The concentration of fast fashion clothing market refers to the market share occupied by a few largest enterprises in the fast fashion clothing market. The higher the market concentration, the greater the value. There are two ways to measure market concentration: one is absolute method and the other is relative method. The absolute method is to calculate the market share of the first few enterprises directly, and the absolute method to calculate the index is the concentration coefficient. Calculation

C R n = ∑ i = 1 n X i / ∑ i = 1 N X i (1)

formula: C R n ―The largest in the industry The degree of industry concentration; X i ―Industry in the first place Value of output, sales, etc.; n―Number of enterprises in the industry; N―Total number of enterprises in the industry [3] .

The market share of the top three fast fashion brands in China’s fast fashion clothing market is obtained by investigating the market sales of fast fashion clothing brands. Among them, H & M is the only one that has reported its annual sales in China at 8.85 billion yuan [4] . ZARA (including Pull&bear, Bershka and other sub-brands) reported global sales of -16.62 billion, Asian market share 23.2% and 17.8% of the Asian market in China on the 2017 annual report [5] . Uniqlo reported sales of 2.81 trillion yen in 2017 and 70% of overseas markets in China [6] . We calculated the sales of 11.81 billion yuan. According to the data center of win Business Network, China’s fast fashion clothing sales in 2017 accounted for 32% of the total brand clothing sales, 2017 brand clothing sales total 123.8 billion yuan, can be calculated 2017 China fast fashion clothing sales of 39.616 billion yuan (Table 1).

China’s fast fashion apparel industry market is dominated by Uniqlo, ZARA and H & M, which account for most of the market share. From the perspective of market concentration, the sales of Uniqlo, H & M and ZARA in China in 2017 are added together:

∑ i = 1 3 X n = 26.104 billion yuan, ∑ i = 1 N X n = 39.616 billion yuan

According to formula (1) the Bain Market structure Classification (Table 2) 65 .8 < C R 4 < 79.5 and 50 ≤ C R 4 < 85 , it is concluded that the fast fashion clothing market in China is oligopolistic type III.

Product differentiation means that enterprises influence consumers’ purchase by triggering the particularity of products in consumers’ minds [7] . Product differentiation is another important factor that affects the market structure. The so-called product differentiation refers to the product that the enterprise provides to customers in front of it, which is sufficient to cause consumer preference through various marketing methods. Enable customers to separate their competing products, thus creating a competitive advantage in the market.

Fast fashion clothing brand product differentiation, the greater the degree of product differentiation clothing brand companies, the more successful will be able to distinguish their own brands and similar clothing brands, so that they

form a unique competitive advantage in the market, And more monopoly nature. So each brand shows different characteristics: ZARA strong supply chain, vertical shipping, greatly shorten the shipping time: an average of 2 weeks, H & M has been cross-border cooperation to attract attention, improve the commodity price ratio; Uniqlo is a new way, from the fabric of clothing, through the study of the performance of clothing fabrics, but the style is simple and comfortable, The crowd is wider and so on.

Barriers to entry and exit are barriers to changes in market competition caused by entry or exit from specific industries [8] . As far as the whole clothing market is concerned, the scale economy of garment industry is not obvious, and the barrier to entry is weak. Garment industry assets are professional, exit barriers strong, stock adjustment difficult.

However, for China’s fast fashion clothing industry market, entry and exit barriers are high.

・ Barriers to entry caused by economies of scale.

At present, foreign famous brands have occupied the main market in the fast fashion clothing market of our country, both in the perfect supply chain and in the intensive degree of the market stores, all of them have reached certain economies of scale.

・ A barrier to entry formed by product differentiation.

The domestic fast fashion clothing brand has developed and matured, the consumer’s preference for the brand has already formed, the preference for the original fast fashion clothing enterprise product is also higher than the new enterprise product, and even it is difficult to introduce the new enterprise product.

・ A barrier to entry caused by costs.

