Zara Case Study

Question 1: In what ways are elements of the classical and behavioral management approaches evident in how things are done at Zara International? How can systems concepts and contingency thinking explain the success of some of Zara’s distinctive practices?

Zappos is an online shoes retailer that started its business in the year 1999. Later on the company had expanded its business to include the beauty products, clothing and even the housewares within its leading e-commerce website. This case emphasizes on the customer service department of Zappos Company and initially the business focused only on the drop ship method. Later on the company also increased the variety of the products. The company had also created a bricks and mortar storefront to expand the business and increase the sales of the business.

* The new investor should leave sufficient liberty for the management to pursue their own strategy

| A company 's suppliers, their supplier 's suppliers, and the processes for managing relationships with them constitute

People: The emergence of the triple bottom line has led to companies becoming more aware of how their decisions affect not only employees and customers but those within the community they operate in. To achieve this in an ever changing global world a company needs to create policies and guidelines on how to select suppliers and evaluate performance.

Purchasing – are responsible for purchasing our materials need to produce our widgets. They will ensure that we have the best possible deal from a reliable company.

1. Consider Dunlap’s statement on page 3 of the case: “Stakeholders! Every time I hear the word, I ask how much did they pay for their stake? There is only one constituency I am concerned about and that is the shareholder primacy? Do you agree or disagree with Dunlap’s view of shareholder primacy? Explain

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Zara International is considered a high end clothing store that is affordable. Due to its quality in fashion, low prices and immediate availability, popular stores such as Gap and H&M fail to keep up with Zara’s success. Zara’s well known tactic of fast fashion has separated them from their competition. The ‘fast fashion’ objective is to distribute top trends of fashion within the runway to customers by selling them in local stores. Zara has been able to achieve the fast fashion perspective by hiring approximately 200 people that will assist in getting these trends out in stores within a matter of weeks.

Zara’s IT was positioned in the support mode quadrant on the IT strategic impact grid. This demonstrates that Zara's leadership team understood that their corporate strategy focused on the expansion of the number of stores selling of high fashion, short life span clothing to young fashion conscious, city dwellers. There was a relatively low need for reliability and strategic IT, it simply existed to support employees activities (Nolan and McFarlan, 2005). By implementing a new POS system Zara could potentially have come up against the following key risks:

The case study is upon on the resource based view. First, the firm resources were divided into three major parts: tangible resource, intangible resource and human resource as Grant suggested. The main body of the essay will also be divided into three parts according to the resource classification. Then, a VRIN test would be carried after listing different types of resources to inspect whether they are able to provide a sustainable competitive advantage for Zara. Finally, Zara’s dynamic capabilities will be discussed to state how Zara used the resources based on their organizational culture.

While these terms are very important, leading organisations have found that in the supply chain, every sector needs to be addressed and accountability must be incorporated into every level, from supplier to customer.

The organisation I chose for this assignment is called J Sainsbury plc. J Sainsbury plc is one of the world's leading retailers, playing a part in the lives of 15 million customers a week. John James and Mary established Sainsbury Supermarkets in 1869. Sainsbury's Supermarkets employs over 138,000 people. Of these 70 per cent are part time and 30 per cent are full time. 58 percent of colleagues are women. A large Sainsbury's Supermarket offers over 23,000 products - 40% of these are Sainsbury's own brand. Sainsbury's serve nearly 10 million customers at 432 stores throughout the UK each week. Of these stores, 17 are in Scotland, nine in Wales and seven in Northern Ireland. Nearly 60 percent of

Zappos started out by selling shoes online to become the world’s largest online retailer of shoes. Subsequently, in their quest to boost sales, they moved beyond footwear to become an E-tailer that sells ‘anything and everything’.

“A proper balance of the rights of majority and minority shareholders is essential for the smooth functioning of the company.”- Explain & Illustrate? 1. Introduction: