Marketing Fashion Footwear ─ The Business of Shoes

Despite the huge market in fashion footwear, no single academic textbook specifically addresses the fashion footwear business. In general, retail, marketing, brand and business elements of the sector are both under-researched and under-represented in existing fashion marketing publications, and no single text focuses on the business and strategic direction of this product category from a fashion marketing perspective.Marketing Fashion Footwear sets out to address this gap and to demonstrate how footwear is now seen as an integral part of the retailer mix, providing fashion, marketing and design students alike with an invaluable guide to research in this product area as well as insider advice on how to gain employment in this competitive industry sector.

The first book to provide in-depth insights into one of the fastest growing areas of the fashion industry,Marketing Fashion Footwear: The Business of Shoes explores the retail environment, consumer attitudes to footwear, as well as brand creation, production and protection.Marketing Fashion Footwear: The Business of Shoes takes as its specific focus the marketing and merchandising of fashion footwear, as opposed to performance footwear, or health and safety footwear, such as work boots or orthopaedic shoes. As such,Marketing Fashion Footwear: The Business of Shoes uniquely provides a comprehensive guide to the theories and strategies used to develop, manage and market fashion footwear. Key marketing, merchandising and brand management theories are applied to current case studies from some of the most successful international footwear and fashion brands, and interviews with key industry figures offer unique insights into this lucrative industry, making it a must-have text for all students of fashion retailing, fashion merchandising, fashion management, and those looking to specialise in the footwear industry.

Fiona Armstrong-Gibbs is Senior Lecturer in Fashion at Liverpool John Moores University, UK.

Tamsin McLaren is Senior Lecturer in Fashion Management with Marketing at Southampton Solent University, UK.