Transnational Upgrading of ZARA: Perspective of Spatial-Temporal History

Under the context of globalization, brands are more increasingly close to places. The fast fashion brands from western developed countries adopt management model with unified prices, the same styles and similar style shops all over the world and their brand images are usually considered with negative significance, but they actually upgrade with higher prices in developing countries including China than in western developed countries. In the case of ZARA, the study describes spatial history of ZARA and analyses how place origin, history of social and space and store location play a role in the transnational upgrading of fast fashion brands. The study finds that interaction of fashion brands and fashion places is crucial to transnational upgrading. Several conclusions are as follows: First, the interaction of fashion brands and fashion place continues to write a new fashion brand memory into the brand and therefore weakens the effect of brand origin stereotype and meanwhile enhance its fashion image on the global scale. Therefore, history of social and space of ZARA has more influence on the brand image than place origin. Second, ZARA interacts with the global fashion city such as Paris, New York, London and so on to shape global and fashion image, and the title of "global brand" appeals to Chinese native consumers. Third, ZARA penetrates from big cities to the smaller cities so as to establish better fashion image and achieve transnational upgrading. Fourth, the stores locate in the high-end consumer blocks and reposition in the high-end consumer groups to achieve fast fashion brand upgrading. The study provides the place and transnational perspective of cultural geography for understanding transnational upgrading of fast fashion brands. It also improves our understanding of how Chinese consumers response to the global fashion culture.