Introduction
Fast fashion industry has been widely spread globally in the recent decade. Zara is the pioneer of fast fashion, the success of Zara is always a myth in the retail industry. Many scholars investigated the competitive advantage of Zara and would like to dig out the reasons of how a company can create such a fortune every year. In this essay, I explore the value chain of Zara from diverse perspectives, identify its relevant successful factors to be the competitive advantage. Firstly, I briefly introduced the background of Zara, evaluated their business model and operations to create a forceful value chain including the vertical integration and supply chain management with adopting the theories, finally addressing the challenge of ethical consumption to Zara and the sustainability of competitive advantage in long term.
Company Background of Zara Company
Zara, a clothing retailer which was founded by Amancio Ortega in 1975 in Spain, subsidiary to the parent company of Inditex. A distributor who is providing a large range of fashionable items including apparels for women, men and children, as well as footwear, accessories and household products. Up to 2016, there are over 2100 stores located worldwide across 88 countries. Zara’s objective is to encompass the customers’ needs to transform into ideas, trends and tastes to supply the most up-to-date fashion within different people, gender, cultures and ages (Inditex.com, 2016). After establishing nearly half
The value of retail customer service excellence is more important, that it reflects the value of corporate culture, happiness as Zappos success.the company believes that interesting and simple corporate culture combines entrepreneurial opportunities to create a value check that is beyond remuneration. The spirit of simplicity, innovation, and excellence is also extended to Zippo 's inventory and distribution system. Zappos is based on excellent customer service, loyalty, and retention rates, and how to build a Successful business model Zappos core values depend on this culture, action leaders at all levels to strengthen. 3. How has Zappos managed ethical risk, and what are potential ethical risks in the
1. What is Vancity 's competitive advantage over other types of financial institutions? As globalization increased competition through the worldwide interconnectedness, it became more difficult to hold on to a company’s competitive advantage. Vancity, founded in 1946, enjoys its own competitive advantage to be one of the greatest employers in Canada.
In the article there was a rhetorical question Mr. Joseph Luckey, the University of Memphis’s director of athletic academic services, wondered how many of those students to let in. “What we’ve all got to decide,” he says, “what’s our breaking point?”
The management at Zappos attracts customers through exceptional service that has created a “WOW” philosophy and embedded it within the fabric and culture of the company. Zappos has several competitive dimensions in which they compete with other online retailers in the market. The company has always maintained its sales growth rate on the long-term basis at a certain output level. Therefore, the competitive advantages of Zappos have always been sustainable. The corporate culture of the company is nurtured and developed by its management team.
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Zara provides fashion apparels for men, women and kids of all ages . Zara 's target business is youthful, cost cognizant, and exceptionally delicate to the most recent design patterns. They section their product offering in such a way that ladies account for 60%, men 's 25% and kids 15% accounts for division . Reason for choosing Zara for analysis in spite of being U.K. based company is that, it operates largely in U.K. Zara 's and its parent organization, Inditex, maybe taken as the course reading for how to do retail store network right . Zara has turned into a most loved of design fans, including industry insiders.
EXECUTIVE SUMMARY Zara can be identified as one of the largest international fast-fashion organizations which is owned by the fashion group Inditex. Their first store was opened in 1975 and from that point of time, they have had an unstoppable growth throughout the years as up to now. After 42 years of operations, today Zara has been able to expand themselves with 2169 stored over 82 countries all over the world. Rather than they were a high fashion brand in the country, Zara has focused themselves as a fast fashion brand where they will change their fashions at a great pace where no one can reach them. Also, the most attractive thing is that all those latest fashion designs are introduced to the public at an affordable price.
Zara is vertically integrated and takes care of designing, manufacturing and distributing its products. This gives it an immense hold on the market as most of the operational inefficiencies are eliminated by the company’s on employees who identify with the larger goal and value proposition of the brand (The New York Times, 2012). Zara works along with the consumers to understand them more closely rather than imposing its own predictions on them. Zara creates an environment of artificial scarcity in its stores for every design it manufactures so that consumers get a feel of exclusivity rather than stock pile up (Johnson, 2012). This gives them a sense of pride to buy a limited edition of products which they find at Zara stores only.
In terms of differentiation, ZARA’s “fast fashion” philosophy is unique, which create demands and lead the trend in the garment market. They respond very quickly to the demands of target customers and focus on young fashion. In production, they design quickly, production quickly and update quickly.
Competitors – The industry that Nissan currently operates in provides lots of potential competitors for them as many automobile companies are developing electric cars which are something Nissan are very keen on focusing on. Nissan currently only run a small market share of the industry so many competitors are dominating the market such as Ford, Vauxhall etc. Nissans competitors have many strengths and weaknesses against Nissan. Some companies such as Ford focus heavily on fuel powered cars which means they will have an advantage against Nissans fuel powered range but Nissan will have an advantage over them with Nissans electric cars and the amount of research that has been put into it. Other companies such as Tesla whose main focus is electric cars are a fairly big competitor towards Nissan and the Nissan leaf range.
1. In order to understand the success of Inditex’s best brand, Zara one has to understand their strategic choices, and at its core this revolves on having a good understanding of who Zara targets, and what makes this brand attractive. Zara’s most important target market can be understood by the use of demographics, they target young (18-40 year old) women, who are price-conscious with a mid-range income, and very sensitive to fashion trends.
Value chain Furthermore, the Zara‘s global value chain varies from its competitors and it is totally matchless for the reason that their lead time is just about two weeks that is quite encouraging for them to compete with their competitors viably. With the help of effective value chain, it helps them to create new and innovative designs in just two weeks (Finney, et al.,
The four building blocks of competitive advantage can be used to help a company become more profitable and stay ahead of their competition. The four factors are superior efficiency, quality, innovation, customer responsiveness. All four building blocks are important to any company. However, I believe that customer responsiveness is the most important because having loyal and happy customers can make or break any company. The four building blocks can help companies grow and become the leader in their industry over their rivals.
ZARA’s business scope including clothe, accessory, shoes, hat and perfume. Because of their excellent operating capability, they can become successful each and every year. Clothes, food, shelter and travel are the four elements for life. Clothes being priority in order to shows how important it is. China have more than 1.3 billion people nowadays, enormous people formed enormous clothing consumer market.