Case Study: Zara’s Operational Model

Founded in 1975, ZARA, a Spanish clothing and accessories retailer was originally the brainchild of the Inditex Group owned by Amancio Ortega. Headquartered in A Coruña, Galicia, Spain, Inditex is the world’s largest fashion retailer with ZARA as its international flagship chain store. Beginning with the single store in Spain to the recent launch into Australia, ZARA currently has over 1,700 stores in 78 countries providing exclusive fashion worldwide. ZARA, alone accounted for 64.6% of the Inditex group turnover in 2010. Over time, it has become one of the notable leaders amongst the fashion brands. ZARA was described by Louis Vuitton fashion director, Daniel Piette as “possibly the most innovative and devastating retailer in the world” and CNN described the brand as a “Spanish’s success story” Zara’s Operational Model Shifting from “mass standardization” to “customization” on a global scale is the most interesting aspect of the Zara’s business model. The Continue reading

Case Study of Dell: Simple but Effective Marketing Strategy

In 1984, with only $1,000 in startup capital, Michael Dell established Dell as the first company in its industry to sell custom-built computers directly to end users, bypassing the dominant system of using resellers to sell mass produced computers.  Since a young age Michael Dell has been intrigued and fascinated in the idea of eliminating unnecessary steps. So it was not surprising when he established a company where there marketing strategy was based on eliminating the middleman. “We sell computers directly to our consumers, deals directly with our suppliers, and communicate directly with our people, all without the unnecessary and inefficient presence of intermediaries. We call this “the direct model,” and it has taken us, to use a common phrase at Dell Computer Corporation, “direct to the top””. The direct business model eliminates retailers that add unnecessary time and cost, that could diminish Dell’s understanding of customer expectations. The direct Continue reading

Case Study: Why Woolworths Failed as a Business?

The British Company, Woolworths is normally categorized as a variety store dealing in retailing of a range of varying products. Historically it was established as a subsidiary of an American Company F.W. Woolworth &Co, in 1879 by Frank Winfield Woolworth It was incorporated in England on 23rd July, 1909 as private limited company with initial capital of 50,250 pound sterling. It, first time floated a new idea of selling all the products at a cost not more than five cents. This idea gained popularity amongst the customers resulting in fast growth of the subsidiary. Its first shop at Liverpool attracted about 60,000 people in first two days because of attractive one penny, three penny and six penny products put at sale. It continued to open new shops at various cities that attracted heavy rush of customers and visitors. It was company’s policy to purchase the products directly from manufacturers, who Continue reading

Case Study of Burger King: Achieving Competitive Advantage through Quality Management

Burger King Corporation (BKC) is the world’s second largest fast-food hamburger chain which trailing only McDonald’s. Over 11 million customers visit their restaurants worldwide each day and over 2.4 billion of its burgers are sold each year across the global. How do they able to achieve it? What are the reasons? Apart from their strategies, the main cause that leads to have these results today is their quality. By having a good quality, it will bring the company to have a good reputation. This is important because it can affect the entire organization from suppliers to customers, by incurring the lower cost and obtain higher profit. Therefore, through managing and improving the quality, the firm will be able to build and implement successful strategies as well as provide competitive advantages. In order to achieve competitive advantages in the fast-food industry, Burger King Corporation had put many efforts in their strategies Continue reading

Case Study: Reasons Behind the Collapse of Research in Motion (RIM)

Jim Balsillie and Mike Lazaridis are running Research in Motion (RIM) as co-CEOs since 1993 successfully until 2011 and the company had been through a turbulent year. Analysts and investors believe that co-CEOs are ruining the company. Lazaridis takes care of the technical side (Engineering & R&D) and Balsillie is responsible for the Finance, sales and marketing.  Lazardis built Blackberry, a device which was a new type of wireless handheld solution  for companies and it created an uncontested market space with in the enterprise segment and companies saved time and money because employees can access email almost from any place at any time without having to go back to the office. Balsille sold the device successfully to Companies and Governments and created an uncontested market space with in the enterprise segment, reaching beyond existing demand to unlock a new mass of customers (B2B) that did not exist before and aggressively Continue reading

Case Study of Nike: The Cost of a Failed ERP Implementation

Nike, was founded in the year 1957 by Knight and the company since the very beginning manufacturing higher quality sports shoes for several sports inclusive of athletics, football, volleyball etc. Additionally, the company also has been involved in manufacturing equipment’s for fitness and related sports apparels such as caps. The organization since its development has always been involved in making higher commitments to innovative products. In the fiscal year of 2012, 24.1 billion dollars was generated by Nike with an increase by 16 percent since the last year. The organization further made announcements of increasing this total revenue generated in the 2015 fiscal year to reach 30 billion. More than 50000 employees across the globe are employed by Nike and there are several contracts wherein the company employs more than 80000 individuals. The mission statement of Nike is to develop inspiration and to consistently innovate for each sports person across Continue reading