Fast Retailing Has Competitive Advantages Essay

Corporate values are ‘the operating philosophies or principles that guide an internal conduct of the organization and its association with its clients, partners and shareholders’. It is also a fundamental and long-lasting belief that specific mode of conduction highly valued by the organization’s membership’ according to IBM corporate responsibility report (2002, What is the value of company).

Urban Outfitters, often referring to itself as simply ‘UO’, is the corporate entity that includes retail chains Urban Outfitters, Anthropolgie, Free People, Terrain, and BHLDN, has became the greatest global retailer in the world. Back in the beginning, the first Urban Outfitter store was opened on a street nearby Pennsylvania University in 1970 by Dick Hayne and Scott Belair, both are the company’s chief executive officers (CEO). The first store’s name was Free People and it sold furniture, second-hand clothing, accessories, and decorative items. The store’s target market was young people, especially college students and it continues to dominate this market segment.

Distribution channels consist of organisations where goods pass in the direction of the customer, while producers need to manage their relationships with organisations in order to provide a cost efficient way into the marketplace. Burberry currently has 206 mainline stores, 214 concessions, 49 outlets, and 65 franchise stores (Burberry, n.d). These are located in largely populated, wealthy and tourist attractive cities, this is important as a huge number of the population fall into the Burberry target audience. If Burberry were to open in less wealthy cities, they may not get as much custom and may lose profit. In addition the brand may lose its sense exclusivity and expenditure.

Neither Kessel nor Archer let stereotypical gender roles influence their actions. Archer showed flexibility when he took a temporary detour within the company. He accepted the challenge to

Uniqlo is a retail industry which sells high quality casual wear at cheap and affordable prices under the company name of FAST RETAILING CO., LTD. It dominated the world with its presence and as of 2015 it has opened over 1’400 stores in 16 markets worldwide including big economy countries like China and The United States. Other than its flagship stores, they have delved into E-Commerce websites bringing in more profits. Due to the number of stores opened and popularity it has gained it has a big group of workforce of over 30,000 employees. (uniqlo.com, 2015)

The retail industry is highly competitive, with few barriers to entry. Each Company competes with many other local, regional and national retailers for customers, associates, locations, merchandise, services and other important aspects of the Company’s business. Those competitors include other department stores, discounters, home furnishing stores, specialty retailers, wholesale clubs, direct-to-consumer businesses and other forms of retail commerce. Some competitors are larger than JCPenney, have greater financial resources available to them, and, as a result, may be able to devote greater resources to sourcing, promoting and selling their products.” There are many factors that characterize competition, including advertising, service,

In addition to outlining such aspects of the retailing industry, theory of the marketing mix and the extended services mix will be applied to the industry to draw a better understanding of the key roles of marketing to large supermarket chains like Woolworths and Coles. Furthermore, by acknowledging past results and findings of industry reports and marketing theories, practical and managerial implications will be made to further analyse and contribute to the facilitation of the retail industry’s marketing strategies as consumer markets are in a constant state of flux. At the end of this report, a conclusion will be drawn, summarising the various findings.

The Spanish retail chain Zara has unique supply chain management practices that enable it to gain a competitive advantage over other fashion retailers in the industry. Zara’s rapid response time enables the firm to quickly respond to changing fashions while deliberately under producing products. This strategy, which is supported by competencies in logistic management, design and information systems, allows the company to maintain less inventory and higher profit margins and is a key factor to Zara’s success. The firm should continue to add value by seeking new opportunities to expand in the retail market and maintain their sustainable growth.

The industry I have chosen for my paper is the Specialty retail industry or the clothing industry which has the SIC code of 5651. This industry consists of companies that are primarily in the business of clothing and accessories for men, women and children. These companies include unisex clothing stores and jeans stores for all ages instead of stores aimed at a particular age group or sex.

The recognized giants in today’s discount retail market are Wal-Mart, Sears, Roebuck and Company, and Target, and this paper compares Wal-Mart and Target. As the competition stiffens to capture market niches, these two organizations are heading for a showdown. This work demonstrates distinctive differences in company culture, promotion within the organization, lofty goal setting, and leadership styles between these two organizations. Although this paper shows a definite competitive advantage for the Wal-Mart organization, it will also demonstrate that Target

Inditex ensures that its fashion is fast through its supply chain efforts. They have created new methods to enable store managers to order and display merchandise faster and added cargo routes for shipping goods. The company ships clothing straight from the factory to stores and makes two-thirds of its goods in Spain and nearby countries, compared to most competitors who manufacture most of their clothing in Asia. Inditex has their sales managers monitoring computers, which are reporting sales at every store around the world. When a garment does well or fails, they are able to quickly tell designers if they need to come up with new ideas. They also have generated

An additional method Zara utilizes to ensure the right product is produced is to constantly monitoring the sells at every store in real time through the use of computers. Sells managers are the individuals that play out this strategy. When the clothing sells well or does not sell well, they can quickly let the designers know to swiftly create new designs (“Case 3-4. Continued Growth for Zara and Inditex”, 2013). However, the competition is changing their strategies in an attempt to successfully compete with Zara. The methods that Zara has implemented to ensure fast fashion is truly fast has pressured the competition into reducing their lead times on stocking their stores (Hayes & Jones, 2006).

The clothing industry, as one of the most globalized industries in the world (Bonacich et al 1994), is currently undergoing a restructuring, especially the fast fashion sector. Fashion markets are synonymous with rapid changes and short product life cycles. Therefore, changes in consumer demand for newness and fashion trend force the emergence of ‘fast fashion’ strategy in retailers like Zara and H&M and shifts in the focus of competitive advantage from price towards quick response. That is to say, clothing firms, which are adopting global or offshore sourcing strategy, are not considered to have more competitive advantages as before.

UNIQLO, established in 1963. At first, it was only a small clothing store sales, which have become internationally well-known clothing brands currently.

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.