What’s the answer to Quiz’s commercial misfortune?

Clothing retailer Quiz entered administration earlier this month. The Glasgow-founded brand has cut jobs, launched massive discounts, and appointed Interpath to manage the restructuring process.

It’s the third time in six years that Quiz has entered administration, so it may be worth thinking about how public perceptions may or may not be influencing the retailer’s fortunes. Data from YouGov BrandIndex shows that the company’s Index scores, a net measure of overall brand health calculated by averaging several metrics, sit at 0.5 compared to an average of 8.9 for clothing & apparel retailers. This puts it somewhat below the typical brand in the sector, and a look at the underlying measures may illuminate this.

Impression scores, which measure general positive and negative sentiment, sit at 1.4; those for UK clothing & apparel brands are 11.2. This may be explained by a couple of factors. One might be perceptions of Quiz’s quality: scores tracking this show that the brand is at -1.7 compared to a score of 12.2 for its competitors. For a brand associated with the budget end of the market, this may not be too concerning.

But another issue that emerges when we dig through the data may be Quiz’s value for money scores. At a neutral 0.0, the public don’t believe the brand represents poor bang for buck, necessarily, but the sector average of 3.7 suggests they do believe other retailers offer them a better return on investment. This, in turn, could explain why the brand’s Recommendation scores (0.7), which track customer advocacy, are worse than those of other UK clothing and apparel brands (8.2).

Quiz is not doing outrageously poorly in any particular category; only one of these metrics is outright negative. Neither, however, is it standing apart from the competition: Consideration scores, which present consumers with a list of brands and ask them which they would buy from the next time they are in market, are at 2.5 compared to an industry average of 9.2. In the event that Quiz survives this latest entry into administration, the most pressing question facing the brand may be whether or not it can effectively differentiate itself from other UK fashion retailers.

Image: Getty