Competitive Advantage: Market-oriented Strategy

Most of Zara's designs are based on the latest trends and they are ever changing according to the immediate feedback from customers. Zara employs its service staff in listening to customers' preferences and reacts very quickly to them. It is only a matter of weeks before the designs get altered, manufactured and restocked in the stores. If a design is largely unpopular, Zara will not hesitate to withdraw them from the shelves. Its global establishment also provides an extensive network of shopper-feedback which allows them to be ahead of competitors in spotting global fashion trends.



Product: Fast Moving Fashion

Zara prides itself on fast moving fashion with new designs restocked in limited quantity every two weeks. This encourages consumers to frequent the stores for new designs and to snap up interesting outfits on the spot in order to guarantee themselves a piece. This provides a sense of exclusivity to shoppers. 



Process: Industry leader in lead time

Creative teams consisting of designers, sourcing specialist and product development personnel, develop design collections. The teams work simultaneously on different clothing, building and improving on styles previously available. Zara’s designers are trained to limit the number of changes made by lowering the number of samples required, minimizing cost and turnover time. Its demand based production or Just-in-time (JIT) production reduces the amount of inventory available, lowering Zara’s storage cost. Zara's outstanding lead time is unbeatable in the industry at the moment. Furthermore, Zara eliminated the traditional design process, where design and development overrides fabric procurement. In Zara, the design teams work with the available fabric, allowing for faster fashion.


Price: Low cost, High Fashion

Zara believes in offering high fashion at a low cost. Prices range from $79.90 to $539.00 for both Womenswear and Menswear while the Kids segment has coats starting from $65.00 and these prices can start from $30 during a sale. Taking quality and cost into account, Zara prides itself in providing high fashion at an affordable cost, making its customers’ purchases value-worthy.



Place: Prime retail locations

Zara, like its competitor brands, is located in prime retail areas like Ion Orchard, Orchard Road, 313@Somerset where human traffic is high. As aforementioned, Zara invests in prime locations as they place great emphasis on the presentation of its storefronts. Zara also has an online store, which increases accessibility to its customers, allowing them to make purchases conveniently on the go. However, this function is currently not available to Singaporean customers.

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​Promotion: Minimum advertising

Zara uses 0.3% of sales revenue on advertising, minimal when compared to its competitors (3-4% of sales revenue). Instead of relying on traditional mass-marketing mediums, Zara uses prime retail locations to attract its customers. It also ensures that storefronts and window displays are attractive and fresh to customers by making frequent changes to the items on display. The interior of the store is also clean and bright, with spacious lanes in between racks. This provides a very comfortable shopping experience. Having a good image projection of the store is vital as this is Zara's most effective marketing communications tool. When customers walk into a store, Zara wants to portray to customers that the latest fashion is always available.