1. Introduction

China's garment industry has always been in the stage of rapid development, with rich historical accumulation and unique market position. Up to now, China's garment industry has become one of the world's largest garment producers and exporters.

China's garment industry is huge. China has a wide range of clothing production bases, covering textile, fabric, clothing design, manufacturing, and other links. This huge industrial chain occupies a significant market share on a global scale. After more than two decades of rapid growth, China has become the world's largest clothing production and consumer, but there has not been a real sense of the world-famous clothing brand clothing product market competition has developed from price, quality and service to brand, the competition is very fierce. How to explore, cultivate and manage the strong core competitiveness of garment enterprises from a strategic height is an important way for garment enterprises to obtain unique and lasting competitive advantages.

Through case analysis and comparative analysis, this paper makes an in-depth analysis of Pacific women's wear, and compares it with Li Ning, a brand with the same Chinese style. This paper will first discuss the STP strategy of Pacific women's wear, then discuss its 4p strategy, and finally analyze its existing challenges and how to deal with them.

2. Overview of the Peace Bird

Established in 1989, over the course of 27 years, Peace Bird Group has developed into a brand of creative R&D, which fashion design and full web marketing at the core of the integrated industrial group. Peace Bird implements a gradient brand strategy, with Peace Bird MEN (Peace Bird MEN), Peace Bird WOMEN (Peace Bird women), peace bird children's clothing (mini peace), LEDiN (LEDiN) and other product lines. Public data show that Peace Bird has more than 5,200 physical stores in 31 provinces and autonomous regions across the country. Peace Bird actively pursues sustainable development, is committed to innovation, environmental protection and social responsibility, and is one of the important representatives of China's garment industry.

In 2022, the annual sales of Peace Bird Group exceeded 60 million pieces, achieving revenue of 41.6 billion yuan, a growth of 7.8%, and taxes paid have increased 6.5% and reached 1.16 billion yuan. At present, the company has nearly 13,000 employees nationwide, including more than 500 fashion design R&D teams, which launch nearly 10,000 new fashion products to market and surprise customers each year. Peace Bird had a net profit of 543.1 million yuan in 2019, 706.7 million yuan in 2020 and 676.7 million yuan in 2021, which was 0.3 million yuan less than the previous year. The net profit attributable to the mother in the first three quarters of 2022 was 153 million yuan, down 72.45% year-on-year; In addition to the sharp decline in the net profit returned to the mother, the net profit withheld from the non-return to the mother is the first loss, and the net profit withheld from the non-return to the mother is 3.3658 million yuan, down 99.18%[1]. According to the data of interface news, the operating income of Peace Bird in the first half of 2023 was about 3.601 billion yuan, down 14.19% year-on-year; The net profit returned to the mother was about 251 million yuan, an increase of 88.10%.

3. Marketing Analysis of Peace Bird Women's Wear Based on 4P Analysis

3.1. Product Strategies

At present, well-known domestic brands such as Peace Bird, Qiushui Yiren, McCawlin and Customer Esprit have begun to follow the fast fashion model and strive to create a rapid response supply chain system and a strong information integration system, and strive to remain invincible in the market competition [2]. Peace Bird has a large number of high-quality products to ensure its share in the market. At the same time, it subdivides consumer groups, uses big data to sketch customers, designs products to meet different consumer needs, and further improves customer satisfaction and loyalty. Peace Bird has been striving to provide customers with high-quality, high-level and high-performance services. Its products meet international standards, constantly meet the changing trend of market demand, and design and develop clothing suitable for its brand image and service concept [1].

Professionalism of products: Peace Bird offers a wide range of women's clothing, including dresses, tops, bottoms, and accessories. They focus on creating trendy and fashionable designs that cater to the preferences of their target market.

The fashion of products (Table 1):

Table 1: Basic series of Peace Bird Women.

