Fashion Industry Analysis From The Perspective Of Business .
Fashion Industry AnalysisFrom the Perspective of Business ModelDynamicsAuthor: Lisa GockelnUniversity of TwenteP.O. Box 217, 7500AE EnschedeThe NetherlandsABSTRACTThe fashion industry is a dynamic and volatile place, continuously exposed to macro-environmental factors that triggerfashion business models to change. The fast fashion model is currently at the forefront of the apparel market castingquestions on whether its underlying philosophy is about to change as well. Therefore, the purpose of this study is toidentify external drivers that might lead to such dynamic changes in the fast fashion model. Moreover, it will beinvestigated whether these may allude to a possible convergence to the newly emerged slow fashion model which iscurrently trying to penetrate the fashion market. The international retailer Zara has served as fast fashion representativefor this analysis and has been examined for business model adjustments, which might have been triggered by macroenvironmental factors. It was found that especially social, environmental and technological factors have influenceddevelopments in the fast fashion model and that it has indeed adopted slow fashion principles in some of its buildingblocks to respond to such emerging trends. The future of the fashion industry appears to be tailored by suchexternalities, continuously reshaping the fast fashion model to eventually arrive at a version that brings a long-lastingcompetitive edge. However, only time can indicate whether this version will eventually be the result of a conflation ofthe fast and slow fashion model.Supervisors: Kasia Zalewska-Kurek, PhD.Björn Kijl, MSc.KeywordsBusiness models, business model dynamics, PESTEL, canvas framework, fast fashion, slow fashionPermission to make digital or hard copies of all or part of this work for personal or classroom use is granted without fee provided that copiesare not made or distributed for profit or commercial advantage and that copies bear this notice and the full citation on the first page. To copyotherwise, or republish, to post on servers or to redistribute to lists, requires prior specific permission and/or a fee.3rd IBA Bachelor Thesis Conference, July 3rd, 2014, Enschede, The Netherlands.Copyright 2014, University of Twente, Faculty of Management and Governance.
1. INTRODUCTIONAll companies have business models (Gambardella &McGahan, 2010; Casadesus-Mansanell & Ricart, 2010). Thereason for this is that they are powerful concepts in today’sbusiness contexts and can significantly contribute to a firm’scompetitive advantage (Teece, 2010). The importance for solidand sustainable business models has obviously influenced themanagement strategies over the last couple of years.Visualisation tools like the Business Model Canvas byOsterwalder and Pigneur (2010) have been increasingly usedand enjoyed acceptance and penetration in many industries.Despite their widespread adoption, however, most businessmodels cannot remain static (Demil & Lecocq, 2010, Ferreira,Proença, Spencer & Cova, 2013) and need to change over time.The continuous emergence of influencing macro environmentalfactors challenges their future viability and determines ifexisting business models are still competitive in the market. Inorder to maintain a thriving business and cope with suchchanges, companies are compelled to thoroughly rethink theiroverall business plans and respond to these external influencersby adapting their business models accordingly (Al-Debei &Avison, 2010). Companies are then trying to differentiatethemselves with innovative business models in order to performdifferently and outcompete those threatened by obsolescence.Such business model dynamics can particularly be observed inthe fashion industry. Fashion trends and styles come and go,change within a few weeks or merely within years or decades.Changes in fashion trends are differently responded todepending on the respective fashion company and its way ofdistributing and selling the clothes to its customers. Businessmodels in the fashion industry are multiple and “fashion brandsand retailers are struggling to find the right business modelanswers” (Rinnebach & Richter, 2014, p. 2). Recently, themajority of companies choose to capture the latest fashiontrends while new entrants increasingly try to emphasise qualityover quantity by striving for a more sustainable and long-lastingapproach. These differences are illustrated by two comparablynew business models, which have emerged over the past yearswithin the fashion industry, namely the fast fashion and slowfashion model. According to Cachon and Swinney (2011)companies following the fast fashion business model arecharacterised by a quick response to the latest fashion trends aswell as short production and lead times resulting in a highspeed-to-market. Well-established international fashion retailerslike Zara or Top Shop take the lead in fast-fashion and aresuccessfully applying the idea for years. They introduce newdesigns and collections within several