Analysis Of H & M's International Strategy

In this report I will analyse Country Road Clothing Company (CR) and the CR customer. Specifically, I will be analysing the marketing environment and Country Road’s approach to this environment and how CR market to their customers. I will look it why the marketing in Australia is so successful but how this same success was not translated in overseas markets. I will also discuss the different macro and micro environmental influences to this failure in the U.S. markets and make recommendations on how CR might have learnt from previous marketing mistakes and show how they are striving for success in the future.

Hennes and Mauritz AB is a Swedish retail-clothing company, which has expanded enormously in the past years. H&M has grown from one single store in a small town in Sweden to a multinational ranked as the second largest global fashion retailer with its 3,600 stores in over 58 countries and $22 billion in annual sales (The World’s). This incredible story of success makes us wonder about their strategies and how they managed to get where they are today.

This expansion demonstrates how the luxury industry is now run by massive corporations whose focus is only on growth, visibility, brand awareness, advertising, and most importantly, PROFITS! With growth and expansion, has come a decrease in quality and rarity. The luxury garments produced are mostly not handmade but are even outsourced to large factories in places such as China and Turkey. Also, to meet quarterly turnover projections, “designers churn(ed) out increasingly trendy collections of clothes, handbags, and shoes.” (Thomas, Pg. 246) With hundreds of new stores around the globe the surplus of designer labeled merchandise is immense hence, the proliferation of outlet malls.

Global sourcing is a technique of strategic sourcing in the global strategy, which is an effective approach as a part of organization’s procurement section. The objective of global sourcing is to develop global efficiencies in the delivery of a product or service for the firms achieving a sustainable competitive advantage and this is an important weapon have been focused in the 21st Century. The well-known organization, Hennes and Mauritz (H&M) is one of the largest international fashion retail and production house with the great deal of businesses all over the world. In the today’s competitive market and

In this report, values and culture of H&M will be clarified at the beginning. Following that, PESTEL, Porter’s five forces, and VRIO analysis will be elaborated. Three new strategies will be tested and one relatively appropriate strategy will be used to make action plan.

* Procurement: As it is the second Europe’s cloth retailer company, for the production H&M uses a lot of material and workers so its mains recourses are material, labour and energy. That is why small changes in prices can affect the company’s profit a lot, and the fact that it does not own any manufactories causes some problems in controlling the production’s prices. However, not owning the factories can be an advantage in some cases. Indeed, if a problem appears, H&M can easily change its suppliers. Moreover, due to its huge size, H&M can easily manipulate with its suppliers to have the best quality at the lowest production’s price.

This assignment will be discussing about when I was working as a logistics manager for Morrisons and we will be talking about how Morrisons distribution system works and evaluating the system. Morrisons' market share as of August 2013 was 11.3%, making it the smallest of the "Big Four" supermarkets, behind Tesco (30.1%), Sainsbury's (16.6%) and Asda (16.4%), but ahead of the fifth place Co-operative Group, which had a share of 4.4% - http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Morrisons. There is currently 569 stores across the UK and this means that the distribution system must be effective and be able to deliver goods to the Morrisons stores in time.

Even though H&M follows a strategy which differs significantly from Inditex’s approach it is the closest competitor from the financial point of view. H&M differs from Zara because it outsources all of the production, it is more price oriented and spends more money on advertising. But both companies are based in Europe, are fashion forward at lower price retailers, and have a strong international expansion strategy. Exhibit 6 indicates that the financial results of Inditex and H&M seem to

Part A: Describe how you would design a new logistics network consisting of only a single warehouse.

In this paper the executive at a high-end retail chain selling luxury watches, jewelry, and hand bags is in charge of the company's first expansion in the international pool, which is about a new store open in Shanghai, China. This is only a short term objective as the company expects to open several stores in the BRIC countries, such as Brazil, Russia, India, and China, which is the long-term plan. The executive explains the chain models used to follow the short-term and long-term goals and the effects these changes would have on executives, managers, and employees from the company.

•  India's $250 billion retail business is the eighth largest in the world and has the potential to grow 7 per cent by 2011. [McKinsey Report] For a company already dominating the world markets, this is an un-passable opportunity.

The global supply chain in the retail industry has witnessed changes and shifts which have led to opportunities and challenges for the involved players. This has occasioned shifts in trade and consumer behavior patterns. Among these are global growth patterns brought about by explosion of more cities and thus growth in infrastructure. There have been flexible supply chain trends which have enabled retail operators to adapt effectively to unexpected circumstances and changes. Moreover, globalization has changed the way retail supply chain is managed as more mature markets emerge to provide logistic and standard solution needs of the businesses. Conversely, near-shoring has

Quick response of Zara leads it to be successful in the fashion clothing industry. Zara adopts international strategy for its operation. With vertical integration, it benefits Zara in cost aspect, however, it involves some risks. Due to our anaylysis on Zara’s operations, some of the recommendations are made to facilitate its further improvements.

Since H&M opened the first shop in Sweden in 1947, using an American concept of shops selling stylish clothes with low prices bring H&M successful in the domestic market. H&M started to expand internationally from 1964. Not only Europe market, H&M also enter in North America, Asia and Middle East market.

UNIQLO is the abbreviation of “Unique Clothing Warehouse”, a Japanese casual wear designer, manufacturer and retailer which provides consumers with the business philosophy of " low price, quality assurance ", and achieved remarkable results as world's top apparel retailer. UNIQLO plans to have 100 fresh stores annually in China while many other retailers have retarded store openings on account of China's slowing economic growth (Doland, 2015). This report, therefore, will set out to evaluate UNIQLO's marketing strategies in China, with a particular focus on the importance of pricing, development of product and the need for precise positioning.