Zara Marketing Case Study Analysis:

Design & Development of Integrated Communication Plan for Zara

Zara Marketing Case Study Analysis Overview:

1. Introduction

 Zara, the world’s biggest retail chain store of Inditex Group was founded by Amancio Ortega in Spain in the year 1975. The most profitable brand of Inditex is headquartered in La Coruna in Spain. The group has global presence in all the continents Asia, Europe, Australia, America and Africa.

The business model of Zara is completely based upon the short deadlines, lesser quantities and an impressive rage of options for style and clothes. Zara’s success depends upon two critical factors i.e.

• Following the trend to be able to sell the garments at particular moment when people demand that kind of style and that too without any advertising.
• Trusting the employees for designing the clothes and giving them the power to delegate (Berhmani, 2009).

2. Event Analysis

2.1Brand Analysis

The presence of Zara in 74 countries with a network of more than 1900 stores which are ideally located in all the major cities speaks about the strong brand presence of Zara across the globe. The 5 keys which make the Zara’s Business Model a success are:

STORE:

It acts as a meeting platform for the Zara fashion brand and the customer. New products are introduced twice a week. It has been found that at the topmost stores of Zara 17visits per year by every customer is done to checkout latest Zara brand clothing’s (Hashemi et al., 2011).

TEAMS:

The Zara teams have an extensive sales knowledge which is totally focussed towards the customer. The friendly sales team of brand Zara creates a pleasant and customer friendly environment at Zara.

CUSTOMER:

The business Model of Zara brand is totally customer centric therefore customers play leading role in each and every aspect of Zara be it Production, Teams, Logistics or Store designs.

DESIGN / PRODUCTION:

 The production and designing team of brand Zara is inspired by the stores which are directly connected to the customers. That is why Zara has the speciality of immediately reacting to the latest trends in fashion industry with the help of well managed and efficient team of 186 suppliers and 200 designers.

LOGISTICS:

All the clothing’s are designed with keeping in mind the maximum flexibility and it is mostly customer oriented. It hardly takes bare minimum time of 24hrs from receiving order to delivering the product to the store.

Branding is unique technique or method of clearly highlighting the features of the product which makes the product or service different and, much more attractive than the competitors. It also reflects the customer’s experience of the business and has impact on every interaction business has with its customers and suppliers. Successful branding means promoting all the strengths the business has. Zara has strengths like:

• Faster delivery of newer products
• Effective Value chain Management
• Latest Design and Trends (Morel et al., 2011)

Figure 1:  Brand Wheel of Zara

2.2Audience Analysis

The target audience of Zara through this event would be fashionable consumer which is more educated, demanding and fashion savvy. This ‘New breed of shoppers’ is found to be loyal and loves freshness and variety. The fashionable consumers of Zara buy because of interest which gives them pleasure and enjoyment and is a meaning of self expression. That is why their purchasing experiences are fantasy, fun, social or emotional gratifications which result in impulsive buying behaviour.

Involvement is another aspect of consumers as they attach some meaning to the clothes they buy because there is major role of fashion which is being played by fashion in their society. The main drivers which make them buy Zara clothing’s are projection of desired self-image and their individual motives as well. Personal, aesthetic and economic values guide their consumer behaviour.

The emotional factors which influence the consumer behaviour are:

• Short span of decision time.
• Feeling of getting constrained
• More impulsive buying
• Desire to reward themselves.

 The retail environment could be best used for influencing their moods which results in impulsive buying. Impulsive buying behaviour of the target audience is of following types:

Fashion Oriented

Strongly involved with the latest fashion trends which helps in providing experiential or sensory cues through their fashion products.

 Symbolic Interactions

Impulsive buying also results due to symbolic interactions of the fashion products and due to emotional experiences of the consumers.

 Thus it is very necessary to understand the impulsive buying behaviour of the target audience reading the experiential perspective which helps in developing the guidance strategies.

Figure 2: Consumer Behaviour of target audience

2.3Band Analysis

  Now we need to find the right band which goes with Zara’s image. Moreover the chosen band or musician should go along with the brand image Zara carries, according to the target audience and should go along with the Breast cancer Cause too. Few shortlisted Bands and Musicians are listed below along with their key attributes:

The main market segments which will be attending the Zara’s brand event organised for raising money for breast Cancer Research would be women and young well educated girls starting from the age group of 22 years onwards. This will also include housewives and plus size women. Even Zara would like all such consumers who are well aware of the cause of Breast Cancer to join the event and contribute towards the social cause. Mostly women and young girls would be attracted towards such kind of event because breast cancer is mostly found in women.

