Reflective Journal: Investigating ZARA's Key Marketing Weaknesses

This reflective journal analyzes the key weaknesses of ZARA, a prominent apparel and accessories retailer. The report, based on a presentation, identifies issues impacting sales and profitability. It discusses the impact of ZARA's zero advertising policy, which contrasts with competitors like Benetton, GAP, and H&M, and its reliance on brand image in the e-commerce age. The journal also critiques ZARA's fast-fashion strategy, describing it as a 'Fashion Imitator' due to design copying, which impacts its brand image. Furthermore, it highlights the problems caused by limited stock availability, leading to customer dissatisfaction despite the fast-fashion model's intent to drive store visits. The conclusion emphasizes the need for ZARA to address these weaknesses, particularly through enhanced advertising strategies, to maintain its competitive edge in the global retail market.

REFLECTIVE JOURNAL

Table of Contents
INTRODUCTION ..........................................................................................................................1
OVERVIEW ...................................................................................................................................1
WEAKNESS OF ZARA .................................................................................................................1
CONCLUSION ...............................................................................................................................2
REFERENCES ...............................................................................................................................3

INTRODUCTION
The report is based on the presentation performed by me along with my other group
members. It outline key weaknesses of ZARA which cause negative impact on its overall sales
and profitability (Boud, Keogh and Walker, 2013). Along with this, it also discuss how these
weaknesses affect its strong customer as well as market base.
OVERVIEW
ZARA is a Spain-based apparel and accessories retailer, founded by Rosalia Mera and
Amancio Ortega in 1975 under the umbrella of Inditex Group. Inditex is a large multinational
conglomerate, which is compromised of almost 10 organizations, specialize in clothing only.
ZARA constitute around 80% of the total revenue of Inditex Group. As of 2017, it manages to
launch up to 20 clothing collections a year. Involving customer's preferences and uniqueness of
tracking products made ZARA, the market leader of clothing industry. Presently, it is operating
in more than 80 countries with over 6500 stores.
Zara is one of the world's largest apparel retailer and this can cause its weakness in
various parts of business, and is excessively troublesome to control it because of its global
presence. Some of its key weaknesses are listed below:-
WEAKNESS OF ZARA
One of the main weakness of ZARA includes it's zero advertising policy. Being a
globally renowned brand, it spends very minimal amount on promoting its product. However,
this comes out as an advantage for its key competitors like Benetton, GAP and H&M. Today, e-
commerce and online marketing is gaining importance and this needs to be taken into account by
ZARA for gaining high competitive edge in the market. It is very rare to see ZARA's
advertisement or logo in public area or outside the store (Chang and Lin, 2014). It only depend
upon its strong brand image for generating higher sales. However this can be a tough weakness
for the company, if other key competitors keep on enlarging its marketing strategy especially in
developing markets. The biggest marketing moment for ZARA was when Kate Middleton wore
its dress, the day after her wedding. In-fact, the company can double its turnover and profits by
advertising its collection. In the introduction part, it has been figure out that, each year ZARA
launch 20 new clothing collection. By advertising it through various sources of promotional
channel, company can also expand its market share in other developing countries. It is well-
1

known to be a trendy fashion store and it can easily draw the attention of vast number of
customers through advertising which will produce a considerable measure of positive word of
mouth for the brand.
The Fast Fashion strategy also has its own set of weaknesses. ZARA has been described
as “Fashion Imitator instead of Creator”. No doubt that company provides high-end designs to its
customers, but all those designs were smartly copied by its designers from a fashion week
(Cowan, 2014). It never falls in the category of premium brand because it usually copied designs
instead predicting the style of season or manufacturing clothes under its private labels. As a
result, many popular labels have attempted to sue Zara for imitating its design which negatively
impact its brand image and goodwill. Somehow, it fails to establish an exclusive image for
themselves over other rival firms. As a result, sometimes consumer failed to distinguish product
from Zara and its competitors.
Going forward by briefing about the area where Zara lacks is limited stocks. Even though
company has opt the concept of fast fashion strategy, which means publishing new products in
every two weeks, but some of the products are limited. In-fact there are some items which are
not even available in its stores which results in dissatisfying customers. Although low inventory
was kept intentionally by ZARA with a purpose to keep consumers walking into the outlets to
check out the latest items (Vicary, Young and Hicks, 2017). But if any of its design is liked by
customer and it won't reach up to its potential because of low availability of stock or buffer for
that particular design. As a result, customers get highly dis-satisfied.
CONCLUSION
From the above mentioned report, it can be concluded that being a global player of
retailer sector company have several weaknesses which needs to get addressed in a proper
manner. Advertising is the biggest platform where company gets an opportunity to increase its
sales and attain high competitiveness level over its key competitors.
2

REFERENCES
Books and Journal
Boud, D., Keogh, R. and Walker, D., 2013. Reflection: Turning experience into learning.
Routledge.
Chang, M.M. and Lin, M.C., 2014. The effect of reflective learning e-journals on reading
comprehension and communication in language learning. Computers & Education. 71.
pp.124-132.
Cowan, J., 2014. Noteworthy matters for attention in reflective journal writing. Active Learning
in Higher Education. 15(1). pp.53-64.
Vicary, S., Young, A. and Hicks, S., 2017. A reflective journal as learning process and
contribution to quality and validity in interpretative phenomenological
analysis. Qualitative Social Work. 16(4). pp.550-565.
3