weeks, which keepscustomers continuously dropping by the stores in order toreview the latest fashion styles (Tiplady, 2006). Compared tothe fast fashion model, slow fashion is more novel and has notyet penetrated today’s fashion market. It has to be thought of asa response to the fast fashion model and is concerned withcreating a more sustainable and ethical supply chainhighlighting the use of local resources and longer product lives(Pookulangara & Shephard, 2013). In contrast to fast fashion,slow fashion promotes a more conscious buying behaviour andmotivates customers to be more aware of the materials that aretaken from the environment to create their looks. It tries toincorporate green thinking into the (fast) fashion world andpulls customers away from the throw-away culture that hasbeen created with the emergence of the fast fashion concept.Nevertheless, slow fashion is still a niche market and fastfashion the prevailing mainstream in the apparel industry. Thedynamics and ever-changing customer demands in the world offashion allow supposing that these businesses models arecontinuously exposed to upcoming macro-economic trends.Therefore, it is worthwhile to ask whether the fast fashionmodel is indeed challenged by external influences that lead tobusiness model changes or even to a possible convergence tothe novel slow fashion model. The research question, whichwill be tackled in this thesis, is: Has the fast fashion modelmoved towards the slow fashion model in the fashion industry,as a consequence of business model dynamics?The results of this thesis will give academics and practitionersvaluable insight into dynamic factors that influence and triggerbusiness model changes in today’s fashion industry. Especiallyin times when the slow fashion model seeks market penetrationand the strong fast fashion model is increasingly challenged byexternal forces, this topic appears worth discussing. No recentstudies have tackled possible convergence effects or businessmodel trends in the fashion industry yet, particularly withreference to the changing business environment and in regard tosuch newly evolved business models.The next section of this paper reviews the business modelconcept and its dynamics and thereby provides a theoreticalframework for the further proceedings of the study. Afterclarifying the methods being used for the analysis part, theapparel industry will be systematically expounded in search ofdecisive macro-economic drivers affecting the fashioncompanies from today. Then, it will be investigated if thesefactors indeed have an influence on changes in the fast fashionmodel and whether this leads to a convergence to the slowfashion model. In order to achieve this, the fast fashion businessmodel of the international fashion retailer Zara will be analysedby using Osterwalder and Pigneur’s business model canvasframework. It will be systematically scanned to detect businessmodel developments that may be traced back to the previouslyidentified external drivers.2. THEORETICAL FRAMEWORK2.1 Business ModelsCasadesus-Mansanell and Ricart (2010) state that the origin ofthe business model goes back to the writing of Peter Drucker,whereas the term itself was firstly introduced in a scholarlyarticle in 1957 by Bellman et al. during an investigation ofbusiness games. From then on until the 1990s, the literature onbusiness models was relatively limited, albeit continuouslyincreasing. The topic was just brought up into deeper discussionwith the advent of the Internet in the mid-1990s (Beqiri, 2014;Zott & Amit, 2008; Zott, Amit & Massa, 2011) when new,highly competitive businesses were established as a response tonew opportunities that opened up through the rise of web andtelecommunication technologies (Afuha & Tucci, 2000).Thenceforward, the business model has received widespreadattention by both academics and practitioners and has been, asnew unit of analysis, discussed in a steadily growing literature.Although widely used and acknowledged, the business modelconcept is often confused with terms like strategy, businessconcept, revenue model, economic model or business processmodelling (DaSilva & Trkman, 2013). One solid reason is thatthere has not yet been found consensus on one widely accepteddefinition of business models within today’s literature (Zott etal., 2011; Al-Debei & Avison, 2010), which gives rise toambiguous interpretations and disparate conceptualisations.Theorists address the topic from many different perspectives,contexts and sectors like e-business, strategic or informationmanagement and not seldomly make its meaning fit theirresearch purposes (Shafer, Smith & Linder, 2005). It istherefore not surprising that “many executives remain confusedabout how to use the concept” (Shafer et al., 2005, p. 200).Considering Zott and Amit’s (2013) suggestion that businessmodels need to be clearly defined in order to come to proper1
