...he GAP modelThe figure below shows the "GAP" model of service quality from Parasuraman et al. (Zithaml & Bitner 1996). This model offers an integrated view of the consumer-company relationship. It is based on substantial research amongst a number of service providers. In common with the Grönroos model it shows the perception gap (Gap 5) and outlines contributory factors. In this case expected service is a function of word of mouth communication, personal need and past experience, and perceived service is a product of service delivery and external communications to consumers. Parasuraman et al. GAP model (Zeithaml 1996)However the GAP model goes further in its analysis of these key contributory factors. It not only provides a more rigorous description of the contributory Gaps, it lists key drivers for each gap and generic breakdown of each of these drivers. These are illustrated below in summary form below. Gap 1 | * Inadequate market research orientation | Lack of upward communication | Insufficient relationship focus | Gap 2 | * Absence of customer driven standards | Inadequate service leadership | Poor service design | Gap 3 | * Deficiencies of human resource policies | Failure to match supply and demand | Customers not fulfilling roles | Gap 4 | * Ineffective management of customer expectations | Overpromising | Inadequate horizontal communications | Key factors in the GAP model (Zeithaml 1990)This...
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...TURIZAM Volume 15, Issue 1 40-52 (2011) Application of Gap Model in the Researches of Hotel Services Quality Ivana Blešić* Anđelija Ivkov-Džigurski* Aleksandra Dragin* Ljubica Ivanović* Milana Pantelić* Received: ???? 2010 | Accepted: ???? 2010 Abstract This work presents the research results of the hotel services quality by applying Gap model and SERVQUAL questionnaire. The research was conducted in five health spa centers in the West Morava river valley region during August and September 2008. The reach is aimed at testing of Gap model, i.e. identification of exceptions when the hotel services quality in the observed sample is concerned. Key words: Gap model, SERVQUAL, hotel services quality Introduction The concept of the quality is topic which holds the central place in the services marketing. However, the attempt to define quality in scientific circles causes a number of dilemmas. The main reason for that lies in the fact that quality does not represent a purely “clear” scientific concept. Although the term “quality” is widely used in everyday speech, it is not often clear what that quality actually stands for, i.e. defining a quality can be a rather subjective concept. The base for a scientific definition is connected with the approaches to the concept of quality from two main standpoints - of a producer – quality represents harmonization with procedural rules in the process of production and service offer, and of a costumer - quality stands for the entire characteristics...
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...4/8/2013 “Thess- Logisti”| | CITY COLLEGE | Application of the GAP model of Service Quality | EXECUTIVE SUMMARY Aim of the study is evaluation of consumer satisfaction in Greek finance market in terms of quality of services in case of accounting and finance consulting agency “Thess-Logisti”. The main information about the company and gaps faced in front of the company were identified from the interview with the CEO of agency Mr. Chatziarapis. Also, the identification of gaps are identified from the private observation and analysis from the past perceived services by the agency for the “Papadopoulos Apostolos&sons” Ltd, which operating in the sector of production of halva in the Drama region in a small village – Kirgion. The first part of assignment is based on the theoretical background with brief identification of service quality, customer satisfaction and the gap model. The main purpose of the research paper was to identify the gaps accessed from observation of current agency and analyzing the main gaps. Finally, was given the proposal of some solutions which could be used to resolve the issues according service offering and to improve firm’s performance and service quality. Contents EXECUTIVE SUMMARY 2 1. Introduction 4 2. Literature Review 5 2.1. SERVICE QUALITY and CUSTOMER SATISFACTION. 5 2.2. Gap Model 6 3. Identification of Gaps in company’s operation 8 4. Proposed solutions to close the Gaps 11 5. Key points learned from this project 12 6. Conclusion...
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...SPANISH FASHION BRAND ZARA Carmen Lopez Ying Fan Brunel Business School Journal of Fashion Marketing and Management (2009), 13:2, 279-296 INTRODUCTION Zara is one of the world’s most successful fashion retailers operating in 59 countries. However, there is little research about the firm in English as the majority of publications have been written in Spanish. This paper seeks to address this gap in the literature by examining the internationalisation process of Zara. This study adopts an in-depth case approach based on extensive secondary research. Literature published in both English and Spanish has been reviewed, including company documents such as annual reports. The paper starts with a brief overview of the global textile and clothing industry, followed by the case study of Zara. The main part of the case examines the key aspects in the internationalisation of Zara namely: motives for internationalisation, market selection, entry strategies, and international marketing strategies. In the final section, comparisons are made between Zara and two of its main competitors, H&M and Gap. The global textile and clothing industry The removal of all import quotas in the textile and clothing industry from January 2005, involving the unrestricted access of all members of the World Trade Organization (WTO) to the European, American and Canadian markets is considered a key driving force in the development of the clothing sector (Keenan, et al., 2004). This new scenario has created opportunities...