3.2. Pricing Strategies

3.2.1. Mantissa Pricing Strategies

Most of the price digits of the products are 9, which makes consumers think that the product is accurately priced and cheap to a certain extent, and the price range is 69-2899. At the same time, 9 as the end of the product price, to a certain extent can be in line with the consumer psychology of the game. For example, there is only one yuan difference between 2999 and 3000, but the difference of thousands of digits allows consumers to harvest a lower psychological price.

3.2.2. Differentiated Pricing Strategies

Peace Bird's product line covers from low-end to high-end, to meet different levels of consumer demand. For each type of product, Peace Bird uses different pricing strategies to meet the needs of different consumers. Peace Bird's interactive pricing strategy refers to the interactive relationship between sellers and buyers. Peace Bird gives pricing power to consumers, who are free to choose the price of their products. Peace Bird's interactive pricing strategy is considered a revolutionary approach, as it breaks through the traditional model of seller pricing and buyer buying. The flexible change strategy of Peace Bird refers to adjusting the pricing strategy according to the changes in market demand. Peace Bird determines product pricing by studying the market and consumer needs.

3.3. Placing Strategies

3.3.1. Offline Store

First of all, self-operated stores are the most important sales channel of the Peace Bird brand. With more than 200 self-operated stores in major cities, Peace Bird has mastered key indicators such as brand image, product pricing, and sales management through its own channels to better control consumers' purchasing experience. In addition, Peace Bird's stores also pay great attention to the details of store decoration and the creation of in-store atmosphere, providing consumers with a better shopping experience. For low-experience products, consumers can judge a product's value online, while for high-experience products, they cannot judge their worth on the network channel and can only rely on physical stores [3]. Second, Peace Bird's franchise chain is also expanding. Peace Bird will provide professional in-store decoration design, product display programs and personnel training support to enhance the store's brand perception and service quality. The franchise chain also brings the Peace Bird brand wider market coverage and more sales opportunities.

3.3.2. Online Store

Peace Bird is also committed to the expansion of online sales channels. Peace Bird has its own online store on its official website and other well-known e-commerce platforms, providing a more convenient shopping experience through the online mall, but also to meet the more diversified shopping needs of consumers. Its main online sales channels include:

Official website marketing: Usually each enterprise will establish its own portal on the web page to introduce the relevant information of the enterprise. The Peace Bird website is simple but informative enough, including company profile, core brand introduction, media center, social responsibility and how to join the channel of Peace Bird, its webpage puts several major brands of Peace Bird in a central position, customers can see as soon as they open the page.

Enterprise APP: The APP developed by the enterprise itself also provides an important channel for the online product promotion of the enterprise, and it may be difficult for the enterprise APP to promote the product to the whole network only by its own promotion, so many enterprises will cooperate with other new media enterprises to borrow the power of others for publicity, such as through cooperation with various e-commerce, and Internet celebrities.

WeChat marketing: At present, WeChat has also become the main tool for people to carry out daily communication. With its public number, small program and other ways, it has brought a lot of WeChat business, which also provides an important platform for many brand products to promote online.

3.4. Promotion Strategies

3.4.1. Use Social Media to Promote Products

In terms of online channels, Peace Bird actively relies on new media, such as Weibo, WeChat, TikTok and other social media, and creates a lively and diversified brand image of Peace Bird on new media through social interaction, special offer and other promotion methods. ​The advent of new media has changed consumer perceptions, and clothing brands have evolved from product-oriented to brand-cultural [4]. Nowadays, not only micro-blogs, but enterprises should also use other emerging social media for market promotion, such as TikTok, WeChat mini programs, XiaoHongshu, Taobao Live broadcast, WeChat public accounts, etc., to attract consumers' attention by advertising on these media, improve the efficiency of online interaction with consumers, and form the interconnection between online and offline channels [5].

3.4.2. Participating in Public Welfare and Social Responsibilities

In recent years, Peace Bird Group has been committed to the development of public welfare undertakings, warm people in need of help. At present, we have organized and carried out various forms of charitable public welfare activities such as earthquake relief, donation for students, pair assistance, and charitable donation, so as to practice the concept of love and advocate social responsibility.

