August 1st, 2023, Hoang Nguyen
Gap Inc. has appointed Richard Dickson as its new CEO and president effective August 22nd, 2023.
As Dickson prepares to take the helm, let’s look at Gap’s overall brand health to see what the new CEO is inheriting.
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Big picture: How has Gap’s brand health fared in recent years?
Data from YouGov BrandIndex shows that Gap’s Index score—YouGov’s measure of overall brand health comprised of consumer perceptions of Impression, Quality, Value, Reputation, Satisfaction and Recommend—has stayed ahead of the average for the overall clothing and apparel sector, even through the pandemic and cost-of-living crisis.
In 2020 and 2021, Gap achieved a positive Index score of 18.6 points compared to the wider clothing sector’s Index score of 8.1.
Gap’s Index score in 2022 was 18.1-points, a marginal dip from the previous two years but still outpacing the overall sector’s score of 8.3-points by a wide margin.
Existing strengths: Delving into the individual metrics that make up brand health, YouGov data reveals that Gap’s strongest drivers of brand health in the first six months of 2023 are consumer perceptions of Quality (23) and Impression (22.8).
To put this into context, these scores are more than twice that of the overall clothing and apparel sector’s own Quality (11.8) and Impression scores (10.5).
Areas of potential improvement: Of the six metrics that give us an overall picture of Gap’s brand health, the company’s Value (14.7) and Reputation (13.8) scores are by far its weakest.
That’s not to say the clothing and apparel sector is faring any better. The overall sector’s own Value score of 4.6 and Reputation score of 7.8 still trails behind that of Gap’s by a considerable margin.
But what this does signal are two clear categories where Gap’s new CEO can show a fresh perspective and use his cross-industry expertise to breathe new life into the company’s journey, especially amid the rising cost of living when spending will be a key consumer focus and in the approach to the holiday shopping season.