Marketing Strategy of Zara

LO 1

a) Key roles and responsibilities of the marketing function

This concept states a plan of action that is utilised by businesses in order to satisfy customer’s needs, increase sale volume, maximizes revenue and for gaining competitive advantage in the market place. Different strategy is executed from the stage of introduction of services to people and asking their feedbacks, views and suggestions (Schmidts, 2018). Role and functions of marketing are described as below:

Market researcher: This function performs role of researcher in the enterprises .it conducts research and gather necessary detail about expectation of buyers so that entity can offer them same products in order to satisfy their requirements. The marketing manager of Zara uses marketing research report to identify target market for business at the initial stage of any advertisement campaign. This report provides important information relevant to customers demand. The secondary market research report aids to save the time of company (Gagnon, 2016). It assists in effective formation and implementation of policies regarding finance, quality and cost. This may help in improving efficiency of all departments.

Market plan developer: It works as developer and support marketing manager in developing suitable market plan. This function of marketing is a source of identifying the consumer requirements. It also assists in evaluating whether the Zara will be able to achieve those needs, fulfil the expectations of the target audiences. It brings clarity relating to usage of marketing mix (7p's). the main aim of company is to achieve goals and objectives effectively with in the competitive market environment. Effective marketing plan allows business to increase their profitability, developing its mission, strategies and in successful implementation of the action plan.

Service developer: It act as a service provider in the Zara. That increases sales of business by improvement of its services. The development process is performed by marketing department. They introduce services to the customers by creating strategic messaging that attract consumers and ultimately the growth of sales starts increases (Bahl and Chandra, 2018.). If the company performs this services development function of marketing then it will be able to enhance the sales volume and can achieve high profitability for firm that assist in achieving growth, gaining competitive advantage in the market place.

Brand promoter:This function plays a role of promoter in the Zara. Promotion is component in a companies’ marketing mix (7p's) that helps in informing, creating awareness among target audience and reminding them about availability of companies’ services in market place. Through this function business is able to communicate the product feature, benefits to the prospective buyers (Liu and et.al., 2017). That led to increase in sales and number of customers for the organisation. Ultimately the enterprises keep operating with the revenue generated by increased sales and achieve a huge success in the business.

Communicator: It works as a coordinator in the firm. The companies meet customers or clients personally via telephones, email, or personal interaction. If Zara provides better and unique customer services to the clients or consumers that will help in enhancing loyalty of the people towards the enterprises (Kaushik, 2018). It increases the demand for services. Business can increase the volume of sale by creating the trust among the audiences for their brand that assist in achieving competitive position in the market by enhancing revenue generation through selling activities.

Relationship builder: This function of marketing helps Zara in three key areas- messaging development, content marketing and increase brand awareness. Public relation (PR) Plays crucial role in effective communication of key messages to the different public while developing messaging for the next marketing program. Good content assists in gaining better impressions on the reporter, bloggers that increase the chances for the content to go viral it aids to create interest of the people in the services (Schmidt, 2018). PR helps in generating awareness among large group, seeing the company name in trusted news make an impression that brand is trustworthy. If they perform this function it can build faith, maximize the coverage of content that will boost the return on investment of marketing. Increasing returns maximise the overall productivity of the firm.

The above-mentioned functions of marketing help Zara in increasing the awareness among the target audiences regarding their offered services, in creating the demand, enhancing the sales volume and revenues of the organisation and achieving overall productivity in the operations of the business.

b) Roles and responsibilities of marketing functions in marketing environment of Zara

Success of Zara depends upon the successful marketing. It is essential for increasing the demand of services of the business. The main impact of implementing marketing process is presented below:

It performs a role of market plan developer in organisation. That helps marketing manager in developing effective marketing plan by knowing and understanding the demands and requirements of the target audience. This function is performed by actively listening to them, asking various questions. This will assist in providing the superior services according to consumer requirements. It aids to increase the satisfaction and loyalty of the customer. So, they will become the frequent buyers of the firm.

The function of marketing works as market researcher in the Zara. It helps in satisfying the consumer requirement by conducting market research and gathering required information regarding the expectations of the peoples for the services (Role of marketing, 2017). That report is utilised by the manager in order to identify the target market and also supply necessary content related to customers demand. It assists in making and implementing effective policies regarding offered services like quality, cost. By conducting such research, they come to know the area where there is a huge demand for services. So, the enterprises are getting a huge advantage of market researcher function in terms of improving the performance of each department and increasing profitability, growth, revenue generation etc.

It also performs an essential role of services provider and carry through a function of developing the process of offering of company. The process of alteration such as making effective messages to attract the audiences is done by marketing department. If communication is effective between customer and business with respect to services that will increase potential buyers of Zara. Ultimately it increases sales volume and profitability of concern (Papadopoulos and Heslop, 2014).

