The Marketing Strategy Of Zara's Fashion Industry

Today’s fashion market is highly competitive and aggressive. Indeed to meet the demand of quick changing trends, fashion industries have to be responsive and flexible as much as possible. Other competitors are not able to copy Zara’s business model unless they copy its supply chain, and considering that this chain is composed by people, technologies and processes, it cannot be replicable. The company has spent more than 30 years to reach this perfect combination between machines and people working together, and providing to costumers always what they want in the right place at the right time. Zara’s differentiate itself from other fast-fashion chains for its service marketing. Thanks to the strategic position of stores but also to its dynamic

Indeed, depending on the country, city and even street, costumers will have different tastes and requirements, which will influence products’ demand. According to Jesús Echevarría, communication director at Inditex, the opening of a new store, depends only on the customer and his demand. This means that customers actually drive Zara’s behavior and strategy, and not the other way around, as it has so far for fashion brands. As we said before, the company does not really invest in advertising, instead it prefers to focus its marketing strategy on real estate. A major part of Zara’s investment is on historical, cult and beautiful buildings for the location its shops. In 2016, the Inditex group rented 50,000 square feet of a century-old heritage building at Flora Fountain, in Mumbai, paying an annual rent of Rs 30 crore (approximately 300$ million) (Babar, 2016). This is Zara’s first store placed on high street in India. Moreover, Zara’s architect team worked together with specialists for the preservation of stones for the restoration of the building’s façade. Also, the interiors where recovered and the original bricks highlighted on all walls of the shop. This is an outstanding example of real commitment in the choice of the right place with the right features (Haja,

Generally speaking, the position of stores in a city is divided according to brand value. Luxury brands want to be right next to each other, and far away as possible from fast fashion brands, such as Zara. On the other way around, Zara’s positioning strategy is to try to get as close as possible to them (Hansen, 2012). Considering the example above mentioned, the area surrounding Flora Fountain, is plenty of luxury brand stores, such as Nirav Modi, Masaba Gupta but also Hermès. However, opening new stores in India was a serious challenge for the company: regulatory constraints are unfriendly with big foreign businesses who wants to acquire