On June 13, 2018, as a representative of caring enterprises, Zhang Jiangping, chairman of Peace Bird Group, participated in the activity with the group and signed a help agreement, promising to provide materials worth 3 million yuan per year to provide point-to-point help to poor schools in Zhenfeng County; On June 10, 2019, the "Caring Bird Nest · New Seedling Protection Plan" charity project jointly initiated by Peace Bird Group and the Municipal Charity Federation was officially launched; During the epidemic in 2020, a total of 12 million yuan was donated, and actively responded to the call of the municipal government and worked with various clothing enterprises in Ningbo to quickly respond and multidimensional help against the epidemic, and built a temporary mask production supply chain with Peace Bird providing design and logistics, and brother enterprises providing raw materials and organizing production capacity to meet urgent needs. By 2022, Peace Bird has been helping 13 provinces in China for 27 years, with a total donation of more than 200 million yuan.

3.4.3. Build an International, Young and Fashionable Image

In 2015, the men's fashion show created the first holographic fashion conference in China; In 2016, the "Two Worlds" show was held to show women's longing and conception of ideal life; In 2017, women's wear launched with the theme of "LIVEONSTAGE" in 2018, representing China's first time at New York Fashion Week; In 2018, Peace Bird represented a Chinese brand for the first time on the New York Fashion Week, the completion of the international debut triggered national tide discussion; In May 2019, launched the "BEANOTHER No Fun No Fun Town 10th anniversary show" In August 2019, MiniPeace appeared in Beijing Fashion Week, cooperated with Fun MM Bean in 2019, twice appeared in New York Fashion Week in February and September of the same year, and debuted in Paris Fashion Week in September, launching the "Focus on Fashion" for Chinese design. Data-driven, whole-network retail "new strategy; A women's fashion show called "SUPERCHINA" was staged in the newly completed Peace Bird Fashion Creative Center in the September of 2020. In 2020, Ouyang Nana became the brand spokesperson of Peace Bird women's wear.

4. Case study: Comparison with Li Ning in China

4.1. Plagiarism and Originality

Since its inception, Li Ning has valued original design and established the principles of no copying, no imitation and no cottage industry. In Beijing, Hong Kong and other places to set up design and development center, set up a designer team of more than 100 people, constantly improve product design and development capabilities, to create "Wade's Way", street basketball series BADFIVE, China Li Ning and other series of products, Li Ning's extraordinary product design and development capabilities have been recognized at home and abroad, won a number of design awards [6].

On the contrary, Peace Bird has repeatedly been on the verge of plagiarism and false publicity problems. On April 7, 2022, the Credit China website showed that Ningbo Peace Bird E-commerce Co., Ltd. was fined 20,000 yuan for suspected false publicity. The specific reason for the punishment is that the promotional page of a fur vest sold by Peace Bird is marked with "real fox fur young fur", in fact, its certificate is printed with the words "fabric material: raccoon fur", and the material publicity is inconsistent with the actual fabric. Peace bird's false publicity behavior has also attracted netizens' attention.

4.2. Brand Recognition and Visual Elements

Peace Bird lacks brand characteristics and brand recognition is not high, while China Lining integrates Chinese elements into product design. Li Ning combined the uniqueness of its own enterprise history to find the roots of Chinese culture, with the birth of basketball shoes rich in Chinese elements "Feijia", a design path with national cultural characteristics was discovered.​In recent years, Li Ning has continued to dig deep into the cultural attributes of the country in its products design and has incorporated a large number of Chinese elements such as national style porcelain, writing and embroidery. Guochao products appeal to the public's aesthetic and national sensibilities, linking the Li Ning brand with the nation and uniting cultural creativity in cultures and sports, Li Ning has become the spokesperson of "Chinese style" [5]. Launched with People's Daily, Red Flag and other products, the perfect integration of Chinese elements and fashion [5]. Brand association is the basis of consumers' purchasing decisions and brand loyalty. Therefore, enterprises need to establish unique, strong, favorable and deep-seated brand association groups to differentiate themselves from competitive brands [7].

