Comparative Analysis of three international fashion retailers

Success factors of international fashion retailers	Mercator - Fashion House	H&M	Inditex - Zara
Target foreign market selection	South Eastern Europe markets	Emphasis on EU markets and North America	Global markets
Enter marketing strategy	Direct entry by opening own stores	Direct entry by opening store with franchise agreement	Direct entry  by opening company managed stores and franchised stores
Timing entry into the new market	Entering a new market depended on the results of market research	Timing of entry depends on the political and economical stability of selected countries	Start with a small number of stores to explore the possibilities of a specific country
Recognition of the company and brands	The main goals are recognition of the name of the company and its retail brands	Collaboration with prominent fashion designers (Karl Lagerfeld, Stella McCartney)	By opening new international stores with Inditex sales format
Analyze local markets and competitor	Monitor and analyse local retail competitors	Monitoring the actions of their local competitors	Monitoring the actions of their local competitors
Marketing support in a global market	From the Mercator group	From  neighbouring countries using the current H&M wholly-owned subsidiary model	Each format is carried out through chains of stores managed directly by companies
The location selection	In large shopping centers	An H&M store is on most prominent shopping streets	In the centres of  cities
Diversity of selling assortment	Depending on the customer’s purchasing power	Assortment depending on factors such as location, size of store and customer flow in the area. A broad and varied range of fashions for the whole family.	Close attention  paid to continuous data on customer needs and wants, and these are answered with clear market segmentation and product differentiation.
Employee	Local sales staff	Local sales staff	Local sales staff
Price policy	Product prices are the same in the Slovenian market	H&M has attempted to differentiate its brand from competitors through a discounting position.	Zara uses a market-oriented target pricing system in all markets
Sales promotion	Various sales promotion tools (coupons, free products, in-store demos, etc.)	Mostly shopping discounts	Mostly shopping discounts
Organization and control business activity	Corporate management is based at Mercator Group’s head office in Ljubljana	Corporate management is based at H&M’s head office in Stockholm. Fifteen regional country offices are responsible for the various departments in each sales country.	Corporate management is based at Inditex  head office in A Coruńa.