Question 1 – Zara’s Business Model and Competitive Analysis
Zara, the most profitable brand of Inditex SA, the Spanish clothing retail group, opened its first store in 1975 in La Coruña, Spain; a city which eventually became the central headquarters for Zara’s global operations. Since then they have expanded operations into 45 countries with 531 stores located in the most important shopping districts of more than 400 cities in Europe, the Americas, Asia and Africa. Throughout this expansion Zara has remained focused on its core fashion philosophy that creativity and quality design together with a rapid response to market demands will yield profitable results. In order to realized these results Zara developed a business model that incorporated the following three goals for operations: develop a system the requires short lead times, decrease quantities produced to decrease inventory risk, and increase the number of available styles and/or choice. These goals helped to formulate a unique value proposition: to combine moderate prices with the ability to offer new clothing styles faster than its competitors. These three goals helped to shape Zara’s current business model.
Zara’s Business Model
Zara’s business model can be broken down into three basic components: concept, capabilities, and value drivers. Zara’s fundamental concept is to maintain design, production, and distribution processes that will enable Zara to respond quickly to shifts in consumer demands. José María Castellano, CEO of Inditex stated that "the fashion world is in constant flux and is driven not by supply but by customer demand. We need to give consumers what they want, and if I go to South America or Asia to make clothes, I simply can't move fast enough." This highlights the importance of this quick response time to Zara’s operations.
Capabilities of Zara, or the required resources needed to exploit the opportunities and execute this conceptual strategy, are numerous for Zara. Zara maintains tight control over their production processes keeping design and manufacturing in-house or with some strategic partnerships located nearby Headquarters. Currently, Zara maintains 80% of its production processes in Europe, 50% in Spain which is very close to La Coruña headquarters. They have strategic agreements with local manufacturers that ensure timely delivery and service. Through these strategic partnerships and the benefits brought by this proximity of manufacturing and operational processes, Zara maintains the flexibility necessary to design and produce over 12000 new items annually. This capability allows Zara to achieve their strategy of expedited response to consumer demand.
Zappos is an online shoe and clothing store. The idea of an online shoe store originally came from Nick Swinmurn in the year 1999. He then pitched the idea to Alfred Lin and Zappos’ current CEO Tony Hsieh. Zappos quick rise to success is mostly attributed to their ten core values. These values vary from creating fun and weirdness to being humble. However, the root of this company’s success lies only on one important thing: their regard for customer service. They value the quality time spent with customers over the phone rather than the quantity of customers.
Business strategy and model: Zappos.com had a differentiation strategy with which they had differentiated themselves from the rest of the market. They had use a unique corporate culture in their company which was one of the major competitive edges of the company. According to the CEO of the company, Tony Hsieh, that everything that they had done at Zappos such as their relationships with 1,200 to 1,500 brands, policies and website style could be copied, however, the only thing that no one could copy from them was their unique culture. Zappos had 10 unique core values as a basis of their company’s culture, employee performance and their overall operations. They were hiring and firing people on the basis of their abilities that whether they were living up to these core values or not.
Analysis & Recommendation: Zara’s main strategy is the ability to respond very quickly to the demands of target customers which called for identifying trends of the customer in advance. The company has been able to identify the trends and meet the demand with the help of its autonomously organized structure and its effective value chain systems. The present system followed by Zara has been very effective and very easy to maintain, which as a result has persuaded the company to continue without any change in the present system so far. The problem that Zara faces right now is that the system that they use, P-O-S (Point of Sale terminals), runs on DOS which Microsoft does not support anymore and any hardware change in the POS terminal will not be compatible with the current POS software. Although the sense of urgency for the change may not be that high, investing in IT infrastructure is a must as MS Dos is an obsolete technology and there is no contract or guarantee from their POS terminal vendor that they will continue supplying the same terminal with out much changes in the hardware for any specific period of time, therefore change is unavoidable. The other main issue that Zara faces is that the stores don’t share inventory information electronically and hence inventory management becomes highly difficult and manual. The decision making process is based on the judgment of employees throughout the company instead of relying on a small set of decision makers; the majority of the decisions were made by store managers and as a result they placed orders for the items rather than simply accepting and displaying what headquarters decided to send them.
The business model that sets Zara apart from other clothing retailers is how rapidly the company changes stocks and releases new product lineups. The company averages 12-16 collections annually which equates to more than one lineup a month. Due to stock being limited and the rapid production Zara brings forth, their items are viewed as exclusive promoting further business. Their customers are happy knowing that their specific article of clothing is more “rare” due to only having an average of a two-week window to purchase the clothing. The company specifically targets current trends and has them in the store within 30 days. This maintains the brand’s uniqueness and relativity in fashion.
1a: Zara’s ability to manage some of the manufacturing in-house and distribute only what is absolutely necessary to outside manufacturers gives them a unique amount of flexibility and control over cost and quality. Their competitors are primarily outsourcing the production, so that control over price is lost.
Zara is a global fashion designing and manufacturing company that is the most productive market that has a great responding for customer demand in UK’s fashion industry. Amancio Ortega Gaona, the CEO of Inditex company of Spain, he began his work as an errand boy for a La Coruña shirtmaker in 1949. He has worked really hard in his way for the company, and later on Amancio Ortega Gaona was founded his own retail store with developing decisions and competitive advantage against many other competitors. In1963, he founded Confeccioneds Goa to manufacture p...
