Q Case Written Assignments o There are 4 case written assignments. The assignments MUST include a) key summary and problems, - For your summary, do not copy and paste contents from the original case b) applications of key themes in the textbook, specifically relevant to the assigned chapters, into the case, and c) your answers to the questions at the end of each case. Formatting including each component as subheadings is recommended in your case written assignment to have full credits. o These should be no longer than 4 pages, 12 font size, single-spaced not including any tables. Please use MS word format (.doc) and submit your assignments through the blackboard submission system by the deadline date at midnight. Key summary and problems The case for this week is about the ways in which Zara as well as Inditex have been able to keep their business growing in spite of the existence of competitors. The extraordinary aspect of Zara is the way in which new designs/types of products are brought to the organization’s stores at a rapid speed. There have been many companies which have considered Zara to be an idealistic organization to replicate its strategies of product-procurement. In case of Inditex, the competitive advantage is the frequency at which new designs are introduced in the stores of organization. It can be difficult for any organization to introduce new designs so rapidly. This is because the designers will have to be extremely creative and skillful to provide new designs for the customers every week. Schedule timings for employees of Inditex being made flexible have made it possible for the employees to be more efficient by utilizing less amount of work-time. The timings of working by the employees have been set mostly for the times when customers tend to visit the stores more often. Selling time has been emphasized by the managers of Inditex to be important because of customers not waiting for stores to open or provide them with products. Customers will mostly switch to other organizations if they are kept waiting most of the times to check new products or to enter the stores. Therefore, shipment-unpacking time and shipment-delivery time have to be made as uniform and standardized as possible. The logistics capacity of every organization must be predicted for future effectively for not having shortage of capacity. Applications of key themes in the textbook The concept of standardization can be applied to this case because there had to be some standardizations made by Zara as well as Inditex to remain consistent in performance (Cateora et al. 2015). Standardization can make the employees identify their weaknesses in some organizational function and eliminated the weaknesses completely. Standardization can be useful for organizations to let customers understand about the discipline with which the organizations work. For example, the introduction of new designs every week by Zara and Inditex had been a form of standardization to attract customers regularly. Adaptation is also important for organizations like Zara and Inditex to ensure that the businesses can sustain competitive pressure from newly emerging companies in the same industry of the two companies (Cateora et al. 2015). This is because there can be some move made by a new competitor and that move can work well for that competitor in spite of the existing brand-influence of Zara/Inditex. Therefore, Zara/Inditex will have to make a counter-move to combat that special move made by the new competitor. Slowdown of customer-responses can also be situations when adaptation might work well for companies like Zara/Inditex. Quality of global standards is important to be considered and maintained in newly designed or existing products by Zara/Inditex (Cateora et al. 2015). This is because global customers will always look for brands which provide standardized levels of optimum brand-quality. Trust can be gained by customers when quality of global standards is maintained by branded organizations. After-sales services can be useful for maintaining long-term relationships with customers by branded companies like Zara/Inditex (Cateora et al. 2015). After-sales services might not be required to be provided always and therefore, it is never considered a loss for an organization. Customers can be guided by organizations providing after-sales services. The demand in global business-to-business markets is important to be estimated/calculated so that the targeted customers can be influenced by formulating effective strategies (Cateora et al. 2015). There can be technological factors which have to be considered by organizations to utilize advanced technology for meeting market demand (Cateora et al. 2015). The stages of economic development will have to be identified and understood as well so that there can be proper pricing strategies formulated for keeping customers interested (Cateora et al. 2015). Case Questions: 1. What are the ways that Inditex ensures that “fast fashion” is truly fast?

Q 2. What are the important attributes of a “fast fashion” retailer to customers? To store managers?3. Why would a retailer introduce their online store country-by country? Why was Inditex slow to embrace online sales when it Is so tech-savvy in other ways?4. Briefly describe five opportunities for continued growth during the next five years for Zara’s parent, Inditex, SA.5. Pick one of the five opportunities and outline the advantages and disadvantages of pursuing it.