The Fair-Trade Market for Cotton Clothing

Product Offering

The global market has many opportunities for business to offer new products and expand their consumer base in the world marketplace. Numerous countries offer expansion in the global market. A business must methodically perform market research to launch a new product successfully into the global market. The product selected for this assignment is fair-trade cotton clothing marketed by Tesco, PLC of the United Kingdom (UK). The purpose of this assignment is to begin a product launch by selecting a product and country, evaluating market need and growth for the product, perform a SWOT analysis, analyze the competition and define the product offering and product identification. Justification of the product chosen will also be evaluated.

Market Needs

The fair-trade market for cotton clothing is gaining popularity. 66 percent of those surveyed by Fraser Consultancy, a communications research and strategy company, are expected to buy more fair-trade products over the next several years. The fair-trade mark on products certifies "disadvantage producers in developing countries are getting a decent price for their goods" (Murray, 2006). As consumers become economic and environmentally friendly, the market for fair-trade cotton clothing is expected to increase significantly. Tesco, PLC is committed to providing consumers quality products at affordable prices. In addition, currently, clothing sales are up 11% in central Europe (Tesco, 2009).

Market Growth

In the global market, environmentally and socially conscious business practices are a goal of most organizations. Consumers and businesses have a social responsibility to buy products that are beneficial to the world and support sustainable production. "The sales of Fair-trade certified products have been growing on an average of almost 40% per year in the last five years. In 2008, Fair-trade certified sales amounted to approximately €2.9 billion worldwide, a 22% year-to-year increase (Fairtrade Labeling, 2009)." Global sales over the last four years have tripled and many producer organizations have become certified. Because of strong consumer support, Fair-trade products have gained significant ground in growing market share in countries in which Fair-trade products are sold. "In some national markets Fair-trade accounts for between 20-50% of market share in certain products (Fairtrade Labeling, 2009)." With these growth trends, and the company's current standing as the fourth largest value clothing company in the world, the combination should offer vast opportunity to market the socially conscious clothing line (Marketwatch, 2009).