ASSIGNMENT~

Zara - Organization's Business Strategy

Zara - Organization's Business Strategy

Introduction

Leadership in an organization has an important role for all parties involved, and has lately taken on an investigative role especially in North America. It has been observed that before the 80's, leadership was based around the trends and development of traits, styles and contingency approach. Since then however, new alternate approaches have been making headway in large scale organizations to characterize leadership traits, motivational factors, perception and achievement of goals and so on( Katz, 1955). Marketing and management philosophies have been helping organizations create strategies and plans which have been tested in theory and hence are applicable on real life situations. These management philosophies can only be defined as a set of ideas that make up the best management practices, and can thus be standardized for others. Although these standard practices cannot cater to every organization out there, they have a true enough affect if the theory is correct. In this paper, I will be analyzing the main constituents of Zara, the Spanish retail chain store and its business strategies as per success or failure. I will also be drawing up a comparison with an equally known brand of retail to evaluate the effectiveness of each organization's strategies.

Discussion

Zara is a Spanish retail store that offers clothing and accessories and is known to be a flagship chain store. While it originated in Spain, it now serves worldwide through online and physical outlet retailing. It's a well known fact that Zara products reach the market within two weeks, as compared to the six months required by other chains to manufacture their products, thus its main constituent in their effectively reproduced business trategy is this. Being a store that has been around since 1975, Zara not only has good field experience in its own native land, and has worldwide exposure through this claim. Zara clothing is manufactured in Portugal and is distributed around the world in their outlets. The store currently has 1751 outlets around the world, with 187 Kiddy's Class stores. Its popularity has soared in the recent years due to the ever changing face of fashion, and more and more young adults seem to be preferring it over main stream brands, as the clothes are much more edgier and conveniently priced lower than average. The store's business strategy is to control their headquarters and the huge list of outlets around the world on a micro level. This allows for the operation management of the organization to run smoothly, since everything from window designs to material used on clothes is decided by the immediate leaders, who are carefully and extensively aware of the store's signature look in clothing and accessories. One of the main elements of the current business strategy is to focus on design. Zara's clothing designers go to great pains to ensure they remain on top of the latest fashion trends, and try to incorporate that into every item that is manufactured. Information that is accumulated from the store managers is ...