Marketing company report Business & Marketing Research Paper

Clothing Market Analysis
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October 21, 2020
As stated earlier in this paper, Gap is an internationally recognized brand of clothing. It has other apparel companies under it, such as Banana Republic, Old Navy, and Athleta CITATION Wri16 \l 1033 (Wright, 2016). To understand its strengths and weaknesses in terms of its marketing approach, this section focuses on the trends of the clothing industry and the competitiveness of the company’s positioning.
Textile and Clothing Industry Growth
One of the main strengths of the clothing industry is its continuous growth over the years. This is evidenced in the increase in the textile industry's value and demand ever since the 1970s. According to ILO.Org, the change in fiber-supply volume for (1) cotton, (2) wool, (3) cellulosic, and (4) synthetic had experienced a consistent increase from 1970 towards 2004, with synthetic materials experiencing the most prominent growth (Image 1).
Figure 1. Change in fiber supply in the textile industry from 1970 to 2004. Retrieved from /component/k2/item/878-global-trends-in-the-textile-industry
In the present, this trend has continued to increase with the current textile supply amounting to around 100,000 million tonnes every year, according to one study conducted by Ütebay, Çelik, and Çay (2020). Accordingly, coupled with variables such as the continuous population growth and the rise of purchasing power in developing countries, the same industry is expected to grow even further in the succeeding years (Figure 2).
Figure 2: Forecast for US Textile Market Size from 2016 to 2017. Retrieved from /industry-analysis/textile-market
However, in the short-term, it seems that this trend might experience some drawbacks due to the recent pandemic. This is particularly the case for some of its subsidiaries (i.e., Banana Republic) that focuses on luxury brands. This is because the luxury clothing line is one of the most stricken industry in the past year CITATION Ros20 \l 13321 (Rosenbaum & Caminti, 2020). Nonetheless, in the long run, the forecast for the clothing industry seems to still support a long-term growth.