers to shop on the go.

Vans six P:

• Product Offering: Has a deep depth of products ranging from shoes to skateboards.
• Promotion strategy: Advertise on Billboards, skateboarding competition and concerts
• The Proper Location: Located in areas where youth shop and times when they are present
• Retail Prices: At convenient, affordable prices people are willing to pay for
• Presentation of the Retail store: Geared to make youth and pop culture audiences comfortable
• Personnel and Consumer Service: Polite and knowledgeable employees of the Vans company information and skateboarding and pop culture

Chapter 6/ Consumer Decision Making

Vans customers build up a belief about Vans by first trying out the product. For example, a person can walk into a store and try on a pair of Vans shoes. If the person likes the pair, he/she will buy the shoes and wear them. If the person likes or doesn't like the shoes after the purchase, he/she builds up a belief about the brand. Brand image is an image built after a person tries out a certain Vans product. Based off of the one product the person tries, a judgement is made on the whole brand. People post their beliefs on the Vans online shopping page, which is also known as customer reviews. Based on these comments, other online shoppers decide to either buy or not to buy the Vans products. The prospective customers build up their own beliefs on a product by reading customer reviews.

Customer Reviews example: http://shop.vans.com/catalog/Vans/en_US/style/edf13f.html?categoryId=57105