Zara's Global Information System Strategy: A Case Study Analysis

This case study analyzes Zara's global information system (GIS) strategy, exploring how the company leverages technology to gain a competitive advantage in the fashion retail industry. The analysis examines Zara's pricing strategies, international expansion, and the critical role of information technology in its supply chain and customer relationship management. It highlights areas where Zara excels compared to competitors like Gap, focusing on the use of point-of-sale systems, data analytics, and customer relationship marketing to understand and meet customer needs. The report concludes that Zara's success stems from its ability to adapt to changing fashion trends and apply innovative strategies, making it a leader in the global fashion market.

Running head: GLOBAL INFORMATION SYSTEM STRATEGY
GLOBAL INFORMATION SYSTEM STRATEGY
Name of the student
Name of the University
Author Note:

1GLOBAL INFORMATION SYSTEM STRATEGY
Table of Contents
Introduction..........................................................................................................................2
Discussion............................................................................................................................2
Zara creates a sustainable competitive advantage...........................................................2
Role of Information Technology in creating Competitive Advantage............................3
Areas where Zara Succeed while Gap failed...................................................................3
Methods used by Zara in maintaining healthy relationship with Customers...................3
Role of Technology in facilitating relationship with Customers.....................................3
Use of same technique in developing deeper relationship with customers.....................4
Conclusion...........................................................................................................................4
References............................................................................................................................5

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Introduction
Zara is considered to be one of the biggest fashion firm all over the world. The
organization belongs to Inditex, which is one of the biggest groups of distributive firms (Wang,
2018). Customers are considered to be one of the primary assets of a business. The Business
Model are often found to be comprising of design, distribution and sales for helping out with the
retail network. In the following report, there have been an attempt to differentiate between the
two retail organizations of Zara and Gap, to find out what possibly would be the advantages of
the companies over one another.
Discussion
Zara creates a sustainable competitive advantage
Zara has been considered to be one of the chief retail organizations with a proper
presence in whole international market. There are many sources of competitive advantages
which would be discussed as below:
Pricing Strategy: Fashion Industry has been found to become increasingly competitive in
nature. Quite naturally, the competition between the organizations have increased to share the
best place in the market amongst the competition. The market is not expanding to be precise, but
the number of fashion organizations are continuously increasing in number every given day
(García-Álvarez, 2015). The biggest advantage of Zara is that they have been offering their
products to the customers at a much affordable price range. Zara aims to provide the products at
a much higher quality which have unique design and style compared to the other fashion or retail
organizations.

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International Expansion: Zara comes up with a global presence that has proven to be
advantageous for the organization. In the last few years, Zara have also strategized to have its
presence online in order to maximize its sales, which has indeed increased. Location tends to
play a role in understanding the importance for retail business more specifically for apparel and
consumable products (Du, Huang & Liu, 2015). Having a prime location can be considered to be
biggest point for attracting the customer.
Role of Information Technology in creating Competitive Advantage
Zara makes use of point of sale (POS) system in their store so that they can collect the
required information and send it back to Inditex. POS technology comes up with tight-up link
that exists in between their vendors (Clegg, 2015). This ultimately leads to overall improvement
of the ordering process and distribution of the system. This is assumed to be having an increase
in the overall responsiveness for Zara. Protocol of Information Technology at Zara tends to differ
from its competitors. The organization tends to spend around 0.5 value of the total revenue on
improving the Information Technology systems for the organization (Aftab et al., 2018). Zara
aims to make use of human intelligence in their system like PDA device that comes up with
hybrid model for flow of information directly from stores to their headquarters.
Areas where Zara Succeed while Gap failed
Zara is running the whole fashion industry by crushing its competitors. The biggest
reason behind the dominance of Zara in the fashion industry is its presence and operation in the
social media platform. Zara makes use of SKU system, which helps in the gathering of data to
identify the shopping pattern of the customers including the garment quality, style and quantity
(Kashyap, 2019). This particular step helps in improving the overall ordering system at different

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distribution centres. In this way, Zara has maintained a proper control on its inventory along with
keeping inventory cost at the minimum.
Methods used by Zara in maintaining healthy relationship with Customers
Zara has succeeded in maintaining healthy relationships focusing on pulling in people,
instead of pushing out products. Zara has become more successful by inducing the customer
relationship marketing for improving its brand. It is mainly done so that they can be updated with
the needs of their customers (Rasheed & Nisar, 2018). The organization collects information
about its customer depending on their purchase and demographic characteristics.
Role of Technology in facilitating relationship with Customers
Zara has adopted tool like big data so that they can outrun their direct competitions. Zara
has gained a universal shopping experience which comprises of both brick and mortar along with
associated stores (Michaud, Nguyễn & Phạm, 2016). Executives at Zara makes use of
technology, which allows them to monitor a much more detailed zone of action like energy
consumption, temperature and many others. Zara has come up with some of the latest
technologies so that they can provide the best customer service as listed as follows:
 Streamline checkout along with self-service.
 Click and Collect and many other fitting room technologies.
 Zara has launched AR application for bringing clothes to life in-stores.
Use of techniques in developing deeper relationship with customers
In other industries, technology aims to play a key role in their organization so that they
can bring excellent Customer Relationship Management (CRM). The organization makes use of
data management and analytics so that they can collect data from their customer for analysing

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their preference (Aftab et al., 2018). Both streamline and business automation process is assumed
to be improving the overall efficiency along with keeping the overall cost minimum.
Conclusion
Therefore, it can be concluded that the report above provides with the facts that Zara,
which is one of the most successful retail brands in the fashion industry has the ability to apply
various strategies to be ahead of their competitors in the industry. Zara is considered to be one of
the largest international fashion brands. The organization belongs to Inditex. The organization
comes up with four major values that are clarity, sustainability, beauty and sustainability. The
overall success of Zara is due to its ability to easily keep up with the changing trends in fashion
and applying strategies along to be ahead in the market.

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References
Aftab, M. A., Yuanjian, Q., Kabir, N., & Barua, Z. (2018). Super Responsive Supply Chain: The
Case of Spanish Fast Fashion Retailer Inditex-Zara. International Journal of Business
and Management, 13(5).
Clegg, B. (2015). Fashioning a Model for Zara. Impact, 1(2), 7-12.
Du, H., Huang, Y., & Liu, Y. (2015, April). The Analysis of the SPA Apparel Company
Strategy. In 2nd International Conference on Civil, Materials and Environmental
Sciences. Atlantis Press.
García-Álvarez, M. T. (2015). Analysis of the effects of ICTs in knowledge management and
innovation: The case of Zara Group. Computers in Human Behavior, 51, 994-1002.
Kashyap, P. (2019). A Study on Measuring the Effectiveness of Visual Merchandising and its
Impact on Sales at Zara Store, Fort.
Michaud, A., Nguyễn, M. C., & Phạm, H. (2016). Z in company names: trendy clothing for a
typical Vietnamese sound. Mon-Khmer Studies, 45, 53-65.
Rasheed, A., & Nisar, Z. (2018). A Review of Corporate Governance and Firm
Performance. Journal of Research in Administrative Sciences (ISSN: 2664-2433), 7(2),
14-24.
Wang, Y. (2018, July). An Exploratory Study of Brand Strategy in Fast Fashion Brand--Using
Zara as an Example. In 3rd International Conference on Contemporary Education,
Social Sciences and Humanities (ICCESSH 2018). Atlantis Press.