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...Assignment Questions for Case 11 Gap 1. What does a five-forces analysis reveal about the strength of competition in the U.S. family clothing stores industry? 2. What factors are critical to success in the U.S. family clothing stores industry? 3. Develop a competitive strength assessment of the four major competitors in the U.S. family clothing stores industry using the methodology presented in Chapter 4. Based on the results, who is in the strongest overall competitive position? Who is in the weakest position? 4. What is Gap Inc.’s strategy? Which of the five generic competitive strategies discussed in Chapter 5 most closely fi t the competitive approach that Gap is taking? What type of competitive advantage is Gap trying to achieve? 5. What does a SWOT analysis of Gap reveal about the overall attractiveness of its situation? 6. What is your overall appraisal of Gap’s financial performance? (Use the financial ratios in Table 4.1 on pages 94-96 of the text as a guide in doing your financial analysis.) 7. What recommendations would you make to Gap senior management to improve upon its turnaround strategy? What actions are necessary to restore the competitiveness of its core Gap, Banana Republic, and Old Navy brands? Hints: You can use a five force model like this one below . And a weighed Key Success Factor/Strength Measure | Importance/Weight | Gap Inc. | TJX Companies | Ross Stores | Abercrombie& Fitch | American Eagle Outfitters | | | Rating ...
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...Zara vs. GAP Inc. American GAP and Spanish ZARA Abstract We are going to compare two super giant clothing retail companies of the world in this thesis. These two giants are dominating apparel retailing market nowadays with their simple and attractive with high level quality of clothes. We will try two analyze working culture, business performance and history, competition and geographic dominance of two clothing retailer giants. Years before two small stores opened and they succeed to dominate market with their modern style and different business doing. • Zara has already changed the fashion industry. - Business Insider Zara is most #58 biggest brand in the world according to Forbes. • America's largest apparel retailer is embarking on a turnaround plan to recapture cool customers. - Business Insider Gap inc is #745 Gap biggest brand in the worlds according to Forbes Zara shops followed swiftly in New York in 1989, Paris in 1990. Now the group has nearly 3,900 stores in 70 countries around the world. Gap has 3,100 stores globally and employs about 150,000 people. A Gap spokeswoman declined to comment on the loss of the top spot to Zara. Let's check analyses of these two giants with full provided information. Firstly take brief tour to their history and about founders. Brief History of Brands Fashion giant, Zara, forms part of the retail group ‘Grupo Inditex’ which Mintel (2007) acknowledges as one of the “largest, fastest growing...
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...Gap Inc. in 2010: Is the turnaround strategy working? Gap Inc. is a leading international specialty retailer offering clothing, accessories and personal care products for men, women, children and babies. Gap owned and operated more than 3,100 Gap, Banana Republic and Old Navy stores world wide in 2010. With stores located in the U.S, UK, Canada, France, Japan and Germany, Gap Inc. employees nearly 165,000 employees world wide. Since 2002 Gap Inc. has been a number of issues including the declining sales of the family clothing store industry. During this time many turnaround strategies have been implemented in the attempt to eliminate long term debt, redesign the companies online presence, create a new e-commerce platform, expensing internationally and improving quality, styling and overall image. Through this adoption since 2002, the market share and sales of Gap Inc. have still decreased and the brand image has also taken a hit. An Internal analysis shows that even though sales have decreased, Gaps financial performance has strengthened year on year. Gap’s Liquidity, leverage and profitability have shown a stead increase that has helped the company maintain a stronger business situation than competitors throughout the recession. A SWOT analysis of Gaps Inc.’s internal structure shows strengths in net profit margins, a strong franchising model and the reinstatement of their strong brand image. Weaknesses include high levels of competition, large amount of substitutable...
