Evaluación y perspectivas de marketing de las pymes productoras de calzado de Bogotá, D.C.

Abstract

The footwear industry has a prominent relevance for Colombian economy. Over past 12 years this sector has made a loss of competitiveness both in the domestic and foreign markets. The growing threat of shoes importations, especially from China and Ecuador (Bogota with the highest participation level of such imports, 24.78%) besides the chance of Free Trade Agreements demand to investigate marketing strategies used by the footwear industry. There are two relevant businesses in this area: production and marketing and sales. Large worldwide producers are China, India, Indonesia and Brazil, while at Latin America level we can find Brazil, Mexico, Colombia and Argentina. Consecutively, the major importers are the United States of America and European Union countries, but in these ones intra imports dominated. Generally, at the international level, the high footwear marketing standards are based on quality, design, comfort, brand, marketing channels, participation in trade shows and specialized publications. The footwear SMBs producers in Bogota prove a weak segment that focuses on lady and gentleman shoes in informal styles, sports and casual fashion; so the analysis have found that factor ‘design’ continues developing troubles despite that product’s life cycle for manufacturers was found in ‘less than three months.’ The most important factors to establish the price were the ‘cost of the pair’ and the ‘trademark existence.’ A high use of their ‘own point of sale’ was found among the SMBs. The higher level of commercial identification was found through the ‘sticky tag’ and the ‘label’, but with a relatively low incidence, while it was found a low level of media use to promote their products, especially through Yellow Pages because persistent taboos remain regarding marketing but in spite of certain conditions there has not yet been able to build a cluster in a place as Restrepo shopping business in Bogotá.