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Abstract ESport and gaming communities have formed during the years into enormous industry. From playing video-games in the basements and internet cafes, into players earning millions, new creative ways of entertainments connected with games are created, gaming can be considered a lifestyle and eSport might be soon part of an Olympics games and fully considered a sport. The thesis discovers how a fashion can collaborate with this emerging industry. The business side of eSport is ever growing and there are secondary factors which can be utilized for creating profit for fashion industry. The investigation takes place on collecting sufficient data from the community in order to see if there actually a demand is and what is the overall opinion on fashion products and industry. It is crucial to know these data, since this could determine if the cooperation of these two cultures is a clever business strategy the company should consider taking. The paper also suggests and prepares a full business plans for three different operations. Even if there might be more possible entries for this new market, the suggested ones consider the most common and directly connected aspects which are closely related to the concept of nowadays eSport and gaming community. With the acquired data and information about the new community, the paper also provides a clearer understanding of the trends and sufficient ways on how to operate on this market. Investigated were the main actors the fashion company should consider as a ambassadors, and the best performers which could help these two communities be connected properly, so both of them would profit out if this collaboration. However, it is important to understand the social factor of eSport community also, the fashion companies should not only see the community as a goldmine because of the growth and success it is showing lately. The community is very close-fitting and are very sceptical towards the “outsiders” which are trying to enter their world. Since this community is active online it is also important to be prepared for a harsh and possibility negative outcomes and feedbacks, since the internet provides an anonymous voice for a lot of members of the community. Therefore, the fashion company needs to listen and follow the certain rules and suggestion from members of the community which might have more relevant and useful knowledge.
Contents
Introduction
Gaming and eSport in general are currently hugely (Influencer Marketing Hub, 2019) popular (Ingraham, 2018) and a lot had changed in terms of how the public is viewing these cultures. It took some time for general public (Prikhodko, 2018) to see gaming (Duggan,
- as something else than just people playing videos games (Cardiel, 2012) and being considered “nerds” and introvert individuals. ESport helped (Youtube.com/theScore esports,
- this in a huge way (Knuckey, 2016), with enormous (Game Designing.org, 2019) money being invested (Morris, 2013) in it. Possibility of being a full-time employed (Smith,
- as a professional player attracts a lot of people to either pursue their dream of reaching this rank one day, or just making eSport and gaming look more legitimate and for some; the most sought type of entertainment and relaxation. Rick Fox, a famous TV actor and retired NBA player, is vocally helping to change the image of eSport and is publicly calling players “athletes”. (Tsuji, 2017) He is also a cofounder of eSport team and similarly, other popular celebrities are slowly starting to invest in eSport too. (Huddleston, 2018) Since the gaming and eSport community is constantly growing (Influencer Marketing Hub, 2019), professional players are considered role-models (Dotaesports, 2016) and idols (Samal, 2017) for their audience. These players are always promoted, usually by clothing and tech companies (Meola, 2018), by which their teams are sponsored. Therefore, gaming and fashion become close connected. There is a pressure on players to look well and represent either their favorite brand or a brand they are sponsored by. Professional eSport events are always broadcasted (Takahashi, 2019) online on specialized websites such as hltv.org, twitch.tv or youtube.com. The peaks of viewers watching these matches can raise up to hundreds of thousands, if not even millions all together. Not mentioning the real-life events where these matches can fully book stadiums for thousands of people fx, League of Legends tournament sold out whole Staple Centre in LA in 1 hour. (Tassi, 2013) These actions changed mind of a lot of people and showed how serious eSport is. Even though there were a lot of issues from media side. The infamous Jimmy Kimble statement (Tassi, 2015) of his opinion on eSport was his most disliked video in his entire career. Another example was Colin Cowherd’s statement (Schwartz, 2015), saying eSport is for “booger eaters”. (Youtube.com/theScore esports 5:30, 2017) During his show NBA pro player Gordon Hayward (Youtube.com/The Herd with Colin Cowherd, 2015) stepped in and supported eSport claiming it is legitimate form of entertainment with clear description of how much effort is being put into the preparations, production of the events, time and effort from the players, etc. People enjoy these events (escharts, 2019) in real-life where they can meet their favourite players, new people with same interests but mostly where they can enjoy the atmosphere during the matches (escharts, 2018), with a huge rollercoaster of emotions. People are very supportive of their teams (Warr,