Until the present day, many business model definitions havebeen published trying to capture the meaning, use, purpose andessence of the concept. After reviewing more than 30 academicarticles and journals it was found that all definitions of thebusiness model are currently – and clearly – heading towardsone specific direction. To come straight to the point, thebusiness model concept has been considered as being valuebased. Scholars like Shafer et al. (2005), Casadesus-Mansanelland Ricart (2010) or DaSilva and Trkman (2013) argue that abusiness model contains a specific set of choices andcorresponding consequences, which lead to the generation ofvalue. It is a holistic framework (Al-Debei & Avison, 2010;Zott et al., 2011) that represents the underlying business logicof an organization (Teece, 2010; Al-Debei & Avison, 2010;Shafer et al., 2005) and directly results from its respectivecorporate strategy (Casadesus-Masanell & Ricart, 2010). Manytheorists (Shafer et al., 2005; Casadesus-Mansanell & Ricart,2010; Zott et al., 2011; Demil & Lecocq, 2010; Tongur &Engwall, 2014; Johnson, Christensen & Kagermann, 1996; Zott& Amit, 2008; Arend, 2013; Sosna, Trevinyo-Rodríguez &Velamuri, 2010; Chesbrough & Rosenbloom, 2002) are inaccordance that business models exist to explain the waycompanies are creating value. In this respect, it is important toenvisage that the business model must not be seen in isolation.Although it is focused on a specific company, its boundaries aremuch wider than only firm-specific and similarly encompassexchanges and interactions with the stakeholders in its network(Zott et al., 2011; Zott & Amit, 2007, 2013). It is additionallyworth clarifying that it is not only the customers who should beprofiting from the value creation. As Freeman alreadysuggested in his stakeholder theory (Freeman, Harrison, Wicks,Parmar & De Colle, 2010) a company is only successful if itgenerates value for all stakeholder groups that are anyhowengaged with the business. Sosna et al. (2010) and Zott andAmit (2007) confirm this opinion when stating that businessmodels are externally focused and concerned with exchangesand “boundary-spanning transactions” (Zott & Amit, 2008, p. 3)with others. Besides, Zott et al. (2011) go one step further byproposing that business models rather have a dual focus andalso concentrate on how the firm captures value, for instance interms of profits gained, for itself. Scholars like Shafer et al.(2005), Zott and Amit (2013), Sosna et al. (2010), Demil andLecocq (2010) and Baden-Fuller and Morgan (2010) areequally agreeing on this proposition. As distinguished from thisview, Demil and Lecocq (2010) and Johnson et al. (1996)provide an indication to a third dimension, namely valuedelivery, which is to be included in the business modeldefinition as well. It follows that creating value is just theentering wedge of the interactions between parties within thevalue network since the value, disregarding of its form, thenneeds to be delivered to and appreciated by the stakeholders.This in turn is the prerequisite for the company to eventuallyappropriate a share of the created value for itself. Osterwalderand Pigneur (2010) have perfectly captured this finding byconcluding that “A business model describes the rationale ofhow an organisation creates, delivers and captures value” (p.14). This definition of a triple value focus of the business modelconcept sets the framework for this research study. Figure 1visualises this finding with the aid of a simple relationshipsgraph.Value CreationValue CaptureValue DeliveryBusiness Modeland unambiguous solutions, the first part of this theoreticalframework will result in an attempt to come to a commondefinition by taking into account the main relevant studiestackling this topic.Figure 1. Triple focus of business model.Having clarified what is actually meant by the term ‘BusinessModel’, it is now worth finding out how it can serve as apowerful strategic concept and what encourages academics andpractitioners to give so much thought about it. Generally, it canbe stated that the business model is an essential strategic toolfor every company. It helps making and implementing strategicchoices and “facilitates the analysis, testing, and validation ofthe cause-and-effect relationships that flow from [these]”(Shafer et al., 2005, p. 203). Arend (2013) and Zott et al. (2011)point out that business modelling further promotes the reductionof the complexity companies are facing in today’s informationoverladen industry contexts. In this respect, Chesbrough andRosenbloom (2002) add that transactions and interdependenciesbetween market participants can be facilitated and made clearer.Al-Debei and Avison (2010) also stress that the business modeldefines how a company is related to and interacting with itsenvironment and all other participants in the value network.This is made possible through the provision of a commonlanguage among the stakeholders involved, which, according toZott and Amit (2013), is an important function of the businessmodel. It provides information for stakeholders concerning forinstance the value proposition (Johnson et al., 1996), thecustomers (Baden-Fuller & Morgan, 2010) or key resources(Demil & Lecocq, 2010) of the respective