It plays a crucial part of brand promoter that has increased the competitive advantage of company in market place. It does a function of promotion (marketing mix 7p's) that assist in revealing, increasing awareness among target audiences and prompting them for accessibility of the services in the market. By this business is able to effectually communicate advantage and attributes of the product (Rubenstein ,2018). Effective communication leads to increases chances of converting people into the regular customer for the concern. That makes a huge positive impact on revenue generation through sales and assists in gaining high productivity, growth for organisation.

It acts as a services provider in the Zara. The entity interacts with the clients and potential customers personally on telephone, emails. An effective mail that describes all information regarding availability of offers and beneficial features, quality of product or services, can enhance the rush of the customers. Like online stores use this technique to increase their number of buyer and the popularity of the business concern (Ghosh, 2017). They make efforts to provide unique and innovative services to audiences that aid to increase the commitment of peoples towards the brand, loyalty. The customers will prefer their brand over any other trade name. This will improve market share of enterprises.

It plays an important role of relationship creator with large audiences. these assist Zara in three major regions such as content marketing, development of creative messages, enhancing the brand awareness. A good content is required for providing information to reporter relating to brand offering so that they will be able to better communicate with people and that also brings clarity in the minds of the customers relating to available services of brand. This function of marketing assists in providing innovative content for blogs (Papadopoulos and Heslop 2014). It is beneficial in writing an effective blog that aids to maximize the chaos of persons on company page and increase the popularity of brand on social media.

Because of that concern can enlarge their productivity sales and growth and can gain a high market share. It performs an essential role of developing innovative messages for attracting the persons via personal messages. That raises awareness among the various groups about company’s offers and discount, newly launched services. People come to know offers that are for limited period. That makes them excited for availing services as soon as possible. That maximizes growth, sales revenue financial ability of business entity.

c) Significance of interrelationship between marketing and other functional units

Marketing information helps in identifying needs and wants of consumers and then analyse internal strength and weakness as well as external environment of ZARA in order to take various decisions for achieving the success wile marketing firm product and services in the market. If needs and wants are not properly identified then the marketing department will not be able to segment the market effectively and the decisions related to marketing the product in the target market cannot be done efficiently if there is improper analysis of available information (Leonhardt and et., al, 2017). Market planning that helps in deciding the level of production, promotions and execution of various programmes. If the level of production is not accurately determined then the production department cannot utilize the resources optimally and it will also increase wastage of resources.

• If standardization process is not done in a right manner. Then the production department will not be able achieve the similarity and consistency in the final products. Grading (standards for weight, size for products) function of marketing helps classifying the goods on the basis of certain already determined characteristics. The improper grading of product leads to take unsuccessful pricing decisions (Rubenstein,2018.).
• Marketing function includes packaging, labelling, branding. Good Packaging and labelling assist in promotion of the products. An improper packaging will not help HR department in attracting or influencing the customer to buy the company’s product (Ghosh, 2017). Marketing also perform the function of providing customer support such as handling customer complaints. If the problems are not handled or resolved properly this may increase the dissatisfaction of customer and can reduce the number of buyers for the brands.
• Availability of finance for the marketing operation help finance department in order to operated marketing activities.

d) evaluation of elements of marketing function and its interrelations with various departments

The business makes various plan of action to identify the needs and wants of the consumers, to increase sales and revenue and for achieving competitive position in market. The marketing function perform various functional activities in the ZARA that involve- Market researcher, market pan developer, brand and services developer, relationship builder (Papadopoulos and Heslop, 2014). It works as a coordinator in firm. as a market researcher it helps marketing manager in identifying the target market at the initial stage of advertising campaign. as a market plan developer, it helps marketing manager in developing marketing plan and well-developed marketing plan helps in achieve effectiveness in operations (Paley 2017). It assists in maintaining and enhancing the image of Zara among customers by effective communication of key messages to them through newsletter, brochures and magazines. so that marketing department in order to maintain effective relations with public. All these functions aids to increase brand awareness among the target audience relating to offering of goods. It assists in creating demand, enhancing sales volume, and revenue generation and that lead to achieve in overall productivity of the operational functions of the concern.

LO 2

1) Comparison of marketing mix between Zara and H&M

Marketing mix is the aggregation several components. Marketing is used by the organisations to communicate the brand message to customers. Its various elements are described as below:

Product

Zara offers services to various group like men, women and kids. Its product involves trousers, jeans, T-shirts, Top, bags, and accessories. It is one stop shop for all. Whether people want to buy formal or casuals. It believes in sustainable development and use ecological fabrics like organic cotton in manufacturing process (Harrington, Ottenbacher and Fauser ,2017).