- and therefore they go through various emotions when the team wins or loses (Lolesportsstaff, 2019). The age groups (Bathurst, 2017) are very different and often there are younger audiences but eSport (Grestyone, 2018) attracts adults or event elders as well. (Statista, 2017) With a huge success of eSport, TV programs which also broadcast these events on a regular TV programs raised. Fx. Danish TV3 frequently airs these matches to their audience. (eodds.dk, 2017) Also ESL launched a official, world-wide TV programme eSportsTV. (McConnell, 2016) Also, some of the biggest matches are also viewed in Cinemas all over the world. Since in Denmark gaming is very popular, people can come watch these matches
in local cinemas (kino.dk, 2019) throughout whole Denmark. (kino.dk, 2019) The money invested (Chapman, 2019) into gaming is also reaching enormous amounts. (Dreamteam.gg, 2018)Not considering sponsorships or the salary of the individual players. The increases in wages and prize-poolhad a huge impact in structuring the eSport as it is today. As eSport infrastructure improved, professional players very quickly changed from being able to earn living through eSport, into having a luxurious world opened to them. This can be seen in some of the pro’s social media (Instagram/olofkjabjer, 2019) accounts (Instagram/devveking, 2019), where they display the “wealth” (Instagram/xyp9x, 2019) of their earnings. The prize pools of some tournaments raise up from 300,000 USD up to 25 million in Dota Internationals. Major tournaments do not have prize-pools under 1 million. Gaming is huge business and not only from a technology perspective. As already mentioned, the players can be role models for some of the gaming enthusiasts. Therefore, companies know exactly how to select their promotions with the eSport athletes. Major international brands such as Nike, Adidas, Jack and Jones, etc are sponsoring some of the best and most successful teams in eSport. Players are often seen in a big brand clothes either by their own decision or just as a marketing promotion. Often these brands also sponsor teams in making their own jerseys which they also sell to the public. This fact leads us to the main topic of the whole paper, which is if fashion and eSport/gaming can be connected and if yes, then how exactly. This could be beneficial to know for clothing companies which are looking for a potential new group segment since gaming enthusiasts are usually in young (Kemp, 2019) age segmentt (Globalwebindex, 2018) and they could be interested in fashionable way of dressing. It can be also interesting to find out how much of influence do these eSport professionals have on their audience and if they could be considered a potential brand ambassador in future. Also, it would be essential to see how these two different cultures perceive each other. This opinion would be also beneficial for the clothing and fashion market. In previous years high-end fashion companies tried to somehow enter the gaming market with different actions. For example, the premium fashion company Luis Vuitton used a video game character “Lightning” from a big title in video game history “Final Fantasy”. (Lidbury,
- The company used virtual character as a model that was presenting the new collection of the fashion goods. On a similar note a high-end fashion company Moschino also interpreted their new collection into a video game “The Sims”. (Newbold, 2019) There are more attempts at cooperation between these two worlds which would be investigated further in the research. However, this shows that these two communities are beginning to investigate what possibilities there are for them to emerge together. However, nowadays fashion is not only about the designer brands and most common people are interested (AFP Relaxnews,
- in the other organisations which produce clothing products. (Wightman-Stone, 2018) Therefore, it would be interesting to investigate what options there are for fashion companies which would like to begin their expansion on this growing market. This leads us to the main focus of the thesis. These two worlds are growing, new trends are always coming up, more and more people are interested in these two communities. Fashion can be seen in different mainstream sources such as movies, music industry (Strähle, 2018) and so on. (O'NEILL, 2019) eSport is also getting more and more mainstream spotlight mainly due to its success and influence with younger people. Therefore, it would be only a matter of time until these two worlds would fully cooperate and create maybe new aspects for both of them. For now, the scope would be investigating entry actions and possibilities which a fashion company could use.
