A Comprehensive Framework for Analyzing Competitiveness in a Case Study on ZARA

Abstract

The fashion and apparel industry worldwide has undergone significant changes and a new business model has emerged ? Specialty store retailer of Private label Apparel (SPA), also known simply as fast fashion. The demand for fast fashion is clearly confirmed by the annual reports of SPAs and Zara seems to be the most successful among all of them. Zara and its competitiveness has been one of the hot subjects both in academia and business circles, but none of the existing studies seems to offer a fully comprehensive analysis. This study fully investigates Zaras sources of competitive advantage, organizing the existing data in a logical and cohesive way. A new, over-arching framework based on Porters (1990) diamond model and Moons (2012) ABCD framework of K-strategy is introduced and applied to explain Zaras competitiveness. It is both unique and valuable, as it is combining the established and emerging theories into one analytical tool. In addition, this study also explores the potential impact of FTAs and other trade solutions on Zaras activities, finding that whereas RTAs seems to be quite significant for Zaras internationalization and expansion, they remain highly unused and do not affect in any visible way Zaras sourcing decisions.