PROVOCATIVE PROMOTION: NAELOFAR HIJAB VIOLATING CULTURAL SENSITIVITY?

Abstract

The implementation of a marketing strategy without cultural sensitivity in mind can result in unintentionally offending or alienating the new target market, which can lead to a drop in sales – or worse. The purpose of this paper is first to explore how promotional advertisement with cultural sensitivity can cause a misfit in marketing strategy for the fashion industry’s specific market. Causing the promotion turned provocative. It could be more advantages for a marketer to be able to fully utilize intrinsic and extrinsic strengths while avoiding the market predecessor threat, simultaneously utilize available opportunities and liberalize weaknesses despite putting too much effort to eradicate. Secondly, a specific execution technique used in analyzing the case by adopting the 7 Ps marketing mixed into an inductive single-case study on Naelofar Hijab’s provocative promotion. The finding shows the core strategy in the promotion fashion industry is promoting via social media consist of popularity engagement, Outfit-Of-The-Day (OOTD) approach, and utilization of personnel status as media social active user established strong consumer foundations. While the execution of runway show faced five challenges, but the successful event may uplift brand identity. As far as the adoption of a single-case study is concerned, this could create biases that can affect the final product in terms of reliability, validity and generalizing. However, Erikson (1986) stated, the general lies in the particular, and Flyvberg (2006) stated the strength of a single example is underestimated in its contribution to scientific progress. In a specific and growing sub-industry, this single case study is reasonable to believe that it could be considered as a representative case of companies of the time and its findings sufficiently in general. Significantly, the finding could guide marketers towards understanding the market sensitivity, and if there is a need to modify the marketing strategy from offending the new target market.