The core range of product of H&M includes clothing and accessories. The focus of the brand is on quality and latest fashion and offer product at a reasonable price. Zara use organic material in order to produce products and also provide fashionable clothes at an affordable rate (Liu and et.al., 2017). Good clothing materials attract large number of people towards their stores that increases the number of followers for Zara on social media in comparison with H&M.

Price

In all the international stores, Zara offers latest fashionable clothes art a low price. They use low pricing strategies. They set market- based pricing strategy that include target prices customer wants to pay and produce budget as per target price that fix margin of profit on each item.

H&M provide high quality product at a premium price. As compare to Zara its prices are relatively low. Because of their low production cost and transportation expenses (Liu and et.al., 2017). Also, it offers a large variety of product in comparison with Zara. That works as a great advantage for H&M.

Place

Zara has large number of stores with in 88 countries and over 6500 outlets. And it also offers products through social media channels. There supply chain provides them in gaining the highest competitive advantage.

Company offers its goods and services through exclusive shops. its stores are located in various cities around the world. It also sells product online and from there customer can select product from the list of available items and can make payment online (Rubenstein ,2018). But Zara has a greater number of followers on social media in comparison with H&M. Zara also has large number of outlets in comparison with H&M.

Promotion

H&M use various promotional tools such as TV, YouTube, Digital marketing and public relation. On the other hand, Zara barely spend any amount of money on advertisement. It only depends on the word of mouth promotion and online channels rather doing expensive promotions. They prefer to spend money on opening new store and its décor that attract the audiences (Rubenstein ,2018). In spite of spending less amount on advertisement, their potential customers are higher than H&M.

Process :

H&M is give the highly importance to customer relationship management. Workers are highly trained to retain profitable consumer by providing them better services and offer. Any of complaints, employees puts every efforts to resolve them at the earliest at the H&M. On other side, Zara's employees resolve any of complaints at the online platforms which help to increase the consumer attraction and their enquires.

People:

The employees at the H&M are trained at each and every level. The work culture is very modern and workers are on rotation basis at each and every division and are motivated to creative and come up with the best clothing wear. On other side, the employees at Zara come from the diverse background having the specific abilities which help to raise consumer satisfaction.

Physical Evidence:

The decent looking clothing which is showed the physical evidence of H&M. Company is diversifying their portfolio and entering into global market. On other side, the high quality products, branding are presented the physical evidence of Zara.

2) Tactics applied by Zara

Zara has limited availability of stores across the world. Company apply selective targeting strategy to ensure the availability of goods in marketplace. They use customer’s centric approach for satisfying the demand of its several consumers. around the globe (Ghosh, 2017). The business designs products as per changing requirement and new available trends in the people’s demand. It spends very less amount on advertisement and use that money for stores décor that assist in attracting large group of audiences. Zara use differential pricing strategy i.e. offering discount. That assist in expanding the potential customers. they have used market penetration strategy for its product line stretching. First it had started selling clothes then accessories. this penetration strategy assists them in increasing demand and market share for the company. that increase the overall growth and productivity of the business.

LO 3

1) Marketing plan of Zara

Marketing plan for the clothing and accessories products of Zara includes several stages:

Mission: the company mission is to provide its consumers exclusive options of clothing and accessories by providing quick availability of new stock in store than other retailers. It assists in gaining trust and loyalty of customers. Firm will achieve its vision through building a new digital network and providing outstanding or personalised services to customers in stores that will increase trust among audiences (Gagnon, 2016).

SITUATIONAL ANALYSIS

SWOT Analysis

Strengths:

• Zara has the largest coverage. It operates business across world that works as the biggest strength for company.
• Firm is operating largest amount of retail stores, it has many retail outlets in visible places (Entezari, Karimi and Kianfar, 2014).
• Its brand name is popular due to having strong online presence through websites.

Weaknesses:

• In comparison with other brands, Zara spends limited money on marketing and advertisement and Due to that having high competition, it is achieving limited market share.

Opportunities:

• Zara can explore many of the global markets and enter into new segment which are highly chance of company.
• Company needs to online marketing for creating chance for entering into international market.

Threats:

• The major threat can be high end fashion merchandise to the company.
• The large amount of consumer shifting taking place which is high threat of Zara.

Marketing strategies:

Segmentation:

• Zara is segmenting the market in order to acquire new customers as well as for increasing future development. This segmentation will be based on demographic (income, age and customers nature), geographic as well as (Ghosh, 2017).
• Every segment of market needs to be measurable, accessible, and significant for delivering customers interest.

Targeting:

• Company is selecting target market for effectively compete with their competitors and for making strong position in the fashion industry.
• Firm has adopted different targeting strategies and produced various services and product for several segments by various tariffs (Paleys, 2017). business is using targeting strategy of maintaining the collection of fashionable clothes and accessories and also organising marketing campaign to pull the target market to Zara stores.

