Clothing Industry

ZARA

vs.

UNIQLO

Team J: Bingbing Ge Lei Du Sophia Maduka Salman Syed Azim Thanadol Boonyaviwat Tanya Goel 1

Index

Content

Page Number

Executive Summary………………………………………………………………... 4 Introduction………………………………………………………………………… 5 Industry Analysis……………………………………………………………………5 Competitive Environment……………………………………………….5 Strategic Groups………………………………………………………...6

ZARA……………………………………………………………………………….7 Critical Success Factors…………………………………………………7 Strategic Issue: What should ZARA do next?......................................... 9 Strategic Options for ZARA and Inditex………………………………. 10 …show more content…

From our Porter 5 Forces analysis, which can be found in Appendix 1, we can see that the highly competitive and labour intensive nature of the industry have led firms to pursue cost leadership strategies. A general trend has been to outsource production to developing countries such as Bangladesh, Vietnam and China (The reasons for doing are highlighted by our PESTEL Analysis, as Appendix 2 indicates). Another important way in which firms try and create a barrier to entry is by product differentiation. The perception of products overall can be deemed to be equal and therefore, apart from price, the key differentiating factors are brand image, reputation and design. As a result firms tend to utilize a lot of capital in order establish a reputation and create brand awareness.

5

Due to the globalized nature of the industry majority of the risks involved are applicable throughout the industry as a whole. These risks are often beyond any of the firms’ controls and therefore it is very difficult to foresee them and adopt strategies to deal with them. A list of some of these risk factors is listed in the Appendix 3.

Strategic groups In the clothing industry, there are generally three strategic groups: low fashion low price, high fashion low price and high fashion and high price (See Appendix 4). Retailers like GAP and UNIQLO belong to the first