4.6.1 New Products and Ranges Product innovation is a core component of Lovisa’s competitive advantage. Its customers expect a broad range of fashionable products that are in line with the latest global fashion trends. In order to meet this expectation, Lovisa employs a product team of more than 20 people who are responsible for Lovisa’s forward range planning, designs, product development, production, visual merchandising and merchandise planning, ensuring Lovisa is continually meeting market demand. While the product team is based in Melbourne, its team members travel the world to identify global trends. In addition, its product teams meet with suppliers in China, India, Thailand and other parts of Asia frequently.
b) Zara can focus on expanding and increasing the number of outlets in Asian countries such as China and India. The scope of development is very high and the demand for fashionable clothes is increasing at a very fast rate. But it will have to focus on other local competitors who provides the latest fashion at a cheaper rate. As Zara is a known brand, so it would be easy to increase awareness among the consumers through advertisement, promotions and celeb endorsements.
The fundamental business strategy of Zara is very simple which is linking customer demand to manufacturing, and liking manufacturing to distribution. Zara has been running their business in fashion industry which is susceptible to seasons and quick changing customer tastes. Zara has been approached to and considered their business as a perishable commodity business just like a fresh baked cake or bread to be consumed quickly.
Zappos.com is a website that started off just selling shoes but now sells items such as handbags, clothing, and housewares in addition to shoes. Their company logo includes their catchy name with an explanation point as the end in the shape of shoe print which leads consumers to believe Zappos has strong feelings about the service they provide to their consumers. Zappos believe that customer service is the number one priority and is focused on cultivating repeat customers which is why they have always provided free shipping on both orders and returns; occasionally provides upgraded shipping so customers can receive their shoes the same day that they are ordered even though this is very expensive to the company; and they only show products on their website that they actually have in stock albeit they lose 25 percent of their potential business by doing so (Walker, 2009). For a compa...
In the modern world we live in, international business plays a key role in the functionality of countries resources and economy. The ease at which people can purchase goods from another country and the outsourcing of brands has now meant international barriers has been squashed and large corporations are more accessible than ever. In recent times, the huge and unbridled up rise of Multinational Corporation is the Famous Japanese clothing brand UNIQLO. UNIQLO's full name is UNIQUE CLOTHING WAREHOUSE, it is defined by the inner meaning of unnecessary decoration decorative abandoned warehouse type store, supermarket shopping using the self-service model, in order to provide a reasonable and credible customers want commodity prices. It is arguably Japan's most successful local fast fashion brand, began in the 1980s, developed in the 1990s. 1980s, Uniqlo focuses on the basic design of unisex casual wear, such as shirts, jeans, sweaters, etc., although these fashionable clothing, but do keep up with changes in fashion. Secondly, the introduction of Japan's first hypermarket style clothing sales, in the form of warehouse stores, with " reasonable and credible prices and large continuous supply, allows consumers one-stop shopping. The most important thing is moving the factory to cheaper places, lowering production cost, allowing prices for consumers to stay extremely low in comparison to other fashion outlets but at the same time staying at a high rate of quality. Through the unique product planning, development and sales system to store operations to achieve cost reduction, the shape of the Japanese consumer 's favorite leisure brand.
H&M is the world’s second largest retailer, only behind its main rival Zara of Inditex (Petro, 2012). The company currently has 3006 stores in 53 countries. The company does not own any factories. H&M outsources production to network of 800 independent suppliers; 75% in Asia and 25% in Europe. In order to increase the efficiency and productivity of its supply chain, the company strategically locates its network of 20 to 30 production offices close to its suppliers. According to Stockholm Newsroom, the pretax profit of the company for the month of June to August of 2013 is $907 million, which indicates an 11 rise in turnover (Pollard, 2013). The company continuous development plan facilitates its goal for both brick and mortar, and online stores expansion worldwide. The target segments for H&M, a category specialist store, are trendsetters and fashion/money conscious males and females ranging from 16 to 40 years old with income ranging $15,000 to $60,000 annually.
2.4 Segmentation: Some of the important bases for segmenting consumer markets are Demographic, Geographic, benefits, Psychographic and Usage rate segmentation. Geographic segmentation is the priority of Zara. It is a global brand and its supply chain management is very much perfect. It helps Zara in getting the latest trends into stores in three weeks’ time, based on consumer preferences. It’s a Spanish brand, so it would be a better option for Zara to open more stores in European countries.
The business model and marketing strategy is the backbone of Zappos business growth and development. By adopting customer oriented business model and marketing strategy the company gains popularity and favor in the eyes of our consumers. The company is famous for creating stylish and unique design of shoes that attract a younger generation of people that helps generate profitability because the younger generation purchasing power tends to be high (Hsieh,
o establish whether there were differences in purchase intention for Zara factors between the respondents of different backgrounds, tests of variance were carried out using Student’s T-Test and Analysis of Variance (ANOVA). The results of comparison are presented in tables 4.9 – 4.20.