Zara has quickly risen to the top of the list of the most prosperous global fashion retail firms. Zara was able to ignite a passion for fashion across a wide range of clients with the spectacular debut of “quick fashion”—affordable and fashionable clothing. All age groups, cultures, and genders are welcome to test out Zara’s products only to fall in love with them. Sales for the brand keep rising as a result, and their market share keeps growing.
Zara doesn’t sell itself like other clothing companies do in order to attain such amazing outcomes. It has a sophisticated marketing plan that allows it to stand out and gain more recognition as well as customer loyalty.
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Zara’s Background
Amancio Ortega and Rosala Mera established Zara as a family business in the Spanish city of Galicia in 1975. Already in its first location, low-cost imitations of high-end brands’ products were available. With nine additional stores in Spain’s most renowned towns, Zara’s commercial strategy steadily gained a reputation among Spanish consumers over the next decades.
In 1985, Zara became a holding company of Inditex and began to expand internationally with a superior distribution infrastructure that quickly responded to the rapidly changing market trends in the fashion sector. Ortega invented a new method of working known as “instant fashion,” which could shorten lead times and quickly adapt to new trends. Investments in information technology and the use of designer groups were the driving forces behind this.
In the decade that followed, Zara quickly penetrated international markets, including those in the US, France, Portugal, Mexico, Greece, Sweden, Belgium, Cyprus, Malta, Norway, and Israel. Nowadays, virtually every developed nation lacks a Zara location. The largest apparel retailer in the world, Zara’s fashion empire spans 96 countries and has over 200 outlets.
Amancio Ortega, the company’s creator, is currently the sixth-richest person in the world. The estimated worth of the Zara brand in 2019 was 16.5 billion euros. Other fashion brands owned by the parent firm Inditex include Zara Home, Pull & Bear, Massimo Dutti, Bershka, Oysho, Bershaka, and Uterqüe. In 2019, Inditex expects to earn a total of 23.31 billion euros in revenue.
Zara’s Marketing Strategies
For Zara, the client is everything, not how much money is spent on advertising. The brand has been concentrating on how it can offer a customer experience in every location since day one.
Here are the marketing strategies that Zara has used to accomplish that objective:
1. Putting The Customer Experience First
The focus of every firm used to be the product, but not anymore. In the new economy, consumers place more value on the customer experience than they do on the actual goods. And Zara is perfectly aware of this. It makes an effort to take advantage of the shopping experience by constantly giving customers a cause to go back to the stores. A regular consumer of Zara can go there roughly six times a year.
The fast-fashion model used by Zara offers a frictionless shopping experience in a carefully curated setting with limited supplies and constantly changing new trends. Customers believe that if they purchase goods from Zara, nobody other will be wearing the same outfit.
2. Quality For The Money
Zara approaches innovation and starting a new movement very differently than other fashion companies. It simply wants to be a fashion brand that clients require, not a trailblazer. The value of a product nowadays must go beyond price and include more time and convenience. These characteristics are deeply understood by Zara, which offers high fashion goods at reasonable prices in just two weeks. This results in a fantastic brand that has high values for consumers. With this strategy, Zara can attract a large number of devoted customers who are less price sensitive and provide a bigger profit margin.
3. The Influence of Brand Adherence
Speaking of devoted customers, Zara leverages their potential as brand ambassadors through their meaningful experience and values. Zara draws people in and transforms them become brand evangelists to spread the word about the company rather than investing more in pushing marketing out (it only spends approximately 0.3% of sales on advertising).
Zara has more than 28 million Facebook fans, more than 39 million Instagram followers, and more than a million Twitter followers. These are employed to examine what is popular or being said on social media. In order to maintain customer satisfaction, this is utilized to improve operations, services, and goods.
4. Convenient Locations For Physical Stores
Zara spends little on advertising and promotion, but a lot on the location and design of its 2,250 stores throughout the world. In addition, Zara provides customers with the brand experience and products they want, when and when they want them. Customers can conveniently access inventory that is not available in their locations thanks to technology and mobile connectivity. There are 39 online markets at the moment.
Zara’s store placement strategy involves placing them in high-street shopping districts of significant metropolitan areas. The shops are probably close to high-end apparel brand retailers. By eliminating underperforming locations and entering new regions, Zara has the guts to bolster its portfolio continuously and maintain the reputation of its flagship locations with regular customers.
What Can Be Learnt From Zara
In order to comprehend, anticipate, and satisfy its customers’ desires for trendy clothing at reasonable rates, the Zara brand was created with a watchful eye on its target audience. In addition to having a strong supply chain, the brand has a distinct competitive edge in that it allows customers to co-create designs. The majority of fashion trends frequently emerge out of nowhere, start unexpectedly, and originate in unusual areas.
Regarding the aforementioned pink scarf craze, it’s possible that Scarlett Johansson, a Hollywood actress, wore one to a charity banquet the previous evening in Los Angeles, or that Michelle Wie, a golfer, flaunted one at a celebrity event in Asia. The ease with which Zara was able to capitalize on this craze by giving hundreds of customers the pink scarves they so urgently desired.
Brands still need to be cautious and perceptive in a world where Big Data is abundant and is being gathered at an even faster rate than before. Big Data may be overhyped to be regarded as the Holy Grail and does not always offer solutions to business problems. No one is a better, more genuine trendsetter than the consumer themselves, which is one of the secrets to Zara’s worldwide success. This attitude needs to be continuously represented in all of Zara’s business initiatives moving forward.
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