ZARA

“Bringing attractive and responsible fashion, as well as improve the customer's

experience, are Zara's priorities” Zara’s story begins with the opening of our first store in
the Spanish coastal city of A Coruña in 1975, an early milestone in our company’s long
history. Over the years, Zara has remained faithful to its core values, expressed simply in
the same four key words that define all our stores and online
platforms: beauty, clarity, functionality and sustainability.

Nurturing a highly intimate relationship with its customers, Zara’s designers respond
instinctively to their changing needs, reacting to the latest trends and constant feedback
received across its Woman, Man and Kids collections, to deliver new ideas in the right
place and at the right moment. 

The brand personality is confident, beautiful, unpretentious and stylish. These traits make
the brand Zara unique and different than the competitors. The traits can be seen in its col-
lections, the way stores are decorated, store windows and where stores are located.

9 brand elements of Zara

Brand and Branding

Branding is a concept that originated to define identity to a brand, person or a company. The
word brand itself originated from old Norse language meaning to leave a mark on your
livestock to claim ownership. A symbol or name were either drawn or burnt on the livestock
to show everyone who owns it.
This is how brands and the concept of branding started and we can see the same practice
going on with logos of brands. When we see the logo of a brand we immediately realize
which brand it is. Simple examples are Facebook, Twitter, McDonald's etc.

Branding has 2 major components:

1. Brand identity - Brand identity is the visible elements of a brand, such as color,
design, and logo, that identify and distinguish the brand in consumers' minds from
other brands. Brand identity is defined by the company or the person who owns the
brand and is defined based on what the brand wishes to be seen in the eyes of the
consumer.

2. Brand image - Brand image is the general impression of a brand perceived by real or
potential consumers. This image develops over time. Customers form an image based
on their interactions, advertisements and experience with the brand. Advantages of
having a good brand image is that it is easier for the brand to launch new products and
better business-customer reltionship.

Brand Elements

A brand is represented by various tangible elements. Elements used to express/represent and

identify/differentiate the brand. The consistent use of Brand Elements in all marketing
programs helps communicate the Brand Character to the marketplace. The brand name, logo,
slogan, and packaging style are all examples of Brand Elements.

Zara’s brand elements is different from the others of its category because of its high fashion
with the combination of fast fashion. Here are 9 defining brand elements of Zara.

1. Brand Logo

The logo was designed to emphasize the simplicity and elegance of the brand found by
Amancio Ortega, the founder of Zara.

2. Specialization

Zara is one of the world’s most successful fashion retail brands. With its introduction of the
concept of “fast fashion” retail since it was founded in 1975 in Spain, Zara aspires to spread
fashion amongst a broad spectrum of consumers, spread across different cultures and age
groups. It is the world's largest apparel retailer. Zara always put its customers first which
made them a global powerhouse. They have defined the company and the brand’s culture
right from the very beginning.

3. Pricing

Zara focuses on giving customers high-end fashion along with high quality materials at an
affordable price. Providing customers with fast fashion at such low rates was a first by any
company.
 4. Customer focus

Customer co-creation ideology, that is Zara’s principal designer is the customer.

Zara’s unrelenting focus on the customer is at the core of the brand’s success. There are many
fascinating stories around how Zara co-creates its products leveraging its customers’ input.
Another secret of Zara’s success is that the brand trains and empowers its store employees
and managers to be particularly comprehensive of the customer needs and wants, and how
customers express themselves.

5. Self-image

Zara is one such brand where they make people enhance their self image by making them
look strong, confident and unique ensuring that the clothes are always in par with the trend.

6. Advertisement

Zara is very low-key about their advertisements because of their huge existing loyal customer
base and gain new customers without having to advertise as much. When they do advertise it
is mainly through print and magazines. It prefers to invest a percentage of its revenues in
opening new stores instead which has help increase sales drastically.

7. Brand style

Zara is a brand with elegant style which is very rustic in nature. This is primarily because of
their unique brand style. They bring in street style fashion into high fashion which is very
enticing and appeals to a wide range of people.

8. Differentiation

Zara only allows its designs to remain on the shop floor for three to four weeks. Due to
Zara’s very fast customer research capabilities, its product offerings around the world in its
various stores is unique to customer needs and wants in terms of physical, climate or cultural
differences of that country.

9. Sustainability

Sustainability has been a hot topic in the fashion business for the last decade and is now
quickly becoming a must-have factor for fashion houses that want to resonate with and win
the loyalty of its global customers. For Zara, this means having a commitment to people and
the environment. Additionally, Inditex, the company that owns Zara takes wide-ranging
measures to protect biodiversity, reduce its consumption of water, energy and other
resources, avoid waste, and combat climate change. Zara is now fully focused on how to
make fast fashion fully sustainable.
 ZARA Customer based brand equity pyramid

A. Salience
“Indicator of Brand Awareness”

 Depth of brand awareness: When mentioning ZARA, the black-and-white logo comes
to our minds and also the high-street fashion brand identity. Although ZARA seldom
uses advertisement, the vivid brand images are known when consumers come to visit
ZARA’s physical stores and the displays. Importantly, ZARA’s store location strategy
is its main way to communicate with the public. In consumers’ minds, ZARA has
already been among the top highly fashion retail outlets

 Breadth of brand awareness: ZARA has different product categories which suit for
everyone like female, male, kids. When consumers need trendy but affordable
clothing, ZARA is their good choice. ZARA brings consumers a concept that you
don’t need to buy luxury clothing just for wearing only once, you can buy ZARA’s
stylish design with limited budget.

