Fast Fashion Systems

Chapter 8

A cross regional analysis on fashion

quick response programs

Tsan-Ming Choi, Pui-Sze Chow

1

, Shuk-Ching Liu & Yeuk-Ting To

Business Division, Institute of Textiles and Clothing, The Hong Kong Polytechnic University,

Hung Hom, Kowloon, Hong Kong

SUMMARY

Being one of the widely implemented supply chain management strategies, quick

response (QR) aims to enhance the supply chain agents’ response to market changes.

In this paper, we interview textiles and apparel companies from Hong Kong (H.K.),

France, and the United States (U.S.) to reveal their QR practices. Specifically we con-

duct cross-regional analysis to examine and explore issues such as perceptions towards

QR systems, stages of QR implementations, and channel coordination practices asso-

ciated with QR in these three regions. Comparisons of the different approaches in

these three regions reflect the different attitudes and concerns over QR programmes

under their diverse market environments. In particular, we find that: (i) All three mar-

kets have similar level of QR implementation; (ii) whereas both H.K. and the U.S.

tend to have positive attitudes towards QR, many French companies do not perceive

the strategy as cost-effective; (iii) to achieve channel coordination with QR, fashion

industrialists from the three regions show different concerns. Specifically, H.K. prac-

titioners are mainly concerned about the willingness of information sharing amongst

partners whilst the French practitioners focus more on the degree of collaboration

over the channel. By contrast, the U.S. practitioners popularly make use of contractual

agreements to solve channel problems under QR. Insights are generated.

Keywords

quick response; cross regional analysis; supply chain management; fashion industry

8.1 INTRODUCTION

Apparel industry is characterized by ever-changing trend-oriented market and short

product life-cycle. As a result, the demands for apparels are highly uncertain. Volatile

demand brings high holding costs, stock-outs and mark-downs to retailers (Koster and

Delfmann, 2005). The situation becomes worse as the sales forecast error is higher with

1

Corresponding author. All authors made an equal contribution to this chapter and the

authorship listing follows an alphabetical order.