Positioning:

• Zara has positioned its newly designed clothes as “made in Europe” in the market. because many people in developing countries considers “made in Europe” goods as high-end products. However, it sells its existing fashionable product at low prices. That attracts large number of customers. The company has adopted strategy of direct sales mode in order to control all stages of distribution of product, chain of supply, designing and manufacturing of goods and services. Business has successfully implemented all the marketing strategies turn its stores as largest apparel in the world. it has successfully applied the marketing strategies by considering consumer positioning strategies, direct sales.

Budget

• For development of marketing plan Zara first create a list of various segments through market research and then estimation of cost is done to determine whether entity can afford total price involved in marketing plan (Pomering and Johnson, 2018).
• The entity organize campaign related to communication and consider costs involved in creative designs of websites and advertisements and packaging. For organising such campaign company will spend 0.3% of sales. business estimates cost in order to monitor efficiency of communication process and average expenditure involve 3.5% revenue.

Implementation and controlling

Zara has successfully implemented its strategies and implemented innovative ideas for gaining a competitive advantage.

The company is monitoring and controlling its brand by considering its goals and objective. Management is working efficiently with proper communication skill that included a new business model for entity. Zara is implementing its marketing plan by building strong digital network. They will use social media platforms like Twitter, Instagram, Facebook in order to increase its market potential (Papadopoulos and Heslop, 2014). For controlling its marketing strategies, it is placing control of the budget and providing quick availability of fashionable clothes and accessories to consumers. And then they will ask for the feedback of the people for effective monitoring of its actions. Organisation is trying to reduce its expenses by minimising the costs of some specific areas (Papadopoulos and Heslop,2014). It is also monitoring the quality and accuracy of its products and services for sufficient availability of finance in concern. That will help in improving market position and overall performance as well as productivity of entity.

2) Detailed coherent evidence-based marketing plan for Zara

Zara marketing plan is to make customer-oriented products. The company focus is on making goods according to the changing needs and wants, trends and fashion of people. That ultimately increases the demand for their products (Gagnon, 2016). The business use organic materials in its production process and provide fashionable apparels at low prices that influences target audiences to visit their stores. Zara believes in spending its earnings in opening new stores. that enhance the availability of items at several different locations. the company is providing high fashionable products at a affordable price in international market that is influencing more and more customer towards its stores .it always focus on designing new fashionable clothes and accessories currently designed 10000 new products in year(Zara marketing mix,2018).that help company in gaining competitive advantage in the marketplace company is planning to increase its presence on social media platform such as Facebook, twitter, Instagram so that are able to get high attention of people.

3)strategic marketing plan of Zara

• Product: Zara is one of the major fashionable brands that provide cloth and accessories for men, women and kids. All these product strategies are included in marketing mix of company. it has introduced 10,000 new designed in a year (7Ps of marketing, 2016). its strategy of providing high fashionable clothes and mass distribution has helped in achieving the growth for its stores.

• Price: Zara provides high fashionable clothes at a low price in all the international store. it has set market-based pricing strategy that sets the target price customer is willing to pay for buying product. that increases the overall demand for its product.
• Place: the companies supply chain provide its stores a great competitive advantage. it also uses online stores in order to sell its products that assist in enhancing brand awareness among customers (Papadopoulo and Heslop, 2014.). they provide timely or quick availability of product in its stores. that attract the customers towards its stores.
• Promotion: the promotion strategy of Zara is to open new stores and it spends some percentage of its revenue in opening new stores. that increases the availability of its product everywhere. that ultimately increases marketing potential of the company.
• People: the employees of Zara is friendly, knowledgeable and approachable about the business product and services. it increases the amount of sales by the company and also helps in managing good relation with the public. that helps in achieving goals of the company (Marketing theories, 2016).
• Process: Zara provide good quality packaging for its product and services. that satisfy large number of consumers. its product presentation increases brand images among customers. The company has strong supply chain and corporate culture they always offer new unique collection in order to satisfy the needs and wants of consumers. Business operate than 2100 stores across the globe.
• Physical evidence: Zara spend a lot of money on de coring its stores. That has increased the attractiveness of its stores. That helps in influencing more and more customers to visit their stores.

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CONCLUSION

From the above study, it can be concluded that Zara has been a reputed brand that made an effective presence within the UK. The business has also gone through several constraints that are negatively impacting the quality of its services. In order to improve the current position of firms in the market, they must need more effective marketing strategies. The organisation has different capabilities to make itself the leading brand in the current marketplace or in the worldwide market. It has also been assessed that issues relating to coverage of its services can be minimized by correct evaluation of the marketing mix.

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