Introduction
A Spanish clothing brand popularly known as Zara is a company where people can find unique, trendy, fashionable, and comfortable clothes with present-day essence. Zara is believed to be the hotspot of fashion. Ever since its origin, Zara consistently launches its new product offerings with a different taste of fashion.
The typical marketing mix helps a company to build its foundation stronger. In this case study, we will be discussing how Zara uses its marketing mix profoundly to popularize its products. let’s deep dive into the Marketing mix of Zara
About Zara
The company has become Spain’s best-known fashion brand. Amancio Ortea Gaona started the firm in 1963. Later, it became the world’s fastest-growing manufacturer of affordable and fashionable clothing stores. At present, there are over 2000 stores in 77 countries including China, and the numbers are likely to double shortly.
In India, it started its operations in 2010. Ever since its debut, it has been on a constant rise and has crossed the 500 crore milestone recently.
Now that we’ve understood Zara as a company, let’s start learning the marketing mix of the company.
Marketing Mix of Zara
A marketing mix is a tool that helps to focus on multiple areas as part of a comprehensive marketing plan. The term refers to a common and traditional classification as the four Ps: product, price, place, and promotion. Let’s learn about it in detail
Product Strategy of Zara
Zara is known as the fashion hub. Such is the fad of the brand among fashion enthusiasts. Since the company does not outsource its manufacturing, it has complete control over the things it creates. Its one-of-a-kind selling point is that it creates the latest trends. Mostly, new fashions are accessible in sale stores within two weeks, or with a maximum of four weeks. If a product isn’t selling in retailers, it is withdrawn from the shelves right away.
However, India has a few issues to work out, the most notable is, the lack of seasonal fluctuations in their range. Second, it must address and meet the cultural demands of the local population, which is a significant problem, and Zara is attempting to meet these needs by creating designs that combine modernism with local customs.
Zara provides its product portfolios abundantly which makes it a successful brand. Now let’s move on to its pricing strategy.
Pricing Strategy of Zara
The concept of the company is to provide its products at a reasonable price to its customers. However, we must keep in mind that we’re talking about cream buyers who might compare Zara to Hugo Boss or other brands. Some Zara stores can be very premium whereas others will be affordable. But mostly the company has a premium pricing strategy. The pricing is attainable because development and training costs have been optimized.
Since high-quality clothes are produced by Zara, it is reasonable to provide the products at a higher rate. So let us now look into the place and distribution strategy of Zara.
Place & Distribution Strategy of Zara
Zara is a one-of-a-kind brand, and one of the things that set it apart is that it is a vertically integrated store. This means that it creates, manufactures, and distributes its products. This strategy appears to be working because it has become one of the most well-known Spanish fashion stores in the world. Zara is available in over 30 countries.
At present, the business owns 90% of Zara stores, with the rest being franchise joint ventures. Customers entering a Zara store in London, New York, Paris, Rio de Janeiro, New Delhi, or elsewhere will find a similar environment: the stores are big, well-lit, modern, and mostly whitish, with mirrors on the walls.
The majority of individuals believe Zara’s true strength resides in its culture, which can never be duplicated. It employs young designers and trains them to make quick decisions as one of its initiatives. To put it another way, while good decisions are rewarded, bad decisions are not.
Zara provides its merchandise throughout the world online, and offline which makes its customers access to buy products without any difficulty. Let us now see the final segment of the marketing mix of Zara – The promotional Strategy in the next section.
Promotional Strategy of Zara
Zara has a unique marketing policy of zero marketing investment. Instead of spending the money on advertising, the corporation invests it in new shop openings. Zara stands apart because it has identified characteristics that matter to customers and exploited them to set itself apart from the competition. To put it another way, their primary marketing strategy is centered on exclusivity and experience.
In essence, word-of-mouth promotion is more important to the organization than anything else. The products are aimed at city dwellers between the ages of 18 and 40. This is because this group is more fashion-conscious than any other. Women (65%), men (25%), and children (15%) make up the market sector, with all of them being fashion savvy, educated, and well-traveled.
Small, regular product shipments are intended to keep inventory rare and fresh, encouraging buyers to buy quickly and return to the store regularly to see what’s new. Barcoding, online purchasing, and computer-assisted transactions are all strategies used to boost sales and establish the company as a global brand.
Thus, we’ve thoroughly analyzed the marketing mix of Zara. So let’s conclude the findings.
Conclusion
The brand was built with a strong emphasis on customer service, which explains its ability to deliver trendy clothes swiftly and at reasonable costs. The company not only has a very efficient supply chain but also incorporates customers in the design process, giving it a distinct competitive advantage. Fashion fads come and go swiftly, but Zara is always able to catch them and bring them to life.
In an age of massive data and quick decisions, I can only see more firms adopting Zara’s approach to product development and customer service. However, adapting to a changing market will be a problem for the brand in the future. The concept of quick fashion will be put to the test in the future, and I’m interested to see how Zara modifies their marketing strategy.
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Hi Aditya, I’m writing an assignment on Zara and have referenced your article, so I just wanted to say thank you for the great up-to-date article.