5. The Existing Challenges and Countermeasures of Peace Bird Women's Wear

5.1. Existing Marketing Problems

In many platforms to see consumers for Peace Bird women's response is plagiarism, high prices. Peace bird clothing positioning mid-range casual fashion market (winter coat price in 500-2000 yuan), compared to fast fashion brands, such as Uniqlo, Zara, H&M, Taobao red shop, its clothing price and no price advantage, so can only hope to win quality, style to win.

In terms of quality, Peace Bird does not have obvious advantages compared with Uniqlo, Zara and other fast fashion brands; In terms of style, Peace Bird has repeatedly innovated through co-branding and pioneer designer cooperation, but its clothing is far less popular than Uniqlo, Zara, and H&M. Therefore, Peace Bird's mid-range casual clothing positioning is slightly awkward: the price is higher than fast fashion brands, but the clothing quality and style do not have outstanding advantages.

There is also peace bird on the brand characteristics are not prominent enough, too "heavy marketing light design". To some extent, the increase in marketing expenses led to a decline in profits. In 2021, the sales expenses of Peace Bird reached 3,948.5-billion-yuan, 36.22% of revenue from operations. As of September 30, 2022, the company's sales expenses were 2.354-billion-yuan, accounting for a higher proportion of the total revenue than the previous year, reaching 37.82%[2].

Domestic fast fashion brands should attach importance to the mining and training of original designers, create "Chinese style" fast fashion through the application of original design and innovative technology, and innovate promotion methods, strengthen promotion efforts, and take advantage of the Internet for brand publicity and activity promotion [8].As a basis for consumer engagement with brands, brand experiences are an essential source of consumer brand sentiment, which can promote consumers to have distinctive feelings about brands, stimulate the purchase desire of consumers, and subsequently generate purchase behavior to achieve the objectives of corporate brand sentiment marketing[9]. More and more enterprises begin to take the initiative to adopt “Emotional Marketing Strategy”. Enterprises would be better to integrate core brand values of ideals and feelings into brand stories, advertisements and promotional rhetoric, convey the connotations of brand feeling through the personal charm of brand icons, create strong brand associations with consumers, and closely integrate consumer self-realization and value recognition with the brand. Strengthen brand identity and enhance consumers' brand loyalty [10].

5.2. Solutions

First of all, invest more money in product research and development, establish a more complete design and development team, and design their own brand characteristics, rather than the pursuit of "fast fashion", because consumer preferences and fashion orientation change quickly and it is difficult to predict, for a large scale, high cost, high price clothing enterprises such as Peace Bird women's clothing. Following "fast fashion" is prone to overstocking and losing out to more affordable clothing brands such as Uniqlo and Zara. Secondly, you can take a combination of Chinese and Western ways, do not copy, blindly follow the European and American style, most of the European and American style of clothing is not suitable for Asian people. At the same time, keep in touch with consumers, do more market research, and listen to the voice of consumers. More discounts and other preferential activities can be carried out to attract consumers and reduce the consumption barriers caused by high prices.

6. Conclusion

Today's economic development, consumer demand is increasingly changing, Peace bird "emphasis on marketing light design", blind pursuit of fast fashion will be difficult to meet the personalized needs of consumers, although in the short term can achieve certain success and profits, but in the long run is very unfavorable to the brand image and positioning. At the same time, the excessive sales expense investment also increases the cost and reduces the profit to some extent. The price of Peace Bird, which pursues the middle and high-end positioning, is much higher than that of HM, Zara and other fast fashion brands, and its brand features are less distinct than the Chinese-style design of Li Ning, which leads to the difficulty for Peace Bird to obtain its own loyal costumer.

Therefore, this study recommends Peace Bird Collection should invest more capital and technology into design and have its own core brand concept and product design, instead of just relying on copying to drive sales. In addition, more attention should be paid to the quality of clothing, so that Peace Bird can stand out in the future clothing industry.