Strategy Implementation and Measuring Success - ZARA, Australia

This presentation provides an overview of ZARA in Australia, including its establishment, store count, and online shopping platform. It discusses the fast fashion industry and ZARA's strategies for success, such as limited quantity yet premium presentation and lean production. The presentation also covers ZARA's structure, systems, leadership, and people culture. It evaluates the successful implementation of ZARA's strategies and highlights key implementation issues. Finally, it provides recommendations for improvement.

Strategy
implementation and
measuring success
ZARA, Australia

Overview of the company
 Zara was established in Australia in 2011.
 Within a span of 7 years, the company owns no less than 15 stores
already.
 The company has currently launched its online shopping platform.
 The collection targets men and women aged between 20 to 27.
 The brand has better understanding of different demographic
preferences.
 Operating global business with local approach.
 The company follows retail strategies and presents premium luxury
quality.

Overview of the industry
 Fast fashion is kind of sustainable and strategy of rapid growth.
 Sometimes, companies struggle with unsold items and keep paying
increased inventory costs.
 Fast fashion industry quickly address the customers’ criteria and like
Zara, and presents modified designs.
 Lean management approach helps them to produce clothes in small
batch. It is effective in terms of effective logistics management and
keeping a balance between market demand and supply.

Strategy implementation
Capabilities
 Launches new designs
within short span
 Zara prefers to keep the
collections’ design close to the
customers’ demand.
 Offers recent trends.
 Capable of modifying unsold
designs to the most
demandable one by predicting
the market efficiently.
Capabilities
 Limited quantity yet premium
presentation
 The company believes in lean
production and smart use of
resources.
 They manufacture a set of design in
small batchers to understand the
consumers’ response first.
 Quality has been maintained in
affordable pricing, it is the factor
which acts as competitive points of
parity against luxury brands.

Strategy implementation
Capabilities
 Employees, such as creative team of
designers and communication
managers are aware enough to collect
feedback from consumers coming to
the store.
 Based on the that their high end
manufacturing unit is capable of
delivering demanded product just when
the customers want.
Capabilities
 Advanced IT infrastructure
 Advance IT infrastructure enables Zara
to maintain operations of in-house
productions, make quick response and
to implement cost effective
implementation strategies.
 Usage of various software is effective to
track customers data and preferences.
 The tradition of in-house prototyping is
what makes Zara exceptional too.

StructureLabour operations are
outsourced from local
contractors only
 Zara does not look for
outsourcing manufacturing
units from Asia. Rather,
depends on local talents to
understand local fashion sense
better.
Flexible supply chain
 Supply chain facilities are too
flexible to deliver products
within 15 days of placing the
order.
 Designs are active enough to
generate information regarding
trends and demands.
 Hierarchical structure is simple
to make the internal
communication easier.

Systems
 Sustainable approach
 Zara has addressed the consumer behaviour towards choosing
environment –friendly responsible business.
 Business is targeting to accomplish the global goal of sustainability.
 Use of natural resources to produce the fabrics and dying them takes
high cost.
 Therefore, they produce garments in small batches to keep the price
affordable.

Leadership
 Considering challenges as the most important source of gathering
knowledge and exploring different opportunities, leaders never fail to
explore available opportunities.
 Leaders practice a culture of innovation to keep the business aligned
with the market demand.
 As mentioned before, one of the most important factor is they can
adopt and response to market really quick.
 Such effective leadership approaches have helped to keep a balance
between demand and supply.

People culture
Work culture
Zara organises training and
development sessions not only
trying to combat future operation
challenges, it contributes towards
individual professional development
of employees too.
Zara has recognised talents among
disable communities and offered
them job opportunity too.
Employees enjoy liberty to work at a
friendly work environment. Maintain
a culture of smooth internal
communication due to simplified
hierarchy.
Communication strategy
 Communication strategy is to pull the
customers into predicting the fashion
trend, instead of pushing them with the
designers’ invention.
 Rather than traditional modes as of
advertisement Zara has decided to
provide decent brand experience to
circulate product information through
word of mouth.

Change management
 The first thing is Zara has been presenting highly fashionable quality
clothes yet the perceived value has been decreasing due to its
affordable price range.
 This fact is crucial in terms of competition with Luxury brands.
 Therefore, to address the market demand properly and to respond
against it an environment of sharing knowledge and opinion has
become open by simplifying the structure. Communication has been
increased through technological aids.
 Online platforms of shopping has been launched.
 Pricing strategies has been revised.

Evaluation of successful implementation
 Before invading into Australian
field, the company was leading with
increasing 16% of sale.
 More than 15 stores have been
opened in Busiest cities of Australia
within a gap of just 7 years.
 Employee recruitment has
increased and increasing at a rapid
rate.
 Although, recent drop in sales has
been spotted. Financial help from
the parent company is expected to
mitigate that.
 Apart from success,
competition has become
tougher.

Key implementation issues
 Online shopping behaviour and use of smart devices
 Among young consumer base, precisely, the use of smart phone has
increased.
 Online shopping has become more convenient. Zara has addressed
the fact late. Yet, with their quick adoption strategies, it can be
expected that they will recover soon.
 Although, Zara has some of the genius strategies to implement yet
misunderstood shopping behaviour is leading Zara towards
unpleasant circumstances.

Key implementation issues
 Static marketing and communication strategy
 Zara’s old world of mouth strategy has to be expired at this age of
virtual communication.
 Lack of management and supervision power have been noticed in
terms of managing social media marketing.
 The company lacks contemporary brand commutation strategies.

Key implementation issues
 Pricing strategy has proven as weaker advantage
 The price is no longer capable of attracting the customers as the
unique competitive advantage.
 Zara has to create communication strong to let the consumers know
about their sustainable process of operation in order to increase the
perceived value yet in reality competition is increasing keeping the
pricing strategy in centre.

Recommendation
 Digital platforms, social media pages must be maintained through
efficient SME strategies to increase views and develop recognition.
 Recent shopping behaviour of customers must be addressed.
 Instead of focusing on pricing strategy, focus must be on improving
the quality to highlight the brand image.
 Investment on elevating the brand position and recognition must be
made.
 Effective leadership approach is needed to impress new customer
base.

Conclusion
 To conclude, it can be stated that to fight the competition
contemporary approaches must be taken.
 The concept of fast fashion industry is not confined under the fast
modification of styles, limited stock and unlimited designs;
consumers are now highly conscious about saving time and enjoy
mobile commence.
 It will be helpful addressing the preferences of the customers, their
consumption pattern and behaviour must be supervisied for
accomplishing the organisational objectives of market growth and
profitability.

Bibliography
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