Abstract

The fashion apparel industry has evolved significantly over the last two decades driven by the internationalisation and rapid rise of global fast fashion retailer brands. This research seeks to introduce and explore how two internationalization models-Incremental and Rapid Internationalization-can be applied to two representative global fast fashion retailers (Zara and H&M). It seeks to apply these models on the basis of three perspectives–“knowledge sharing, resource-based view and psychic distance”. The result suggested that H&M and Zara do not entirely correlate with the expectations of Incremental and Rapid Internationalization Models. This appears to be significantly different from what has been covered in the literature, which concludes that Zara was a born-global fast fashion retailer and H&M was a traditional/gradual global one. Another conclusion is the adoption of the Rapid Internationalization Models by the two fast fashion retailers were not completely independently from use of the Incremental Models, especially in their early expansion stages.

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