Is Zara's competitive advantages sustainable?
So what's so unique about Zara? Of course, Zara segments its market, is heavily consumer oriented, and has excellent marketing all around, but in my opinion, Zara's model is hard to replicate because the company has carved a sustainable competitive advantage by virtue of its operation excellence.
Zara's generic strategy is cost leadership. The brand holds a competitive advantage in the market by offering products similar to high-end fashion and designer brands' styles at modest prices.
Synergy between Zara's business strategy and operational processes. Zara's overarching strategy is achieving growth through diversification with vertical integrations. It adapts couture designs, manufactures, distributes, and retails clothes within two weeks of the original design first appearing on catwalks.
Zara gets a competitive advantage by offering customer stylish clothes at inexpensive prices. A team of 200 designers is accountable for turning the latest fashion into products. The collection was converted every year with 11,000 dissimilar items.
Zara's use of technology across the value chain allows the firm to manufacture more unique items than rivals H&M and Gap.
The Zara brand strategy
Its core values are found in four simple terms: beauty, clarity, functionality and sustainability. The secret to Zara's success has largely being driven by its ability to keep up with rapidly changing fashion trends and showcase it in its collections with very little delay.
Zara Supports ecological agriculture and uses organic cotton in the production of selected items of clothing (100% cotton, completely free of pesticide, chemical agents and bleaches). With a distinctive lable these products can be identified very easily at the stores.
The competitive advantage Zara is pursuing is lower prices than his competitors with better speed and flexibility in getting the product to market. This is an advantage over gained over competitors by offering consumers greater value, by means of lower prices and cutting age fashion.
They are getting better value in return than what they are paying for. The good quality is also a reason apart from the lower prices of ZARA products that helps attract and retain customers in larger numbers. It is one of the most important factors that ZARA's popularity and sales have grown fast in overseas markets.
Abstract. In the turbulent world of fashion retailing, competitive advantage is achieved by first targeting not simply in terms of demographics but also in terms of lifestyle and attitude to fashion, and secondly by creating a store image congruent with that of the target market.
Which element of Zara's strategy do you believe best explains its success?
I. Which element of Zara's strategy do you believe best explains its success? logistics, unlike other clothing brands, Zara can provide everything to their customers in under two weeks timeframe, ensuing in earlier return of income.
1) What advantage does Zara gain against the Competition by having a very responsive supply Chain? They can introduce new design every week and thus change 75% display every 3-4 weeks.
Vertical integration makes the Business model of Zara stand out. Via this, Zara manages the design, production, distribution, management, shipment, promotion, and sales all on its own. After being vertically integrated the brand can hold a lot of control over every aspect of it.
Zara's strategy is to offer a higher number of available products than its competitors. While most clothing retailers manufacture and offer to the public for sale 2,000 to 4,000 different articles of clothing, Zara's production has been markedly higher, at over 10,000 pieces produced per year.
Based on Zara's company the business level strategy is based on focusing both and differentiation cost leadership. Most important point of this strategy is to maintain balance between low cost and differentiated products.
Zara scored just below 50% for environmental sustainability. Zara has recently publicized a list of environmental commitments. These goals span the next five years and include everything from water conservation to reducing waste in landfills. They've also worked to ban some harmful chemicals in production.
Zara is working on a clothes collection programme to give used garments a second life, whereby clothes collected are donated to non-profit organisations which help to reuse or recycle the garments. 100% eco-efficient stores.
As one of the largest fashion retailers in the world, Zara has an opportunity to lead the way into a sustainable future. Zara has taken steps towards good supply chain management, such as the Closing the Loop program. However, its business model is based on an unsustainably high turnover rate.
Zara Supports ecological agriculture and uses organic cotton in the production of selected items of clothing (100% cotton, completely free of pesticide, chemical agents and bleaches). With a distinctive lable these products can be identified very easily at the stores.