attract wider audience, providing the market with more options to choose from and to find the right one for them. b) The actors and main figures in these communities are often showing also different styles, therefore in a way “influencing” the audience by doing so. For example, the eSport teams are often showing their fashion sense in different ways. Taking a simple example of team’s tournament clothes; players usually dress in the team’s or organization’s merchandises which they are signed by legal contact. However, even these simple products can show off different fashion trends. From a simple big logo displayed on the front (Cloud9.gg, 2019)following by a special, unique designs (ESL,
- There are several occasions and examples of different fashion styles and companies cooperating in eSport and gaming market. Example of the two that seem very different are Nike (hypebest.com, 2019), known for their streetwear and sport fashion and Moschino (Ritschel, 2019) which is a high-fashion designer brand focused on uniquely extravagant fashioned products. Overall, when talking about fashion and eSport the focus is not set upon only the biggest companies. Some of the market leaders in fashion business are doing a great example of showing the possible potential between these two communities. However, this does not mean only big companies with enormous resources and with the same fashion style should consider expanding to eSport and gaming market. There are several smaller fashion companies which are active on this market such as Sixteen-o, DRKN, NYXL, J!nx.
Literature review
In case of relevant and supportive literature which would be beneficial for this exact problem formulation to the best of our knowledge, the connection between fashion and eSport in general has not been so far measured in literature material which would be discussing or investigating this situation. This could be because it is very specific question and people are mainly still focusing on the overall growth of this competitive scene, therefore they might not be selecting each smaller segments of the industry. For a lot of people eSport could still be something new and they might not understand the basic elements of it. This can be seen, for example, by lack of proper information shared by mainstream media, with individuals and organizations which underestimate the value and popularity of this community. A helpful insight into the eSport industry from a perspective of value creation and appropriation was research in a master thesis by Shanin Adl Zarrabi and Henrik Nel Jerkrot from Chalmers university of Technology in Gothenburg, Sweden. (ZARRABI, 2016) The study was following a question investigating and describing different value sources, which are generated in eSport market and industry. They investigated main factors in value creation and assorted them in different groups. Mentioning the publisher and producer of the video games, the teams which compete in eSport, the organizers of the events for the teams to compete in, and distribution platforms which provide the public the option to spectate these teams battle against each other. This thesis showed the core value creations in this industry. However, there are certainly more possibilities which could be considered “secondary” and under which the topic of fashion can be placed. These secondary factors could only help the industry and community to grow and help teams and fans to participate in making the community stronger. However, they cannot affect the core basics of the eSport as the previously mentioned factors do. The topic of value creation and more in-depth view for the mentioned secondary factors was lightly analyzed and mentioned in two literatures. Yuri Seo from Victoria University of
Wellington researched the eSport consumption (Seo, 2013). The research followed different stakeholders, similar as the article mentioned before. However, in this case there was a focus also on the secondary factors. And lastly, on topic of stakeholders, a book by Tobias M. Scholz provides a full observation of whole business aspect of eSport. The book follows the beginnings of eSport and how it emerged into this multi billionaire industry. Different primary and secondary stakeholders are discussed in the book. The whole book is concluded with future predictions on eSport community. Mr. Scholz, however, focuses his research on the available ones. (Scholz, eSports is Business, 2018) His book also in a way supports the idea of this research of fashion and eSport in a part where he discuss the sponsors as a secondary stakeholders. It is, of course, not fully focused on the fashion part, but the fashion company in a sense could take a role of a sponsor if they would collaborate with the eSport team, player, influencer or content creators.