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...“The Future of Gap” Jocelyn Bridgett Columbia College Gap Inc. is a large retail company that operates outlet stores which sell casual apparel and accessories for men, women, and children. The company primarily conducted its business through four business divisions: Old Navy, Gap, Banana Republic, and others (Wheelen & Hunger 2010, p.21-3). A resource must have five qualities to be seen as contributing to competitive advantage: it must be valuable, durable, rare, difficult to imitate and complex. That is, the resource must be valuable in that it contributes to the value perceived by the customer. It must also be durable, meaning that it is not temporary. It must be rare as well; many other companies should not possess this competitive resource. As Gap growth started to plummet the manager came up with something new such as: Gapkids, babygap, and then discount stores. Gap had a method wearing khakis and blue shirt. However, it was easy to replicate therefore Gap found themselves competing with other retailer’s such as Target and Khol’s at the time. Now-a-days there are several stores duplicating Gap’s same image of the khakis and blue shirt. The Exchange where I am employed is now going to the khakis and blue shirt as well starting May 15, 2012. Capabilities Old Navy capabilities incorporated plus sizes for women which help boost their sales. Gap, Old Navy, and Banana Republic were able to expand their target market by offering their clothing etc. online as well...
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...SPANISH FASHION BRAND ZARA Carmen Lopez Ying Fan Brunel Business School Journal of Fashion Marketing and Management (2009), 13:2, 279-296 INTRODUCTION Zara is one of the world’s most successful fashion retailers operating in 59 countries. However, there is little research about the firm in English as the majority of publications have been written in Spanish. This paper seeks to address this gap in the literature by examining the internationalisation process of Zara. This study adopts an in-depth case approach based on extensive secondary research. Literature published in both English and Spanish has been reviewed, including company documents such as annual reports. The paper starts with a brief overview of the global textile and clothing industry, followed by the case study of Zara. The main part of the case examines the key aspects in the internationalisation of Zara namely: motives for internationalisation, market selection, entry strategies, and international marketing strategies. In the final section, comparisons are made between Zara and two of its main competitors, H&M and Gap. The global textile and clothing industry The removal of all import quotas in the textile and clothing industry from January 2005, involving the unrestricted access of all members of the World Trade Organization (WTO) to the European, American and Canadian markets is considered a key driving force in the development of the clothing sector (Keenan, et al., 2004). This new scenario has created opportunities...
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...INTERNATIONAL MARKETING CASE STUDY ZARA: THE SPANISH RETAILER GOES TO THE TOP OF WORLD FASHION Professor: Jennifer Stack Student: Martina Sekuloska San Sebastian October,2014 International marketing [ZARA:THE SPANISH RETAILER GOES TO THE TOP OF THE WORLD FASHION] INTRODUCTION Inditex is a fashion retailer which dates back to 1963 when it started life in a small workshop making woman’s clothing. Today it has more than 6.460 stores all over the world (Inditex, 2014). Officially it all started with the launch of the first Zara store in La coruña, north-west of Spain in 1975. At that time the textile maker Amancio Ortega decided to open his own store after years of work in the textile industry. This was followed by the brand’s internationalization at the end of the 1980s and the successive launch of several another retail concepts: Pull&Bear, Massimo Duti, Bershka, Stradivarius, Oysho, Zara Home and Uterqüe. Today, Inditex is considered to be the greatest fashion retail group, and its founder Amancio Ortega, the richest person in Spain. Zara is the flagship chain of the Inditex Group which generates nearly 65% of the net sales of the group (Inditex annual report 2013). It encompasses many different styles, from daily clothes, to more formal elegant clothes for women, men and children. This case study tackles the challenges of being the world’s fashion retailer, the sustainability of the competitive strategy, and the group’s internationalization process. ...
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...non-exempt positions. The GM is responsible for implementing the individual store strategy in a manner consistent with Gap Inc.'s Purpose, Values and Behaviors. The GM leads their team to meet net contribution goals, sales goals, customer service targets, and Operating and Human Resources objectives through motivation, inspiration and accountability. The GM is accountable for professional representation of our brands within their locale, understanding our competitors and their operations as well as driving excellent tenant and community relationships. Leadership and Employee Results (25%) • Holds Store team and self accountable to all Gap Inc. standards of performance and behavior. • Effectively sources, recruits, selects and on-boards all management and non-exempt store personnel. • Maintains optimal staffing levels to ensure business needs are obtained while promoting associate retention. • Promotes a high-quality store associate experience from on boarding through the associate life cycle. • Promotes maximum team and individual performance through consistent coaching and feedback. Drives in-store performance management processes. • Partners with District Manager to create individual development plans that support performance needs and career growth for self and direct reports. • Recognizes and rewards behaviors that are in alignment and support Gap Inc. s Purpose, Values and Behaviors to promote a high-performance team. • Recognizes escalated associate and customer...