B. Imagery
“Meeting of customers' psychological and social needs”
  User Profile: Typical Zara customers are people who are young, fashion-conscious
but with lower budget. They care about their appearances and longing for being
stylish.
 
 Purchase situations: Consumers might pass by ZARA’s stores and be attracted by its
window display. As the clothing in ZARA changes very fast, If you don’t buy
something you love now, it will be sold out next time. Thus, ZARA creates
psychological thoughts to let clients buy its clothing without considering too much.

 Personality and values: Zara is modern, trendy, high fashion and individualistic.

Zara’s stylish personality appeals to the confident, young target audience.

C. Performance
“Meeting of Customers' Functional Needs”

 Reliability & Durability: As ZARA’s idea is to wear disposable and fashionable

design, the quality of clothing is good but less than luxurious brands.

 Style & Design: ZARA provides the latest design. From designing to sale, the
shortest time only takes ZARA 15 days. Thus, ZARA can always offer modern, latest
fashion to attract consumers who want to be voguish and be unique. As fashion
changes every moment, this fast fashion method make sure that ZARA is always
ahead of competitors and be the first one to provide fashionable clothing.

 Service Effectiveness: ZARA satisfies customers with its fast movement in designing

and providing the latest fashion. ZARA also cares lots about consumers’ need. When
some products are not so popular among clients, ZARA would not hesitate to remove
these stocks so that consumers can meet what they love and buy it.

 Price: The price is low comparing to other luxurious fashion brands. It’s very
affordable for those who want to keep on the latest fashion. With this affordable price,
consumers can buy clothing more often instead of spending lots of money on one
piece of classic clothing from luxury brands.

D. Feelings
“Creating which type of emotion during consumption”

 Self-respect: ZARA creates less emotion about warmth, fun, security; instead, ZARA
builds more on self-respect. For people purchasing ZARA, they can feel they are
unique, different, cool, chic, superior and individualistic. The logo and the modern
decoration also help shape this atmosphere.
 E. Judgements
“Integrating all the opinions from performance and imagery association of customers”

 Credibility: After viewing the value and the satisfaction from ZARA’s consumers,
ZARA is definitely a trustworthy brand. Since 1975, ZARA has offered fashion
products continuously. ZARA is an expertise in producing fast fashion clothing for
male, female and kids. Although it copies the design from other luxury brands, it truly
satisfies consumers’ needs for chasing latest fashion.

F. Resonance
“Intensity or depth of psychological bonds that consumers have with the brand”

 Behavioral loyalty: Because ZARA provides limited fast fashion products without

replenishing many times, the products are possible to be sold out soon. Consumers
know this fact, thus they would like to visit ZARA’s store to see the newly available
products. Once they love those products, they can’t refuse to buy them. Otherwise the
products would be sold out next time when clients come. The frequency of purchase
is high and repeated buyers are a lot.

 Sense of community: ZARA manage its social community in a cool way. It only

posts information such as new design of this season or newly open store on FB. And
ZARA doesn’t post and communicate with its clients every day. It’s the personality of
ZARA so there’s no conflict by doing this way. And clients love ZARA and fashion
so they will keep following its information.

 Active engagement: ZARA has 19.7 million fans on Facebook. It communicates

more with younger people who loves fashion. ZARA seldom do marketing; instead, it
saves the money to design and optimizes its supply chain so that customers can be
satisfied with its products. That’s how ZARA keep engaging the public.

ZARA contribute to brand equity

 Brand Associations
Zara is not an unknown name in the Fashion Industry, and the values that are associated with
the brand are Modern, High-Fashion, Sharp, and Trendy. It is famous for the high-quality
clothes for women, men, and kids that they produce and sell. The first image that comes to
the people's mind is fast and quality fashion with low costs. Zara is also famous for quick
turnarounds that it designs and produces clothes faster than the other brands, and it makes
them available in the stores within two weeks. Zara offers the most fashionable, comfortable,
latest, and trendy items to their customers. It is the brand for the Elite class, and it has a
conventional approach in the clothes designs.

 Brand Awareness
Zara doesn't have enough money for advertisements, but the brand's marketing strategy is
word-of-mouth and to make fashion items available in the stores faster than any other brand.
It spent a lot of money to buy storefrants next to high-profile luxury brands like Gucci and
Prada, to own the tag of "affordable luxury." Zara is obsessed with its clients, and produce
clothes of the customers' desired designs, which marked the brand as the most reliable among
people.

 Brand Loyalty
Zara has the most loyal customers because they keep coming back for different and new
designs to maintain their fashion trends. One of the reasons for customers loyalty towards the
brand is that the brand has a well-received exchange policy that allows clients to get back full
refunds for purchased products. It targets the customers of age group 15 to 40 years, and it
has also introduced kids wear all around the globe. The clothes of Zara are using from college
students to office employees, and they all are satisfied with the brand.