History of eSport
In order for a fashion company to understand whole phenomena behind eSport and gaming, it would be essential to be familiar with what eSport community went through during their time span and how did it evolve into a huge community as it is now. This data of historical eSport path could be beneficial in understanding the market and the fans. Being able to see the development could unravel a lot of useful information and prevent maybe possible mistakes that could eventually happen. (Scholz, eSports is Business, 2018) Many people might be in a believe that eSport (preceden, 2019) is a young (Lopes, 2019) community and was born not that long time ago. However, eSport is dated up to 1950s when the substructure of video games was settled down and with it a competitive aspect of playing games. And by the constant hardware development and improvements with network led to the creation of eSport as a major sport and gaming community as it is known nowadays. The first proper multiplayer “competitive” game was created in 1958 by William Higginbotham, a nuclear physicist at Brookhaven Lab’s Instrumentation Division. (Brookhaven, 2019) The concept was very simple, two players could play against each other in game of tennis and was played by an early forms of joysticks, where players could set the trajectory of the ball. This game is by many considered to be a birth of eSport. (Larch, 2019) However, as owning a computer was very expensive in these times, there was a very small to even none sign of video game market, simply because of lack of potential users. Around 1972 companies such as Atari, Magnavox and Vectorbeam presented to the world their first products and this changed rapidly the costs of computers and led to rise of arcade games and gaming consoles. The first dated eSport tournament that ever happened was held on October of 1972 at Stanford University. During the tournament, students competed against each other in the game of Spacewar. The winner would take home a yearly subscription to a Rolling Stones magazine. (Consolazio, 2018) In 1980 Atari held a tournament in the game Space Invaders and the event attracted a significant amount of 10000 participants and received a widespread of media coverage and helped to show public the concept of video games. In 1981 an organisation under name of Twin Galaxies was created. The purpose of the company was to record high scores and the help promote video games and publicise the records through Guinness World Records books. (eSportforgamers, 2019)
In the current ages, fashion can be present in many factors and still has inclining reach potential. With fashion being hugely popular and visualised in music industry, movie industry and sports it can be assumed that a lot of people are in some way affected by fashion and most likely also influenced. Since the huge industries and communities mentioned before are full of fashion actions of some sort, a potential enormous market which is constantly growing can be also utilised for a profit of fashion companies. ESports and gaming is nowadays one of the most popular sorts of entertainment. From the whole history of eSport up to present popularity and growth, eSport is considered a billion-dollar industry. A lot (bbc, 2018) of sources (Cullen, 2018) are expecting eSport (bbc, 2018) to be a part of upcoming Olympic (Morgan, 2019) games which would be even a bigger boost for the community and might attract even more fans. However, even though the facts and statistics predict the eSport and gaming community and market to grow, how can this data be valuable for a fashion company if they would consider entering this new market? It could be beneficial for the company to have some sort of proof that there actually is a connection between these two communities, which in first sight might not be the perfect duo. However, during the time many companies and decisions have proven that there is a significant symmetry and with a proper innovation and preparation could be transformed into unique and profitable cooperation. Therefore, in this section a brief list of such contradictions would be listed in order to show how the cooperation between fashion and eSport functioned so far
Nike x LoL
It is nothing new that major fashion brands are starting to be invested and directly involved in sponsoring eSport teams and tournaments. Although there are few of those labels at the moment, their brand image says a lot of this new movements. Recently in February 2019 Nike announced that they will be the official and exclusive sponsor for Chinas Tencent League of Legends Pro League. (Li, 2019) The partnership of 4 years will consist of Nike designing and producing special new clothing and footwear product until 2022. Another way of Nike getting involved is by preparing a physical training programs for the 16 teams that are participating in the tournaments. The focus is to explore new possibilities for eSport athletes to be able to keep their physical and mental health in the best shape possible. This could lead into a lot of improvements also for general eSport public.