company, which is“helpful in translating strategic objectives into implementationtasks and functions” (Al-Debei & Avison, 2010, p. 365). Withthis information, stakeholders get a better understanding of howthe company works (Baden-Fuller & Morgan, 2010) and howits internal business structure and functions operate andinterplay with each other (Al-Debei & Avison, 2010). All thismakes the business model, if properly applied, a tool forincreased efficiency (Zott & Amit, 2013), better decisionmaking (Hacklin & Wallnöfer, 2012) and secured sustainability(Demil & Lecocq, 2010). As a result, business models have thepotential to give the firm a competitive advantage over otherparticipants in the industry by not only generating more valuefor the stakeholders but also capturing more value for theshareholders than rivals do (Zott & Amit, 2013). Teece (2010)is further concerned about which other conditions can make thebusiness model a source of competitive advantage. He explainsthat, next to representing a reasonable business logic, thebusiness model further needs to be difficult to imitate forcompetitive companies and should be designed to cater for thecustomers’ needs and the interests of other stakeholders.Casadesus-Masanell and Ricart (2010) add that business models“can guide the search for novel, interesting and profitable newways to compete” (p. 212) to remain competitive, better react toinconsistencies and exploit uncharted market opportunities.In order to fully enjoy the advantages a successful businessmodel can bring, a company needs to make sure that its wholebusiness community understands what the business actuallydoes and how its activities, functions and processes interlinkand interlock within the business. Experts emphasise differentstrategic components, which form the building blocks of everybusiness and, taken together, generate a shared language for thecreation, delivery and appropriation of value. Severalframeworks or so-called ontologies are available in order toachieve clarity among the stakeholders regarding the design and2
connection of such business model components. They intend toensure a structured, clear and comprehensive overview of theimportance, linkages and interactions between business modelcomponents, which helps to grasp the business model conceptof a company as a whole. Table 1 summarizes five differentframeworks introduced in the academic literature.improvement and innovation. This seems especially importantfor a company in order to stay competitive in the market.2.2 Business Model DynamicsRemaining competitive now gives the cue for the oftenundervalued act of adjusting, improving or even renewingexisting business models. As is often the case, managers do notTable 1. Overview of business model frameworks.Osterwalder & Pigneur(2010)Al-Debei & Avison(2010)Casadesus-Masanell& Ricart (2010)Chesbrough &Rosenbloom (2002)Label offrameworkBusiness Model CanvasV4 Business ModelOntologicalStructureCausal Loop DiagramCognitiveimplications ofbusiness modelActivity System DesignFrameworkRationale ofBusinessModelFrameworkBusiness model as aconceptual tool to describekey components and theirrelationships that representthe organisation’s corelogicBusiness model as acoherent frameworkgiven that it depictsthe business logiccomprehensivelyBusiness model as aset of choices andresulting consequencesBusiness model as amediating constructbetween technologyand economic valueComponentsof BusinessModelFramework1. Customers: Customersegments, Customerrelationships, Channels2. Offer: Value proposition3. Infrastructure: Keyactivities, Key resources,Key partners4. Financial viability:Revenue streams, Coststructure1. Value proposition2. Value architecture3. Value finance4. Value network1. Strategic choices2. Value network3. Capture value4. Create value1. Market2. Value proposition3. Value chain4. Cost and profit5. Value network6. CompetitivestrategyBusiness model as asystem ofinterdependentactivities thattranscends the focalfirm and spans itsboundaries1. Design elements:Content, Structure,Governance2. Design themes:Novelty, Lock-in,Complementarities,EfficiencyAlthough all frameworks have several characteristics incommon, the business model framework by Osterwalder andPigneur (2010) appears to be the most applicable for thisresearch. Their canvas is a management tool for designing anew or illustrating an existing business model and constitutesthe starting point for the upcoming business model analysis. Itdescribes an organisation with nine building blocks that containall necessary elements needed for the construction of acomprehensive business model. The model is easy tounderstand, communicate and use since there can be found asubstantial amount of resources and literature introducing andelabora
within the fashion industry, namely the fast fashion and slow fashion model. According to Cachon and Swinney (2011) companies following the fast fashion business model are characterised by a quick response to the latest fashion trends as well as short produ
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