Personally, Zara is one of my favourite stores and it quickly rose to become one of the most successful fashion brands in the world and I want to explore why. In 2019 the estimated total revenue was 23.32 billion euros. It sells “fast fashion” which is affordable, keeps up with the brands and is for the mass-market. Many kids, men and mainly women of all age groups and cultures love and enjoy Zaras fashion. The brand continues to grow with sales and market shares increasing. However, they only spend about 0.3% of sales on promotion so how have they become a successful, global retailer?
Zara has rose to these levels of success in a unique way compared to other brands. It has a clever marketing strategy that differentiates itself. For example, it doesn’t aim to be innovative and leaders but to keep up with trends providing what the customer needs at convenience. Its main reason for success is the focus on the customers because in fashion marketing, understanding consumers complex needs and desires are important (Barners, 2016).
Target Audience
Millennials (especially females) are their main target audience and they understand this tailoring their products around this. They look for quick fashion at affordable prices and zara understands this providing them at good quality. They have a large range of products with different styles and designs providing 450 million products each year with the majority being women’s clothing. Zara ships new products to stores twice a week so customers always have new options. Customers know every time they enter a Zara store, they will find new products encouraging them to return often (Bauer, 2021).
Customer Experience
The main concept for Zaras success its its core focus on the consumer experience and creating long-lasting relationships, not the product. One example of this is in 2015 two customers in separate stores asked for a pink scarf but there was none. 7 days later they were in stores worldwide selling out 500,000 items in 3 days. Zara listens to what the customer wants and provides.
Zara do all the designs, manufacturing and distribution themselves without any third-party suppliers providing the same experience and environment for all costumers in any store. Stores are designed to be modern, luxurious and predominantly white providing a positive experience that feels high end. The luxury of the store makes consumers associate this with the products so they view the products as more luxurious (Mulhern & Leone, 1991). Memorable and engaging experiences are made to connect with the customer. The atmospherics, ambience, design of the space and positive customer service creates engagement with the customer. Creating an enjoyable atmosphere can directly influence consumer experience (Blazquez, 2014) so they then associate the positive feelings to the brand encouraging word of mouth exposure. Studies have also shown when we are in a good mood we are more likely to spend more, thus creating an enjoyable experience encourages sales. Swinyard (1993) conducted a lab study exploring consumer mood, involvement level and shoppers quality of experience influence on mood. It was found mood interacts with shoppers experience and when in a positive mood they have a better view on the brand and are encouraged to buy. Zara understands this so aim to provide a positive experience for consumers to return.
Brand Loyalty
Malik, Ghafoor, Iqbal and Shahbaz (2013) suggests the importance of brand loyalty. They assessed the effect of brand loyalty on purchase intentions through questionnaires given to employees in service sectors and available members of the public. Descriptive statistics and regression analysis were used to analyze the data and it was found brand loyalty had a strong positive association with purchase intentions. Therefore, building brand loyalty is important to encourage purchases which is what Zara attempts to build.
Zara focuses on loyalty through creating a meaningful, consistent, positive experience. They have over 1 million followers on twitter and over 47 million on Instagram which continue to grow. They use social media to analyze trends and views of their brand to improve their brand, services and products to keep customer satisfaction.
Data Analysis
Data analysis is important in big companies to help make decisions. It is important to asses market trends, buyers and planning the next steps. Zara has a developed data analytic infrastructure that tracks demand in real time to create products customers actually want quickly because trends show up at rapid rates and can be expected to expire as soon as a new one emerges (Chang, Joy, Sherri, Venkatesh & Wang, p. 273.). Zara thus only design 15-25% of products ahead of season compared to other top retailers such as H&M who pre design 80% of products. This also helps reduce large amount of waste fast fashion produces (Joy et al., 2012). Therefore, Zaras data analysis tactics allow them to always keep up with trends and demands increasing sales without the concern of missing trends or trends expiring.
Campaigns
Zara spends very little on promotion and marketing compared to other fashion retailers. It still focuses on marketing however focusing on opening new stores and word of mouth. It sees importance in experience, exclusivity, affordability and differentiation.
This is because 61% of marketing executives say word of mouth is the most effective form of marketing (Berger, 2014). Social talk creates over 3.3 billion brand impression every day shaping peoples views (Keller & Libai, 2009).
This focus on the consumer through providing what they want quickly and creating a positive experience etc. instead of promotion has helped develop Zaras popularity and brand image being the cause of its global success.
Consumer World 