Champion eSport team jerseys
A well-known streetwear label Champion has recently announced that the brand is planning a first-ever collaboration with eSport professional teams. (Higgins, 2019) The idea behind the new partnership will consist of producing a special custom-made baseball jersey with a emblazoned logos of the eSport teams. The teams collaborating with Champion are teams that have multiple rosters for all major games including Overwatch, League of Legends, Fortnite, etc. Each team will receive their own designed products with a different elements on each one of them. (Silbert, 2019)
Adidas x North
North (North, 2019) is a professional eSport team focusing on game Counter Strike: Global Offensive. The team was founded by most successful football club F.C Kobenhavn and media company Nordisk Film. The team is based in Copenhagen and was established in January 2017. In April 2018 a sportswear and fashion giant adidas signed a contract with the team. (Cooke, 2018) The main elements of the partnership are connected with the players
from the team to be promoting the fashion brand. This was supposed to be done during the time when the players were traveling, playing official matches and live stream on streaming platforms. (Collins, 2018) This way a significant part of public could see the players being interested in the brand, thus they could influence the viewer to purchase some products from adidas, since their favourite players were wearing them. This concept easily falls under the influencer marketing strategy. Also, an adidas logo was embodied on official North jerseys also available for public to purchase. The Communication manager from adidas additionally had a very uplifting and positive statement for this cooperation: “ESport in general has a fantastic community which supports and gathers people across borders. At the same time, the youth culture has a strong voice in Copenhagen. We believe, as a sports company, that you are able to succeed with passion, practice, motivation and support. “We want to show the new generation, that we see and support what they care about, because we know how important communities are for young people. Furthermore, North is one of the most professional eSport brands in the world.” Sandra Essesjö
Astralis x Jack and Jones
Currently and for a long-time number 1 CS: GO team in the World ranking (HLTV, 2019), Danish team Astralis has also found a fashion sponsor. Now the team went with a home-turf and signed a partnership correspondingly with Danish brand Jack and Jones. (Astralis, 2017) Astralis was co-founded in January 2016 and was first ever professional organisation which was co-owned by the players playing in the team. Astralis quickly showed that Denmark is living with eSport and already in 2016 was ranked number 1 in the World. Over the next years Astralis was always dominating the scene and was and still is one of the most feared teams to play against. Jack and Jones therefore became an official sponsor for the team and were in charge of creating official team’s jerseys and also accessories and other clothing products. The two organisations will work together also on different online and offline events such as fan meetups, competitions, merchandise collection and unique design collaborations. (Bestseller, 2017) Henning Nielsen from Jack and Jones mentioned the company was very impressed with the team’s achievements and results and also with lifestyle of the players. Therefore, they found a perfect match for them and were convinced that Astralis is the best option for them to partner up with. (Garren, 2017) He also mentioned the main decision why the company such as Jack and Jones decided on this strategy: “The eSport industry is experiencing tremendous growth, not only in terms of active players and fan communities, but also as an entertainment product. Therefore, we see a great opportunity to become part of this development.
The stereotypes are changing
This section shows how eSport and gaming developed into this big phenomenon which it is today in a view more of relatable for fashion companies. The purpose is to boost or even change the idea of how some media and population still see eSport and by showing some big changes, examples of eSport celebrities and overall image of an eSport fan, it hopefully will be clearer to see the potential between cooperation of these two markets. Since fashion is hugely focused on appearance and main actors are models, providing an example of eSport players who are already being used for fashion campaigns can be a supporting proof of the potential. Over the years a typical idea and opinion about individual interested in video games would be
Methodology
From an epistemological perspective the research looks at the problem in interpretivism viewpoint. Meaning that the study relies heavily on human subject (Bryman, 2016) as the tool for measuring certain phenomena and this is done via observation of qualitative data available online, thus using Netnography to collect relevant data. The individuals are often complex and different and therefore they can understand the same object of interest differently and have their own experience with it. It is also a important factor that in order to fully understand humans action, it is needed to see the world thought the eyes of the actors. (Thompson, 2015) Constructionism is used from ontological perspective. Meaning that humans are constructing their knowledge and meanings of certain phenomena’s from their own experiences. Related to the thesis it is important to research how the user experience the fashion and how they interpret in online. They are creators of their own knowledge and it is important to discover what they consider as knowledge reality. From the previous part of the thesis, it can be seen that there are already a several similar concepts of cooperation between fashion and eSport community happening. However, it is important to find out if there are similar academic works already written about the exact this collaboration. Therefore, it is important to find these articles and analyze how far their research reached. Therefore, the Literature review part would focus on search for the exact, similar or somehow related researches. It can bring new ideas; perceptions and it can also help to answer the problem formulation. Before suggesting how should the fashion company create the collaboration and start their potential expansion to this new market, it is important to find out if there is an actual demand for clothing and fashion products from the members of the eSport and gaming community. This is essential information which is very crucial and important to acquire before any major investments and research should be conducted. This could save a lot of resources, time and effort from the