CASE STUDY - ZARA - ONLINE STRATEGY ANALYSIS. Business & Marketing (Essay Sample)

CASE STUDY - ZARA - ONLINE STRATEGY ANALYSIS
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The Zara External business environment
Zara is a subsidiary of the Inditex company of Spain. Before the story of Zara, in the year 1963, a businessman by the name Amancio Ortega opened a business whose main preoccupation was manufacturing and selling women pyjamas and lingerie (Tungate 2008, p.49 and (Zhelyazkov 2011, p.2).
Catoni, Larssen, Naylor and Zocchi (2002, p.127), postulates that Zara stores never sold retail, and all their produce was sold to wholesalers. The cancelling of a significant order led to the firm opening the first Zara retail shop. The intention of opening the retail shop was to create an outlet for the cancelled orders. However, through experience, they realized that there was a considerable benefit of combining retail and manufacturing. This discovery is what has guided the evolution of the company ever since (Tokatli 2008, p. 21).
Jiang, Lu, Wang, and Yu (2019, p.7) agrees with Ferdows, Lewis and Machuca (2003, p.63), that one of the opportunities that have enhanced the success of Zara, is that of locations of the retail outlets of Zara. The Zara stores are located in the most prestigious, high traffic and upmarket sites. The section of the locations is meticulously done after extensive market research has been done to make sure that the targeted locality is of enough size to grant financial viability.
Another opportunity that has enhanced the growth of the Zara apparel stores is the availability of market and customers. Ghemawat, Nueno and Dailey (2003, p.4), and Lopez and Fan (2009, p.13), postulate that in the year 2000, the amount of money that was spent on clothing was approximately 900 billion pounds. Willems, Janssens, Swinnen, Brengman, Streukens, and Vancauteren (2012, p.1487), agrees that the people's appetite for clothing and fashion apparel had grown significantly, and hence there was a ready market for the Zara commodities. The attributes of the market were that there was significant variation in the customer preferences and characteristics within a country and even within a region (Aftab, Yuanjian, Kabir and Barua 2018, p.213). For instance, according to studies, in Europe, the Britons sought for stores based on social affinity.