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...SERVQUAL and Model of Service Quality Gaps: A Framework for Determining and Prioritizing Critical Factors in Delivering Quality Services Dr. Arash Shahin Department of Management, University of Isfahan, Iran. Abstract Service firms like other organizations are realizing the significance of customer-centered philosophies and are turning to quality management approaches to help managing their businesses. This paper has started with the concept of service quality and has demonstrated the model of service quality gaps. SERVQUAL as an effective approach has been studied and its role in the analysis of the difference between customer expectations and perceptions has been highlighted with support of an example. Outcomes of the study outline the fact that although SERQUAL could close one of the important service quality gaps associated with external customer services, it could be extended to close other major gaps and therefore, it could be developed in order to be applied for internal customers, i.e. employees and service providers. Key words: Service, Quality, Gaps, SERVQUAL, Customer, Expectations, Perceptions Introduction Managers in the service sector are under increasing pressure to demonstrate that their services are customer-focused and that continuous performance improvement is being delivered. Given the financial and resource constraints under which service organisations must manage it is essential that customer expectations are properly understood and measured and...
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...in stock Exchange per minute. For each stock, for each day, we have a detailed amount of messages, detph for ask and bid and the volume traded. AA ADBE AMAT AMZN BHI BRCM CELG COST CTSH DIS EBAY GE GILD GOOG HON INTC KMB MMM PFE PNC 1.2 Instructions Alcoa Adobe System Applied Material Amazone.com Baker Hughes Inc Broadcom Celgene Costco Wholesale Cognizant Technology Walt Disney Ebay General Electric Gilead Sciences, Inc Google Honeywell International Intel Corp Kimberly-Clark 3M Corp P zer Pnc Finance AAPL AGN AMGN AXP BIIB CB CMCSA CSCO DELL DOW ESRX GENDZ GLW GPS HPQ ISRB KR MOS PG SWIN Apple Inc Allergan Inc Amgen Inc American Express Co Biogen Idec Inc Chubb Comcast Cisco Dell Dow Chemical Express Scripts Holding Corning inc Gap inc Hewlett-Packard intuitive surgical Kroger Mosaic Corp Procter and Gamble Southwestern Energy Construct 4 equally portfolios with the average of message by stock as criteria. Plot the graphs reprensenting the spread, depths, messages and volume for these portfolios. Construct 4 equally portfolios with the average of volume by stock as criteria. Plot the graphs reprensenting the spread, depths, messages and volumes for these new portfolios. Compare between the 2 constructions of the portfolios depending on the criteria. 2 2 METHODOLOGY 2 Methodology 1. Filter the data by minut, so as we can have all the information concerning the variable (spread,...
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...| Assignment2: GAP INC 1. 5-forces analysis reveal about the strength of competition in the US family clothing stores industry:- US apparel industry is segmented based on gender, age, size and price considerations. Most of the clothing industries focus on women’s segment, because their clothing has a major market value of 50 % and the remaining 50% is shared by men’s wear (37%) and children’s wear (13%).Other than this market share is divided by price point.65 percent of market share is value price clothing industry, other 35 per cent is occupied by higher price items. With the help of 5 force analysis we will study the US family clothing industries competition in detail. i. Threat of rivals As per the above conditions we can say that US clothing industry is highly fragmented. In this market there are many small firms which are fighting to improve their market share along with customer base to have higher margins. However, the four largest (Gap, TJX, A & F, Ross) national chains acquired 39.4% of US market share. In this atmosphere every firm is offering discounts to compete with the discount retailers, because of this the profit margins are becoming thinner. Other than this firms need to customize their designs with regular intervals as per fashion and should be up to date to capture the customer attention and satisfaction. ii. Threat of new entrants. Because...
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...7 August 2013 Making Products Ethical Global Competition • As global competition increases, many international companies have transferred their production to developing countries. • Consumers demand for quality products at lower prices. • Consumer awareness and concern for ethics has grown. Thus, they seek for products that are made ethically. Products made in Sweatshops • This concern exploded in the late 1990s. • Activists embarrassed famous brands with exposés of working conditions abroad. • Nike and Wal-mart are two of the key targets of these activists. White House Task Force • Consumer activists and industry representatives collaborated to form the White House task force. • This task force suggests that codes of conduct must be established for overseas production. • Firms are to label their products “not made in sweatshops” • Mattel and Disney are two of the companies who adopted and attempted to enforce the codes of conduct. • Mattel hired an independent panel to monitor its factories; Social auditors visit Mattel factories three times a year • Disney conducted overseas inspections and cut off subcontractors who failed to make improvements. Social Accountability 8000 • Involves nongovernmental agencies operating in developing countries and major international auditing firms to oversee firms that comply with this standard. High Profile Culprits: • Nike o Formed a labor practices...
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