fashion company. On the other hand, it can boost the overall idea of the collaboration and show or convince possible sceptics who could undervalue the hidden potential of this expansion. This step will be done using a researching tool created by Kozinets, Netnography. The focus would be set on finding if there is a demand and interest, what is the opinion on fashion by eSport fans, what are their preferences and if they are involved or interested overall in fashion and apparel. By combining the data gathered and analyzed, hopefully it would be easier to find appropriate solutions for the problem formulation. In order to answer it, there needs to be a solid background of strong and valuable data and sources which would be supporting those suggestions. The suggestions would be able to hopefully create and construct from the data mainly gathered in the Netnography, since by using the tool, it should be clearer about the opinion, demand and needs of these members of the eSport and gaming community. After constructing and describing the possible outcomes from the data and research, an appropriate analysis will be constructed. When talking about expansion for a company or a new perspective, the selected analysis would be used. Ansoff Matrix for a discovering what options for expansion the company could have. Marketing Mix 4ps for preparation of promotional and business actions for future times. Next, Product Life Cycle (PLC) for
making sure that the whole life-span of a product would be analyzed and back-upped by a series of actions and advises which the company should consider using in the appropriate time. Lastly Risk Assessment will be conducted in order to prepare the company for some of the most crucial issues they might encounter during this expansion. This can help the company be prepared and ready for any alternatives and outcomes of how the whole collaboration can evolve. It is always a good and smart decision to do a Risk Assessment since it can prevent small problems from escalating into major ones which could have create a significant damage to the company or business plan.
Theoretical framework
In this section the theories and analyses selected for researching this phenomenon would be selected and the decision process of selecting each one of them described. This section should show the reader the idea and concept of this paper more easily and in the end, it will be a lens by which the problem formulation would be evaluated.
Ansoff Matrix
Since the whole general idea behind this research is how could a fashion company enter (TheWritePassJournal, 2011) a new market, Ansoff matrix (Meldrum, 1995) tool fits perfectly into this. The tool (Hussain, 2013) is supposed to help as a strategic model for planning and preparing business for opportunities, which should lead in profit and growth and to evaluate which steps and opportunities have the highest chance of being the successful future business decision. (Hanlon, 2018) The main four sections of Ansoff Matrix (Al-Bostanji, 2015) consists of Market development, Product development, Market penetration and Diversification strategy. (Riley, 2018) Market development This strategy consists of company’s desire to enter a brand-new market under which they did not yet perform their business. The company usually wants to enter the market with the products which they currently have in their product line, therefore no development of products is happening during this strategy. The company fully believes their products are the top quality and would be the best solution for the new market. The main question which company is asking at this point is “How can we extend our market?” (Professional Academy,
Product development This growth strategy is used for company which want to introduce their new products to an already used and existing market. The main focus is set on developing modified products which should appeal to existing markets. This strategy is very useful for businesses where the product needs to be somehow different from the competitors in order to be most successful. Research and development, insight into customer needs are the main factors which company should emphasise on.
Introduction stage During this stage it is expected that the most investments would be done. This stage is launching the new product line; thus, the awareness and customer’s demand might not be so high. Therefore, investments in marketing, customer and market segmentation and research and development would be the ones with the highest values. (Lumen, 2019) Hence the demand must be manually created via proper promotion and campaign awareness. The company needs to evoke a need in customers to try the product and create their own opinion about new goods. Growth stage During this stage the product sales and growth is increasing, and it has received acceptance from the market, the customers and also the wider public. This is a result of a successful marketing strategies which resulted in revenue increases. Increase in distribution should be expected since the overall demand for the product is rising, most likely a word-of-mouth marketing is happening naturally during this stage, which brings more and more new customers to the company. However, the company should still consider in investing in marketing just to keep the positive pace going as long as possible. During this stage the company maybe should consider innovating the product and introducing new features which would bring more attraction and maintain the growth. The overall feedback from the market needs to be investigated in order to find the best solutions for fulfilling the needs of the customers. Maturity This is the stage when the sales will reach their peak and the product also reached the overall market acceptance. The company wants to prolong this stage as much as possible in order to avoid decline stage. This would lead into innovation investments and new features of the product in order to continue being competitive with other companies and their versions of the product. This stage can be the most competitive, therefore the companies need to consider where to invest the resources and which improvements should be done in order to still have the competitive advantage. Decline During this stage the sales of the product are expected to decline and fall. There are multiple reasons why this is happening, either the demand for the product disappeared, the competition came up with a more attractive product version, new competitors came with new product, or simply the customer does not need to re-purchase the product. The companies could either switch up to a less costly production methods, if possible, (Product Life Cycle Stages, 2019) or to decline and take off the products from the market and investigate what could be improved for another attempt.