 Source: (Waltz, 2010)

After analysing all the most famous rock bands and musicians Kylie Minogue seems to be the best artist for performing for the Breast Cancer Festival and the reason being she herself has fought breast cancer at very early age and she enjoys international pop stardom although she belongs to Australia, which goes along with Zara’s brand image too as it is Spanish company ruling the whole fashion industry worldwide. The best part is that Kylie being a woman can easily catch the fancy of the target audience who are also women for this Zara Event.

2.4Event Detail

Other important details of the vent which would be organised can be easily followed from the table depicted below along with the reasoning why they should be made part of this festival:

3. Sponsorship Activity

 Sponsorship works as a key for a strong and powerful marketing plan. Sponsorship is the in-kind support or any kind of financial assistance given to specific activity to reach specific business goals (Freidman, 2012). Here in case of organising Zara Festival the supported activity is Breast Cancer research and the business goal of Zara is to reach out to its target audience through this festival. Through this festival they want to raise money to support the cause of breast cancer.

3.1 Potential ESB/ National Brand Sponsors

Qantas airlines

The airline is both domestic as well as international airline and Zara being an upmarket brand most of its audience travel by air. So Qantas can launch a scheme that they will give rebate on airline tickets to the audience who buy Zara outfits this way they will have mutual sales benefit. Mor4eover Qantas can donate say $5 per airline ticket bought by Zara customers to breast cancer research foundation. Qantas can contribute money for the event and can also sponsor the flight for Kylie too.

MTV

Since this is a musical event so sponsorship or partnership with MTV would be of great benefit for Zara as well the popularity of the music channel will also grow. They can do live telecast of the music eve and thus gaining TRP’s and get ahead of their competitors and this will prove to be good advertising for Zara as well.

Tropicana Juice

Manufactured by the PepsiCo would be also a good national brand sponsor because this way they can get good amount of sales during the vent and promote healthy drink which will keep the fitness freak audience healthy and smart. PepsiCo can contribute by sponsoring the event. This way they will also get brand recognition and whatever sales they make, they can donate some portion to Breast Cancer cause too.

McDonalds

Getting a national brand sponsor like McDonalds to sponsor the vent which sit eh topmost fast food chain Zara would be able to satisfy the appetite of the audience as well as can get good amount of money for the event sponsorship.

3.2 Local Brand Sponsors

The Melbourne based potential sponsors which have been selected and which match the cause, brand and event are listed below.

CABRINI HOSPITAL, Malvern

Cabrini Hospital located in Malvern, Australia can be potential local brand sponsor for the Zara Fashion Festival. The well known breast surgeon which they have is Dr. Jennifer Senior; she performed the breast cancer surgery for Kylie Minogue too. The sponsorship will be mutually beneficial for both the parties because the audience for them are same. This will help Zara in increasing their sales and attracting more women audience who will contribute to this noble cause and at the same time both Cabrini Hospital as well as Zara will create positive publicity along with enhancing their visibility too.

Hair Dresser Brad Mullins and Makeup Artist Sarah Tammer

Cutting edge hairdresser Brad Mullins will guide women regarding hair styling suiting their personality and give their hair complete makeover. AT the same time makeup artist Sarah tamer will also work upon giving a new dimension to the personality of the women using her bets makeup strokes. They will use latest styles and trends to give awe inspiring looks to the women and young audience’s This will be mutually beneficial as it will enhance the brand image of both Zara as well as the makeup artist and hair dresser. Moreover the sales will also enhance form the profitability point of view (Victoria’s Premier Hair and Beauty Trade Event 2011, 2011).

Ripple Melbourne Massage Day Spa and Beauty

Women are always attracted towards getting beautiful skin and always wanted to look beautiful so on the makeover day Ripple Melbourne’s beauty specialists will help in making women look beautiful and guide them about what can be done to stay and look smart and beautiful. This way both the beauty and Spa will be benefitted as well as the Zara Fashions will get enough brand visibility.

National Breast Cancer Foundation

 They will educate the target audience about breast cancer, cause and how to fight them. And mutually Zara will also get benefitted as they will get brand differentiation by aligning with the cause of breast cancer. Whatever donation Zara will receive or it can also work upon giving away $1. Per Zara outfit sale to National Breast Cancer Foundation.

