Table of Contents
Type: Case Study | Subject: Marketing | Level: Masters | Word Count: ~3000 words
This model case study was produced by an Essays UK specialist as reference material for learning purposes only. For support in this field, see our marketing case study support.
You are a brand consultant advising the board of a heritage British footwear manufacturer whose core customer base is ageing and whose sales among 18–24 year-olds have stagnated. Produce a case study analysing the brand’s current positioning and recommending a repositioning strategy to engage Gen Z consumers without alienating existing loyal customers.
Whitmore & Vale is a fictional heritage footwear manufacturer used here to illustrate a brand repositioning case study. Founded in Northampton in 1927, a town historically associated with English shoemaking, the company built a century-long reputation for Goodyear-welted leather boots and brogues, sold through a small chain of owned stores, department-store concessions and a long-established wholesale network. The brand’s positioning has traditionally rested on craftsmanship, durability and Englishness, values that have supported premium pricing and strong repeat purchase among an older customer base.
That positioning, however, has become a commercial liability. Approximately 85 per cent of Whitmore & Vale’s revenue currently comes from customers aged 45 and over, and sales among 18–24 year-olds have been essentially flat for five years, even as the wider premium footwear market has grown, driven substantially by younger consumers. A number of newer direct-to-consumer footwear brands, with a strong social media presence and faster product cycles, have captured much of this younger demand, leaving Whitmore & Vale increasingly dependent on an ageing customer base whose purchasing will naturally decline over time. The board has therefore commissioned this case study to determine whether, and how, the brand can be repositioned to engage Gen Z consumers without eroding the loyalty and price premium it retains among its existing customers.
The analysis that follows applies Keller’s (2001, 2013) Customer-Based Brand Equity model to diagnose Whitmore & Vale’s current brand position, before applying segmentation, targeting and positioning (STP) analysis (Smith, 1956; Kotler and Keller, 2016) to consider how the brand might be repositioned for a younger segment without damaging its existing customer relationships. As with all cases in this series, Whitmore & Vale is a fictional construct created for academic illustration; it draws on general dynamics observed across the UK heritage footwear and fashion sector but does not describe any real company or brand.
The difficulty facing Whitmore & Vale is one widely reported across heritage manufacturing sectors more broadly, from tailoring to leather goods, where brands built on decades of consistent craftsmanship often find that the very consistency that built trust with an older customer base can be read by younger consumers as irrelevance rather than reliability. Kapferer (2012) argues that heritage brands face a particular strategic tension: too little change risks the brand appearing outdated to new audiences, while too much change risks eroding the authenticity that differentiates it from mass-market competitors in the first place. This tension frames the repositioning question addressed in this case study, and is returned to throughout the analysis and recommendations below.
Whitmore & Vale operates through three channels: 12 owned stores in the UK, concessions in five department stores, and a wholesale relationship with around 60 independent shoe retailers, supplemented by a basic transactional website that accounts for only around 8 per cent of sales, low by comparison with sector norms for comparable premium footwear brands. Table 1 summarises the current customer profile and channel contribution.
| Metric | Value |
|---|---|
| Revenue from customers aged 45+ | 85% |
| Revenue from customers aged 18–24 | 4% |
| Website / e-commerce share of sales | 8% |
| Owned stores | 12 |
| Department store concessions | 5 |
| Independent wholesale accounts | 60 |
The company’s marketing has historically relied on print advertising in broadsheet newspapers and word-of-mouth among existing customers, with a limited and inconsistently maintained social media presence. Product development has similarly prioritised continuity, with core boot and brogue styles largely unchanged for a decade, reinforcing durability and craftsmanship but offering few entry points for younger consumers seeking newer silhouettes, colourways or price points. Meanwhile, competitor brands with a stronger digital and social presence have grown share among 18–34 year-old buyers, several combining heritage manufacturing techniques with contemporary design and direct-to-consumer or limited-edition release models that generate the kind of social media engagement Whitmore & Vale currently does not replicate.
Internal customer research commissioned alongside this review found that existing customers’ purchase decisions are driven overwhelmingly by durability, comfort and an expectation that resoling and repair services will extend the working life of a pair well beyond a decade, values consistent with the brand’s historic positioning. By contrast, exploratory research among 18–24 year-old non-customers found relatively high awareness of the general concept of “heritage British footwear” as a category, but very low unprompted awareness of the Whitmore & Vale name specifically, and a strong stated preference among this group for brands they had encountered through social media or that were worn by content creators they followed, rather than through in-store or print advertising. This pattern is consistent with the wider view in the marketing literature that younger consumers increasingly discover and validate brands through peer and creator networks rather than traditional advertising channels (Kotler and Keller, 2016), reinforcing the channel-misalignment issue examined further below.
Two frameworks are applied: Keller’s Customer-Based Brand Equity (CBBE) pyramid, to diagnose the current strength and composition of the Whitmore & Vale brand, and segmentation, targeting and positioning (STP) analysis, to consider how a Gen Z segment might be targeted through repositioning.
