Women Buy Zara’s Scarcity
Scarcity isn’t all bad. In fact, in terms of marketing to women, it can be downright genius.
Here’s what got me thinking on this topic:
"Knowing What Customers Want" is a short piece in the August 2005 issue of INC about the “sense and respond” supply chain business model. It caught my eye because one of the examples cited was the Spain-based and much loved worldwide clothing chain – Zara.
I first visited a Zara store in Vancouver, B.C. a few years back and experiencing it made shopping fun for me again. There was so much color on the racks and plenty of space to maneuver on the sales floor. Plus, the prices were astoundingly reasonable given the up-to-the-minute styles.
In “Zara’s Secret for Fast Fashion,” a February 2005 Harvard Business Review article on the company, the writers zero in on one of the reasons the clothing retailer is so popular with customers (and I say with women, in particular):
“In Zara stores, customers can always find new products—but they’re in limited supply. There is a sense of tantalizing exclusivity, since only a few items are on display even though stores are spacious (the average size is around 1,000 square meters). A customer thinks, ‘This green shirt fits me, and there is one on the rack. If I don’t buy it now, I’ll lose my chance.’”
Zara strives to refresh styles/colors/designs very frequently (and you should think about reading that HBR article for more on how they do it). Feeling special and unique, having gotten just one of the few carnelian-colored long sleeve t-shirts the last time you were there, is the sense customers have come to expect and desire from the brand.
I had the unexpected treat of coming across Zara for only the second time when I was in Lithuania earlier this year. I bought a shirt and skirt that I knew I’d see on no one else (both because I bought it so far from home, and because I was aware of the retailer’s modus operandi of changing styles/colors so frequently). When, at a party a few months later, a friend whispered, "I love your shirt. Is that Zara?"… we did the women’s way thing and immediately set to comparing notes on how we’d each first found the "secret" store.
Certainly, the cat is out of the bag and Zara is much more well-known these days (with 762 stores in 55 countries as of their web site). However, because the brand is so good at maintaining the exclusivity and freshness of their clothes, the buzz lives on.
Zara’s approach is one of transparency. They embrace/celebrate scarcity and promote the fresh selection that so appeals to many women.
Trying to hide scarcity, on the other hand, won’t appeal to any woman. (So, don’t cover up the fact that you’ve only got two pairs of cream-colored size 0 pants left in stock while continuing to accept orders for the gamut of sizes and colors, and then later sending out postcards saying they are backordered forever.)
In this world of abundance, Zara lets other brands and retailers pretend to be all things to all women. Their clothing and business approach is appreciated by a more proactive customer – one who is motivated and inspired by retail scarcity, and who loves to feel special without breaking the bank.