3.3 Selling the Sponsorships

 The sponsorships would be sold by first arranging a meeting with their publicity manager. Then we will explain them how whether local brand sponsor or national brand sponsor will be benefitted by associating with Zara’s breast Cancer supporting Festival Campaign. The key benefits which the sponsors will derive by sponsoring this breast cancer suppor6ting event would be:

• Shaping the attitude of consumers and enhancing the brand image as well as association with such good cause will develop a positive brand image in the minds of consumer and they will tend to buy such good products.
• Driving their sales efforts, especially in case of food and beverage sector sponsors will derive greater benefits    through bigger sales and sampling, thus PepsiCo and McDonald will get greater benefits if they sponsor this event.
•  Helps in Creating Positive publicity and heightening the visibility of the company as well as the brand. The media will definitely cover this event thus through print as well as electronic media they will get wider exposure.
• Enhance their product differentiation from competitors as the target audience will definitely carry positive image about the product which has a positive image being associated with a social cause like breast cancer.
• Help in portraying the image of ‘Corporate Citizen’ role in good capacity. The sponsoring company will be viewed as good neighbour by target audience as the company will be seen as supporting community as well as economic development of society.
•  Sponsoring such event will definitely help in enhancing not just business but will also help in developing VIP relations and consumer relationships.

Thus using the direct marketing efforts of the events like sending mailers and newsletter regarding the events which will carry or talk about the sponsorship partners of Zara Event will deftly give strong brand image and differentiation to the sponsoring companies.

4. Promotional Efforts

Zara follows a very unique advertising and promotional approach and spends much lesser than their competitors on advertising. Large scale advertising is being taken care of by Zara so we need to support this large scale advertising of event through Point-of-Purchase advertising, sales promotion techniques, support media and social networking opportunities

Point-of-Purchase advertising

 It is the best and the most effective way of advertising and promotional graphics are being developed which help in influencing the consumer behaviour when the consumer is making purchasing decision (Halkyard, 2003). POP helps in creating impact on the buying decision by turning it into the favour of specific brand or product in-store. Moreover the POP application fits well as signage to so many applications like shelf, floor, walls, and window and vehicle decals too. Like signage or boards for Zara festival events with all relevant information should be places in various areas of the Zara store as well as should be advertised at various public places like grocery stores, fast food outlets and traffic signals banners can be out. Even hospitals can also be targeted.

Sales Promotion techniques

The techniques adopted by manufacturer to buy more and enhance the sales of products are called sales promotion. It mainly uses short-term a nonrecurring techniques to increase sales. The sales promotion for this event can be done by advertising the free samples scheme like if the audience buys a ticket for Zara festival scheme they ill get 25% discount on any Zara label they would buy. Premium or Bonus offers can also be given to the target audience like if they buy tickets for the Zara festival they will get a  premium t-shirt signed by Kylie Minogue  or they can get limited editing Kylie music CD.

Social networking opportunities

A contest on Facebook page of Zara can be started to advertise the event where in the contest winner will get free passes for the Zara festival event. A contest can be designed in way like the consumer needs o answer few questions related to breast cancer and if all of them are correct they will win free tickets for the event. Another contest can be the audience need to upload their image of black and white combination dress and the best dress designed will get a limited edition music CD signed by Kylie Minogue.

5. Public Relations Efforts

Finally we need to launch the public relation efforts in order to promote the event and support the cause of breast cancer amongst the target audience. For this we will design a proactive strategy to promote Zara as well as the Breast cancer research as well as reactive strategy will be developed which will be handling after analysis of potential problems which might arise during the course of the festival (Smith, 2011).

5.1 Proactive Strategy

 The main aim of proactive strategy for Public relations for Zara Festival supporting breast Cancer research cause is to communicate the reason for organising the event and to develop a communication plan which consists of how and when the plan will be communicated. Digital PR is the strongest PR medium which can be used for launching the event and informing and educating about the event (Reddi, n.d.). The Digital PR thrives on who we want to inform since it is mostly women and young ladies or rather the whole section of women so it would be better to place the advertisement about the event or create a twitter or Face book page which speaks all about the cause with which this event is associated.

We can also create a video in which the CEO of the company and an advertisement linking the vent can be uploaded on YouTube. Another proactive strategy which could be beneficial is placing a full page ad in the women’s magazines say two to three months before the events can also be helpful in increasing the awareness about the cause as well as informing the target audience about the event.

Same way a poster competition can be organised online through Facebook regarding breast cancer or designing just simple black and white clothing line and the best design will get a gift hamper from Zara and along with this contest the whole event information can be displayed inviting all the potential customers.

5.2 Reactive Strategy

 The reactive approach towards public relations planning is to respond in passive manner to any event once the event has occurred. Many environmentalists might stand against this event as such a large event will definitely create large amounts of carbon footprints. So we need to prepare a strategy beforehand to handle such situation (Falkow, 2012). Firstly we need to educate through a press release that we would be using eco friendly paper all through the event, secondly the music would not be loud enough to create noise pollution and required permission from the authorities would be taken beforehand. Demonstrate all the efforts taken to reduce the carbon footprints by Zara as a company so that they are convinced that by organising this event no harm would be done to the environment.

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