Keller’s (2001, 2013) CBBE model argues that brand equity is built in four sequential stages: brand identity (salience), brand meaning (performance and imagery), brand response (judgements and feelings) and brand resonance (the depth of the customer relationship). Applied to Whitmore & Vale, brand salience is arguably strong but narrow: awareness is high among older, typically male, UK consumers with an interest in traditional menswear, but low among younger and more diverse audiences who may never encounter the brand through its current channels. Brand performance associations, such as durability and Goodyear welting, are genuine functional strengths, but brand imagery, the more emotional, lifestyle-oriented associations that Keller (2013) argues increasingly drive purchase decisions among younger consumers, is underdeveloped; the brand is not strongly associated with any particular social identity, subculture or lifestyle relevant to Gen Z.
At the judgements and feelings level, existing customers report high quality perceptions and trust, evidenced by strong repeat purchase, but there is no meaningful evidence that younger consumers hold any developed judgement of the brand at all, since basic awareness itself is low. Consequently, resonance, the top of Keller’s pyramid, is strong but narrow: a loyal core of older repeat customers, but no meaningful relationship with the segment the business needs to grow. Aaker (1996) similarly distinguishes between a brand’s core identity, the enduring associations that should not change, and its extended identity, which can be developed to reach new markets; the challenge for Whitmore & Vale is to build an extended identity relevant to Gen Z without diluting the core craftsmanship identity that its existing customers value, a tension Fournier (1998) frames in terms of managing multiple, sometimes divergent, consumer–brand relationships simultaneously.
The STP framework (Smith, 1956; Kotler and Keller, 2016) suggests Whitmore & Vale should treat Gen Z not as a single homogeneous segment but should identify a specific sub-segment for which the brand’s genuine strengths, namely durability, craftsmanship, and the implicit sustainability of a long product life, are most relevant. A plausible target segment is what might be termed “conscious heritage” consumers: younger buyers, disproportionately represented on platforms such as Instagram and TikTok, who are increasingly interested in sustainability, provenance and buying fewer, longer-lasting items rather than fast fashion. Ries and Trout (2001) would classify this as an opportunity to occupy a distinctive position in the target’s mind by association with an existing, credible attribute, durability, rather than by manufacturing an artificial new identity that the brand cannot substantiate.
Positioned this way, Whitmore & Vale’s century of manufacturing heritage becomes an asset rather than a liability: the brand can credibly claim an authenticity that newer direct-to-consumer competitors, however strong their social media presence, cannot easily replicate. Wood (2000) notes that brand equity of this kind, built on genuine heritage and demonstrable quality, is a source of sustainable differentiation precisely because it is difficult for competitors to imitate quickly, provided the brand can communicate it through channels and formats the target segment actually uses. Kapferer’s (2012) brand identity prism similarly suggests that a brand’s “physique” facet, its tangible, sensory characteristics such as materials and construction, can anchor a repositioning strategy even as the more surface-level “reflection” and “self-image” facets are refreshed for a new audience, offering a route to change how the brand is perceived without changing what it fundamentally is.
Kotler and Keller (2016) identify four broad bases for segmenting consumer markets: demographic, geographic, psychographic and behavioural. A purely demographic definition of the target segment, “18–24 year-olds”, is too broad to be strategically useful, since the internal research summarised above suggests only a minority of that age group would respond to a heritage, durability-led positioning at all. A psychographic and behavioural refinement is therefore more useful: the “conscious heritage” segment is better defined by attitude (valuing sustainability and provenance over novelty), by media behaviour (active on Instagram and TikTok, and influenced by creators rather than by traditional advertising) and by a stated willingness to pay a premium for a product they expect to keep for many years, rather than by age alone. Framed this way, the segment overlaps with, but is narrower than, the full 18–24 age cohort, and Whitmore & Vale should expect that a repositioning campaign targeted at this narrower segment will convert only a minority of younger consumers exposed to it, which is consistent with realistic expectations for a considered, premium-price purchase category rather than a fast-fashion one.
This segmentation also has implications for targeting strategy. Rather than pursuing an undifferentiated approach aimed at all younger consumers, or over-investing in a small, tightly defined niche, a differentiated targeting strategy is appropriate: continuing to serve the existing older core segment largely unchanged, while developing a distinct but related marketing programme, using different channels and creative content, for the conscious-heritage segment, consistent with Smith’s (1956) original argument that segmented marketing programmes tend to outperform a single undifferentiated offer once a market contains genuinely different groups of buyers with different needs and media habits.
Synthesising the CBBE and STP analysis, four key issues emerge.
First, an awareness gap: Whitmore & Vale is simply not visible to most Gen Z consumers, who are not exposed to its historic marketing channels, meaning brand meaning and resonance cannot develop regardless of underlying product quality.
Second, underdeveloped brand imagery: while functional and performance associations such as durability and craftsmanship are strong, the lifestyle and identity associations that increasingly drive younger consumers’ purchase decisions are largely absent, leaving the brand emotionally flat relative to more socially engaged competitors.
