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Teaching Guide to What Business is Zara In? Curriculum Web February 12, 2009
What Business is Zara In?
A Curriculum Web created by Professor Daniel Doiron Aim The What Business is Zara In? curriculum web will build confidence in fourth year BBA or MBA students to construct an understanding of how companies compete in an industry via analyzing their business models. Through this process students will build skills which will enable them to confidently study an industry and draw key conclusions of how companies can effectively compete within that industry. This is more easily accomplished by studying companies who have introduced disruptive business models into their industries, like Zara, Southwest Airlines, Wal‐Mart or Dell. Introduction Zara is one of the most successful apparel manufacturing and retail business in the
world today. They are not the biggest, but their profit margins and growth rates are leading the industry. Most interesting though is that they have accomplished this through the introduction of a very unique business model within their industry. Let’s find out how they did it . . . Rationale Graduates with business degrees or MBA’s too often are led to analyze problems or
opportunities through narrowly focused functional silos like operations management, marketing, distribution, financial management or supply chain management. They are taught to perform SWOT analysis, which can build long lists of external and internal factors which are rarely put in context of the industry and the company’s competitors. The proper approach starts with an understanding of how the business model for an industry works. When students have a picture in their minds of how an industry works, from a broad perspective, they can more easily solve a problem or address an opportunity any one stakeholder or company in that industry is facing. Page 1 of 9
© Daniel Doiron (2009)
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