How licensing can elevate the brand in the fashion industry: an empirical analysis focusing on Guess.

In an era of constant change and innovation, the fashion industry is becoming highly competitive and, nowadays, the organizations of the sector seek for strategic tools which can effectively raise the value of their brands to distinguish themselves within an increasingly uncertain economic scenario. Indeed, it is essential to demonstrate that licensing refers not only to a mere contractual and commercial tool, but also as an important effective marketing strategy able to reach new markets and customer segments: this important source of revenue allows the companies to optimise the organisation's resources without incurring in significant direct costs (which characterise other strategic approaches), to generate a greater brand awareness, to expand the range of products or services offered in the market, to reduce the business risk, to exploit possible effective synergies and to maximize the possibility of penetration of a specific market. In this thesis, structured in five chapters, the focus will be to explore the relationship between licensing and fashion industry, both from a theoretical and an empirical point of view: from an initial understating of what licensing contracts are, its advantages and disadvantages, the discussion will follow focusing on the description of the fashion industry competitive scenario and on some licensing application by famous luxury firms. Thanks to the discussion of the results obtained from the dissemination of a survey questionnaire, it would be possible to hypothetically analyse how the application of a specific form of a new trending licensing contract would impact on the perception of a globally recognizable fashion brand, Guess, identifying both its benefits and challenges in the brand management.