Analysis of productivity, efficiency, and their explanatory factors in the fast fashion sector: New evidence from the international environment

ABSTRACT

This paper analyses the performance levels of the leading companies in the fast fashion sector, Inditex, H&M and Gap in the period 2005–2019. Additionally, the isolated analysis of Inditex, as a case study, has been considered, with special emphasis on its internationalization process, in the period 1995–2019. The use of different approaches to obtain efficiency and productivity (DEA, intertemporal and Windows models), have enriched this work. The results obtained indicate a good performance in the resource management of the companies analyzed. In the case of Inditex, a curvilinear U-shaped relationship was found between efficiency and its level of internationalization. In addition, average increases in TFP are observed in the case of Gap and Inditex. However, Inditex shows a trend of continuous improvement in most of the sub-periods considered, reaching an improvement of 18%.

KEYWORDS:

• Productivity
• efficiency
• fast fashion sector
• DEA
• second stage

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the authors.