Marketing mix (4PS)
Essentially marketing mix (Muala, 2012) is a set of actions which are set and used when the company is presenting new product or service on a market. (The Economic Times, 2019) The model helps companies to define the marketing options in four terms. (Marketing Mix, 2019)
Price, product, promotion and place would be the ones that will be used for the purpose of the thesis. (Mind Tools, 2019) These are the main processes which company will need to investigate and prepare for when entering new market. It is essential to prepare a plan for each one of them and be ready for execution of it. In order to fully understand Marketing mix (Khan, 2014), a small brief explanation of all the parts is needed for being able to reach the full potential of the tool. (Purashraf Yasanallah, 2012) Product Product which is decided to enter the new market needs to be summed up through a definition of the product’s features and benefits. (Cleverism, 2014) The product can be either tangible or intangible services depending on the specific needs which the company tries to fulfil for their customers. It is important to fully understand and to know all the unique beneficial features of the product in order to move forward with the proper marketing strategy. Also selecting and investigating the end customers is important before launching the products in order to see if the potential customers would be interested in the product from the company. Overall in this part the summary of features, different additions from competition and other aspects of the product are mentioned. Price The price is the actual amount of how much the end customer is supposed to pay for the product. It is necessary to determine the amount by how much the product is going to sell, because this decision can directly determine the success of the product on the market. Therefore, it is important to understand how the customer sees the product that the company is selling. A proper pricing method can determine the position of the product among other competitors and also can help set an opinion on the product from the customers respective. Meaning if the product would be priced lower, it can be assumed that the quality is also in lower range and vice versa. (Pahwa, 2018) There are three major pricing strategies available for the decision. Penetration pricing (lowering the prince in order to gain market share) Skimming pricing (starting the price in higher numbers and then eventually lowering it) Competition pricing (price higher in order to create a perception of being higher quality, price the same in order to show more benefits for the same price range and lower the price in order to attract wider customer segment) (Cleverism, 2014) Place Every product needs to be placed in order for customer to be able to buy it, if the product is placed unsuccessfully and is out of reach and exploration of market, then the whole potential is wasted away. Therefore, it is essential for business to be able to prepare the best solution for customer to find out about their products and be able to acquire them easily and more comfortably than they would from the competition. In order to be able to place and distribute the product to be the most efficient, the understanding of how market thinks and decides on buying, is needed. There are different distribution strategies available for the businesses. Intensive distribution - Cover as much market as possible
participants which are sharing their opinions on a relevant topic of their interest. If the researcher would be able to position himself into the community and understand the point of view of an actual customer, it would be more insightful and more useful than just owning a series of statistical data which could confirm some part of the research, but not being open all the possible outcomes. (Kozinets, 2014)
Data collection
The data that is needed for this particular research is the opinion of eSport scene on fashion overall. If the company wants to enter this market it is essential to know whether the market is actually interested in them entering and brining their products. This is one of the pillars of decision making for companies which are looking for expansion to new, unknown grounds and if the effort would be invested into this research, it could save the company a lot of money if there would be a small demand. Or on the other hand gain a useful knowledge before actually starting to engage with this community. In this case the online website HLTV.org was used as a source for this data. The reason behind selecting this website are several.
