Yesterday, 2oceansVibe reported that clothing retailer, Abercrombie and Fitch, had decided it no longer wanted its clothing to be associated with members of The Jersey Shore cast, especially Michael “The Situation” Sorrentino. Coincidentally, the very next day of trading after the announcement, Abercrombie shares shed nearly 10 percent at one stage.

There were a few commentators that called the stunt by Abercrombie just some kind of marketing ploy of sorts.

An MTV spokesperson told CNN:

It’s a clever PR stunt and we’d love to work with them on other ways they can leverage Jersey Shore to reach the largest youth audience on television.

One can easily see where the commentators were coming from, even though in this instance, the tactic would seemingly have backfired on Abercrombie with said share price depreciation.

The Abercrombie share price fell nearly 10 percent at one point yesterday and ended the day of trading some eight percent down on its start.

Analysts however doubt that the shock announcement about the Jersey Shore thing had anything to do with it really.

They feel that rather than it being a bunch of groupies’ dad’s forcibly selling their shares because their daughters said so, it was more than likely because of cautious comments from management over reported earnings that beat analysts’ expectations.

According to CNN Money:

Abercrombie and Fitch reported a sales increase of 23% in the quarter ended July 30, to $917 million. Even more dramatically, it reported a 64% surge in net profit to $32 million, or earnings of 35 cents per share.

Analysts had earlier predicted earnings of around 27 cents per share, and this, says retail analyst John Morris, makes investors edgy:

Management’s tone was cautious, and that creates an air of uncertainty. In this fearful macro backdrop, investors don’t like that.

Abercrombie is also looking to incur capital expenditure of about $350 million for the remainder of the financial period, with some rather large international expansion involved too.

Morris also thought that the dig at Jersey Shore was just a clever way to get some publicity as the rest of the fiscal year continued for the clothing giant.

[Source: CNNMoney]