Third, channel misalignment: an 8 per cent e-commerce share and continued reliance on print advertising and physical retail concentrate the brand’s presence in channels Gen Z consumers use comparatively little, regardless of the quality of the underlying message.
Fourth, a positioning risk: any repositioning must reach a younger segment without signalling to existing older customers that the brand’s core values of durability and craftsmanship are being abandoned in favour of fashion-led trend-chasing, a risk Aaker (1996) associates with over-extending brand identity beyond what the core can credibly support. This risk is heightened by the fact that Whitmore & Vale’s existing customers are highly loyal and price-insensitive precisely because they trust the brand not to change, meaning any visible shift in tone, product range or marketing style carries a genuine risk of signalling instability to the segment currently generating the great majority of revenue, even while the business works to build a relationship with a new one.
These four issues are interdependent rather than separate problems to be solved individually. The awareness gap and channel misalignment are, in practice, the same underlying issue viewed from two angles: the brand is largely absent from the channels the target segment uses, so no amount of message refinement within existing channels alone would be sufficient to build imagery or resonance. Equally, the positioning risk cannot be managed by avoiding change altogether, since inaction leaves the awareness and imagery gaps unaddressed; it can only be managed by sequencing and ring-fencing change carefully, which is the logic underlying the recommendations set out below.
Five recommendations follow, sequenced to build brand awareness and imagery among the target segment before asking it to purchase.
1. Reposition around “conscious heritage” rather than fashion trend. Lead marketing communications with the brand’s genuine durability and craftsmanship credentials, reframed for a sustainability-conscious younger audience around a “buy less, buy better” message, rather than attempting to compete directly on fast-changing style, consistent with Ries and Trout’s (2001) positioning principle of occupying a credible, ownable position.
2. Rebuild brand imagery through appropriate channels. Invest in a genuine, consistently maintained presence on Instagram and TikTok, showing the craftsmanship process, the people who make the products, and the longevity of older pairs still in use, building the imagery dimension of Keller’s (2013) CBBE model without changing the underlying product.
3. Introduce a limited, clearly labelled entry range. Develop a small number of lower-priced, younger-skewing silhouettes or colourways as a distinct sub-line, allowing experimentation with younger audiences while explicitly preserving the core heritage range that existing customers value, managing the tension Fournier (1998) identifies between serving multiple, divergent customer relationships from a single brand.
4. Invest in e-commerce and direct-to-consumer capability. Redevelop the website beyond a basic transactional function to support storytelling and craftsmanship content and a stronger direct relationship with younger customers, who are markedly less likely to shop through department-store concessions than the brand’s existing customer base.
5. Monitor brand health by segment. Track awareness, imagery and purchase intent separately for the existing core segment and the target Gen Z segment, ensuring the repositioning is building resonance with the new audience without eroding it among the base, directly addressing the positioning risk identified above.
6. Ring-fence the core proposition explicitly in internal and external communication. Brief staff, wholesale partners and department-store buyers on the rationale for the entry range before launch, and ensure all marketing for the conscious-heritage segment is presented as an addition to, rather than a replacement for, the existing core range, so that the differentiated targeting strategy set out above does not read to existing customers as a change in what the brand fundamentally stands for.
Implementation should be phased over 12–18 months, beginning with digital and social content investment, recommendation 2, to build awareness and imagery before the entry-range launch, recommendation 3, allowing the brand to establish credibility with the target segment before asking it to purchase, an approach consistent with Keller’s (2013) argument that brand awareness and meaning must precede purchase-driving activity if genuine resonance is to be built sustainably rather than through discounting alone.
This case study has examined how Whitmore & Vale, a fictional heritage British footwear brand, might reposition itself to engage Gen Z consumers without eroding the loyalty of its existing, older customer base. Applying Keller’s CBBE model indicates that the brand’s core weakness is not product quality, which remains strong, but an underdeveloped and largely invisible brand meaning and imagery among younger consumers, compounded by channel choices that concentrate the brand’s presence where Gen Z consumers spend comparatively little time. The STP analysis suggests that a “conscious heritage” positioning, built on the brand’s genuine durability and craftsmanship credentials rather than a manufactured trend-led identity, offers the most credible route to engaging a younger segment.
The recommendations proposed combine digital and social investment, a carefully bounded product extension, differentiated targeting of a narrower psychographic segment rather than the whole 18–24 age cohort, and ongoing segment-level brand tracking, sequenced to build awareness and imagery before asking the target segment to purchase. Throughout, the guiding principle is that Whitmore & Vale’s route to relevance with Gen Z lies in communicating its existing, genuine identity more effectively to a new audience through channels that audience actually uses, rather than in adopting a different identity altogether, a distinction that Kapferer’s (2012) framing of heritage-brand tension makes explicit and that this case study has sought to operationalise through the recommendations above. As with the other cases in this series, Whitmore & Vale and the figures presented are fictional constructs created for academic illustration and do not describe any real organisation.
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