1. The website is focused mainly on the scene of Counter Strike: Global Offensive game. This game is one of the top competitive games in history and dates its beginnings 1990s. Nowadays the game is played by millions and viewed by even more. This game is also the main played game of the best CS:GO Danish team Astralis. In Denmark eSport is growing rapidly and is supported even by the government. Denmark sees a huge potential in competitive video gaming and is clearly showing this in their public actions. For example, the collaboration between Astralis and world-wide fashion brand Jack and Jones, opening of eSport college in Odense and hosting two huge eSport tournaments BLAST! located in Copenhagen and ESL one in Odense. According to Prime Minister Lars Loekke (Popat, 2019) in Denmark, 96% of young boys are playing games at-least 2 times a week, and it can be assumed that huge part of them are playing CS:GO since Astralis are the best team in the world in this game. 2. HLTV is not an official game forum and therefore people tend to use this forum more for than just discussing the state of the one game. There are multiple statistical data of the current eSport CS:GO scene, news regarding teams and events or even forum part which is not strictly restricted for creating posts only regarding CS:GO. 3. By trying to conduct somehow accurate research, HLTV was the website which provided the most usable data for this issue. This community showed interest in the fashion by publicly talking about different aspects of it. The keywords which were used to filter out the only relevant forum posts which were “fashion” and “clothes” These keywords generated 74 forum posts and 2214 comments from which 1078 were irrelevant and 1136 were consider relevant for the purpose of this research. The criteria for considering the comment relevant were if they strictly mentioned any kind of emotion towards the fashion topic. Understanding that dealing with people online and in a possibility community under which a lot of younger audience can be part of, there were a lot of irrelevant comments which ranged from political, homophobic and other insulting messages up to discussions regarding different topics which were not relevant to the selected problem. “fashion” generated 30 forums under which this term was used. These posts had together 876
comments from which 372 were considered relevant. “clothes” generated 44 forums, 1338 comments from which 764 were considered relevant. The forums were divided into three major categories depending on what was their main topic. Overall from 11 36 relevant comments, 797 were considered positive. This means the user were expressing their opinions and experiences towards fashion in very positive way. User were also stating mostly they positive relation towards fashion and towards their personal interest in purchasing fashion clothes. 339 relevant negative comments were mostly stating the opposite. User were rating negatively, sometimes in insulting manner other users fashion choices or simply stating their uninterest in purchasing branded clothes, since they prefer to spend their money somewhere else (mostly on computer setups) which in a way also support the suggestion for visually better-looking pc accessories. Brand opinion Forum posts in which people discussed different exact brands and how did other users like them and what is overall opinion about these brands were used 5 times. Mainly people were discussing the high fashion design products. Fashion rating This type of forums was the most popular and users created these topics 37 times. Under these discussion posts people were sharing their opinions on fashion news, how the trends are changing, what is popular in which country. Here the users wanted to discuss different fashion choices and style of eSport professional players, this topic was discussed in 9 individual forum threads. This is interesting, since this clearly shows that users are following and judging these athletes, not only for their in-game performances, but also outside the whole eSport segment. This data is confirming that these players are considered influencers for some, and their choices might influence and affect the customer’s mind and their behaviours. Another similar topic was when users asked other users to rate their fashion choices. Users were also discussing eSport teams and players’ official merchandises and sharing their experiences and opinions about them. This showed the interest from the users but maybe their hesitance in deciding if they should buy the products and if they would be quality goods. Lastly the users were discussing and sharing their favourite fashion brands. These topics could be just purely to discuss what brands do other user like, or the way some are trying to find new brands which they do not know, because of their fashion sense or limits in knowing the brands. Fashion advices Advices were also popular subjects of conversations in this community. 32 related topics. A lot of users were actually very engaged in sharing a lot of their fashion advices and opinions on certain topics. These topics were mainly in the highest numbers (28 out of 32) regarding the advices for places and online stores which other users use for purchasing fashion products. This was hugely overused topic and shows a clear interest of the eSport community in fashion but also maybe an insufficient promotion from the fashion side, since the customers are unable to find products and sources for purchasing them. This information is crucial for the fashion companies to maybe rethink their promotional strategies and create new ones which would be more sufficient for this new market. Users were acting very friendly towards these topics since they might understand the other users’ pain in trying to find trustworthy and proper fashion stores or websites. However, in the major number the
