Video Viral

Brand Association Map

Collaborations

John Galliano 

Broadsheet Research

Thursday 3rd October 2013

http://www.theguardian.com/environment 

"Ocean acidification due to carbon emissions is at highest for 300m years" 

Photograph: Paul Jarrett

Damage of events that affect the environment often lead to trends within fashion.
I had an idea for a possible recommendation for ZARA to create a range raising the awareness of an environmental crisis.

ZARA Mini

ZARA Mini
www.Zara.com 

 

Recently I noticed that ZARA had caught on to the baby boom idea and were now offering a range called 'Mini' as well as a kids range. However there was not a campaign for this range. There are still no ranges available online for during pregnancy just after. 

ZARA Current Campaign

TRF

Kids

Women  

Men

Celebrity Endorsement

"I think they spelt my name wrong"
Cara Delevinge/Instagram

ZARA Online Recommendation

After looking through ZARAS online website for a maternity range I noticed that over half the items of clothing I have seen in their shops are not available to purchase online. Although ZARA is the most successful fast fashion retailer in the world it still has competitors such as ASOS, TOPSHOP and MANGO that are rolling out fast and affordable fashion clothing in stores and online. Considering ZARAS target market are young-middle age professional working women that are probably working from when the retail stores opens until close, making all or the majority of their ranges accessible online could raise sales dramatically.

The Baby Boom

The September 13 issue of Glamour is crammed with adverts of children's clothes and parenting techniques. Which bought to my attention that everyone is having babies...

Sky News: Thursday 8th August 13

Biggest Baby Boom In 40 Years in UK 

"The UK experiences the biggest population growth of any country in Europe to June 2012, but net migration fell to 165,600."

I was unsure if ZARA had a maternity range or not so I looked online and there were no collections on their website. I thought this would be quite a relevant marketing recommendation as ZARAS main customer base is mid twenties to mid 30's which is currently the average age of first time mothers. It would also be essential to make the products available online. Competitors like TOPSHOP have the whole of there maternity range online making it easy for the customer to purchase from the comfort of their home,  pregnant women would not want be be wandering around shops, it would be important to make the range as accessible as possible. 

Broadsheet Research

While I was flicking through the broadsheets online I came across this article from the 16th of August in The Telegraph about Rosalia Mera's death. Mera co-founded Intidex the mother company of ZARA.  I thought it would be interesting for ZARA to do a sort of tribute range to celebrate her life.

Research

After the holidays I had pretty much got the basic structure of my report on paper but am lacking primary and secondary research. So I started gathering bits and bobs from ZARAS social media sites such as Twitter and Facebook.

What I gathered from looking at their sites was that unlike other high street stores that tweet once or twice a week ZARA were constantly posting and advertising events like when there sales were and when new collections were going to appear. 

PEN PORTRAIT ZARA

FINAL GROUP PRESENTATION

Some selected pages from our final presentation: 

SWOT ANALYSIS

Strengths

     Competitors offer better deals

     Very responsive to trend (just-in-time manufacturing)
Global Outreach
Vast market

Weakness

     Low quality
Poor customer & employee care
Low price means they need cheap labour abroad = Britain needs job opportunity
No student discount

Opportunities

     Rise in online sales
Bangladesh disaster : demand for concious fashion: Environmental policy
Demand for plus sizes - widen their market 

  Threats

      Fierce competition
Competitors offering student discount
Lawsuits related to sweatshops

BASIC RESEARCH

WORLDS LARGEST APPAREL RETAILER
REVENUE : £368,847 BN
STORES: 65
EMPLOYEES: 2.571
PRICE POINT: £9.99 -£99.99
RANGE: WOMEN/ MEN/ TRF/ KIDS/ HOME
FAST FASHION - LOW COST

• Zara is a vertical integrated retailer 
•  Controlling most of the steps of the supply chain, design, manufacturing and distributing. Latest fashion off the international catwalk at the best price. 

MACRO & MICRO FACTORS AFFECTING ZARA

MACRO FACTOR: CAN AFFECT ANY BRAND 
MICRO FACTOR: SPECIFIC TO BRAND 

MICRO

Supplier: 2011 the number of audits of suppliers and external manufacturers doubled/
Intidex has over 1,300 suppliers/ 50% of the products are manufactured in Spain, 26% in the rest of Europe, and 24% in Asian and African countries and the rest of the world/ Basic products are outsourced to low-cost suppliers, mainly in Asia and Turkey.

