MARKETING ANALYTICS BUILDING BRAND ARCHITECTURE

ANDREA GIMÉNEZ USÓ

ANDREAMARKETING ANALYTICS
GIMÉNEZ USÓ
BUILDING BRAND ARCHITECTURE
MARKETING ANALYTICS BUILDING BRAND ARCHITECTURE

1. INTRODUCTION
ZARA and H&M are two of the biggest top names in the fashion
industry; they are international clothing retailers that serves in more
than 2.000 stores over the world.
I chose these two brands because, even if they target similar
markets, they are very different in the way they operate. These two
clothing distributors have differing approaches to their ownership of
materials, sourcing of manufacturing, and treatment of auxiliary
brands, so I think it can be very interesting to get a closer approach
into their marketing strategies to see which are the fundamentals
that rules each of them.

2. BRAND PYRAMID

H&M

 Brand  Core/Essence:  casualwear,  fashionable  

clothes  for  mass  market.  

 Brand  Personality:  young  fashion,  trendy,  fresh,  

popular,  happy.      

 Emo?onal  Benefits:  trendy,  young,  ?p-­‐to-­‐date,  exo?c,  

feeling  good  being  trendy,  trendy  pieces  for  the  now.      

 
Product  Benefits:  affordable  prices,  exo?cism,  
interna?onal,  sustainable,  best  value  for  money.  

 Product  AFributes:  accesible  clothes,  european  style,  

long-­‐las?ng  design,  urban  casualwear,  mass  
produc?on.      

ANDREA GIMÉNEZ USÓ

MARKETING ANALYTICS BUILDING BRAND ARCHITECTURE

ZARA

 Brand  Core/Essence:  high-­‐end  fashion  for  everyone.    

 Brand  Personality:  fashion-­‐friendly,  feminine,  trendy,  
elegance  and  exclusivity.    

 Emo?onal  Benefits:  fashion-­‐oriented  woman,  trendy  

in  every  situa?on,  feeling  good  by  looking  good,  
trustworthy.  

 
Product  Benefits:  fashion  at  a  affordable  price,  
customer  centered  business,  haute  couture  trends  
adapted  for  the  streets.  

 Product  AFributes:  Fashionable  clothes,  varied  

assortment,  trendy  colors,  femenin  cuts.  

3. BRAND COMPARISON:
Both brands are worldwide fashion manufacturers that targets similar
audiences and with high brand awareness and great recognition.
The main characteristic that they share is to make possible for
customers to own fashionable items and dress themselves with the
latest trends without spending much budget.
But to do this they use very different strategies:
For one side, H&M, in order to attract the audience, spent a lot of
money in marketing and also resort to big designers making
accessible to the big public brands that wouldn’t be affordable to
medium range audiences.

ANDREA GIMÉNEZ USÓ

MARKETING ANALYTICS BUILDING BRAND ARCHITECTURE

Zara, conversely, barely spent money on marketing; its sign is to use

the minimum possible publicity but it does its investment on
marketing in their stores, making everything look as if you were
buying haute couture trying in order to seem as luxury clothes.
Another big difference in this two models is the manufacturing and
distribution, ZARA is very good regarding to place in the market the
latest trends in a very short time, this is a key in its success, but is
possible because is more centralized than H&M. ZARA´s central keep
in touch with all the branches around the word, and meanwhile
H&M produces most of its production in Asian countries, ZARA keeps
a 45% in Europe, which give it the chance to send its products to any
store in one day or two via trucks or planes.
H&M behaves as a giant, that means that they manufacture massive
quantities of stock that has to distribute by ships and trains, but if
weren´t for this, they could not maintain their lower prices. Zara for
instance keep very rigorous stock levels trying to keep its inventory
controlled without big surpluses of clothing.
Another differentiation is their position in the fashion industry, ZARA
focuses more on high couture designers but H&M style is more for
street fashion. Clothes to be dressed everyday in life.
This is how we can see how two successful similar brands behave
competing in the same field but with completely different strategies.

4. BRAND VALUE/EQUITY:
In 2019, the Zara brand was valued at approximately 18.4 billion U.S.
dollars. In comparison, the brand's valuation was around 10.1 billion
U.S. dollars in 2016.
In 2019, the H&M brand was valued at approximately 15.9 billion U.S.
dollars. In comparison, the brand's valuation was around 19 billion
U.S. dollars in 2018.

ANDREA GIMÉNEZ USÓ

MARKETING ANALYTICS BUILDING BRAND ARCHITECTURE

In this moment, ZARA is the more valuable brand, if you take a look
into previous statistics you can see that is the first year ZARA surpass
H&M and this is also because in the latest years H&M has suffered a
declination in value.

The evolution of brand value for this year's top five brands - Brand Finance 2018

5. SOURCES CONSULTED:
https://issuu.com/beckymajor8/docs/h_mmagazine2
https://www.slideshare.net/preciousssa/zara-marketing
https://innokabi.com/zara-vs-hm-batalla-de-estrategia-por-la-moda-low-cost/
https://www.investopedia.com/articles/markets/120215/hm-vs-zara-vs-uniqlo-
comparing-business-models.asp
http://brandaditofexchanges.blogspot.com/2013/12/zara-vs-h-bms-model.html
https://www.statista.com/statistics/
https://uk.fashionnetwork.com/news/Nike-H-M-and-Zara-top-most-valuable-
apparel-brand-list,961774.html

ANDREA GIMÉNEZ USÓ