Publics: Owned by Inditex – CEO Jose Rios –  the biggest shareholder of which is Garter, S.L. (owns 50.01%) / Intidex has over 60,000 shareholders.
          
Intermediaries: social media as part of marketing strategy. Sophisticated tech, such as PDAs with wireless transmission, used by managers to track and report which products are selling well in store. Stores use DOS-based POS system by the company IBM.

Competitors: Mango, Topshop, River Island (positioning map) 

MACRO

Political: After 1,100 people died in a Bangladesh factory on April 24^th, companies signed a safety agreement on building and fire safety 

EU rushing out to reveal corporate tax and profits on country by country basis

Technological: Advances in wireless technology allow stores to avoid roadblocks and improve in areas such as supply chain management, inventory management, customer experience and loss prevention. 

 Economic: 16-24 have high economic pressures due to rising tuition fees and high levels of unemployment/ Minimum wage to increase as of 1st October 2013 to £6.31 from £6.19/ Number of under 24 female neets (not in education, employment or training) rose by 28,000 since 2012 in Britain. This is all 3 of our brands target age group/ Britain avoided the triple dip recession with a 0.3% GDP growth.  

Social: 6% forecast decline in the number of 15-24 year olds in the UK population. This affects all our brands directly as that is their target market. / Mintel has shown 16-24 prefer to shop at brands that introduce collections more than once a season, which is why the traditional format is not working well – our brands could break out of this.  / Women aged 25-34 years old forecast to grow by 8% to reach 4.5million by 2017 – this age group are most willing to pay more for premium sub brands. / Under 25s are more cautious with spending. Compared to 2012 there has been a 7% increase in the number who choose to save a percentage of their disposable income. / Release of Great Gatsby influencing collections and sales.

Legal: Rise in the number of UKIP MP’s in Parliament, who are the main pushers behind the UK leaving the EU. This if it came to fruition would greatly affect import, export and other laws/ Primark to offer financial aid to all Rana Plaza workers (Bangladesh) putting social pressure on other brands for industry change.

 Environmental: Weather cycles disrupt the natural pattern of shopping, for example cold wet weather does not induce customers to buy spring/summer clothing/ 

(Reflection : Need to link SPICC to PESTLE more.) 

POSITIONING MAP

I created a positioning map to see where ZARA stands in relation to quality and price to their competitors. To gage an idea of where each brand should be placed I looked on each of their online stores to find out the average price of a basic plain white t-shirt. As you can see in the table above ZARA was actually the most expensive by far. However I shop their regularly and would not say that I find their products expensive especially compared to TOPSHOP. The positioning map below has been conducted  to my personal shopping experiences as well the results from the table.

ZARA ONLINE

 

I began my research on ZARA's website to see if I could find a bit more about the background of the company and its possible aims or objectives. 

"Zara is one of the largest international fashion companies. It belongs to Inditex, one of the world’s largest distribution groups.

The customer is at the heart of our unique business model, which includes design, production, distribution and sales through our extensive retail network." 

I also came across their Mission Statement : 

"Through Zara’s business model, we aim to contribute to the sustainable development of society and that of the environment with which we interacts. The company's commitment to the environment is included in Inditex Group’s Corporate Responsibility Statement, published on our website: www.inditex.com." 

I wasn't already (and I am sure lots of people are not) aware of the Environmental and Animal Welfare Policies ZARA are involved with.    

Environmental Policy : Save energy/ Produce less waste and recycle/ Ecological fabrics/ Biodiesel fuel in transport.

Animal Welfare Policy:  

"All products of animal origin sold in our shops, including fur and leather, come exclusively from animals raised on food farms and under no circumstances come from animals sacrificed exclusively for the sale of their hide."

Assessment One

Group Presentation:

Working as a group we are to identify two multichannel fashion brands (who sell to UK consumers) and investigate and analyse their current situation in the market. Then compare and contrast these two brands to H&M.

With the research we are to prepare a 15 minute presentation covering both Macro (PESTLE) and Micro (SPICC) factors affecting the brands and a SWOT analysis. As well as suggesting how we feel we could improve the overall sales of the brands based on the findings.

Three Brands : ZARA/ H&M/ TOPSHOP

As a group we chose to split the workload by brand.

NINA: TOPSHOP

PAULA: H&M

EMILY (ME): ZARA

SABRINA: THEORY 

MARKETING THE FASHION PRODUCT

Hello. Welcome to my Marketing the fashion Product project blog. Its just a collection of my ideas, thoughts, research and reflections throughout my project.