When new enterprises enter the market, they spend more on marketing, besides the cost of building factories, and the cost of obtaining resources is much higher than that of old ones, so the barriers to entry are stronger.

・ Expense barriers to exit

For the existing scale of fast fashion apparel enterprises in China, fast fashion clothing exit obstacles. Fast fashion companies, such as ZARA, H & M and Uniqlo, have opened many stores in China, and when they exit the market, they have to close their stores, spend rents on the early days of the stores, decorate the costs and pay back the money they have to pay to lay off workers.

From the angle of market concentration, the fast fashion clothing market of our country is oligopoly III. From the perspective of the interval 65 .5 < C R 4 < 79.5 , the fast fashion clothing market in China has a strong monopoly; Judging from the degree of product differentiation, the fast fashion brands represented by Uniqlo, ZARA and H & M have formed their unique core competitiveness through product differentiation, which other fast fashion clothing brands cannot imitate. Thus forming oligopoly market; from the perspective of industry entry and exit barriers, because the operation of fast fashion brand clothing not only needs to achieve a certain scale economy, but also needs strong funds to support, so the entry and exit barriers of the industry are the higher, once again confirms the fast fashion clothing market is the oligopoly market type.

Fast fashion clothing industry is mostly cost-oriented pricing, accompanied by regular price discounts and promotion pricing. Cost-oriented price behavior leads to the low price of clothing, which greatly reduces the traditional fashion price, makes consumers scramble for it, and makes enterprises occupy market share quickly. Price behavior is the main competitive means of fast fashion clothing industry in the market.

Table 3: On the one hand, the three fast fashion brands have low starting point of clothing pricing, adopt competitive pricing strategy to attract consumers, so as to achieve the effect of quickly occupying market share; On the other hand, from the relatively high price number, fast fashion clothing enterprises not only grasp the low end consumer group, but also focus on the middle end customers, the price of each category can be reflected. In summary, the cost oriented price behavior of fast fashion clothing forms a price advantage in the clothing sales competition, which is aimed at the middle and low end consumer groups and is the mainstream of the clothing consumption market in our country. This will bring good market performance feedback.

・ Digitization

With the rapid growth of our country’s economic level, the structure of garment industry is changing, from simple price competition to comprehensive strength competition of brand and science and technology. As a leading fashion consumption industry, fast fashion enterprises should be aware of this to deal

with current consumption. The consumers of fast fashion clothing pursue fashion sense, pursue new things, and pay more attention to the experience of buying. Therefore, fast fashion clothing enterprises should keep pace with the times, rely on new technology, digitize, and rely on science and technology to enable the brand, as Table 4 “fast fashion brand digitization, science and technology specific practice” shows.

・ Sales channel optimization

With the rapid development of information technology, online clothing consumption has become one of the most important consumption channels for consumers. Fast fashion clothing brands also break through online and offline barriers to achieve full-channel retail, and multi-channel network sales, competition is no less intense than offline. Each big fast fashion brand in the original already has the own net shop foundation, one after another has entered Tmall’s flagship store, JingDong self-service store, WeChat Mini Program is also one of the sales methods. Four fast fashion brands in china e-commerce sales channels are shown in Table 5.

As a result of the foreign fast fashion brand joining unceasingly and the domestic emerging fast fashion brand rising, the organization adjustment behavior that the storefront quantity increases sharply becomes the fast fashion clothing enterprise in the existing market of our country to speed up the development. Maintain or expand the market share, thereby maintaining competitive advantage of an effective way. In order to maintain the original oligopoly market structure, the fast fashion clothing enterprises in the domestic market rapidly attack the land and rapidly increase the number of stores in China, in order to maintain or expand the original market share. Major fast fashion clothing brand stores have also spread across the country’s major shopping malls. According to incomplete statistics, including H & M Zara, Uniqlo, MJ Ten fast fashion brands, including style, MUJI, NEW LOOK, UR, C & A, Forever 21 gap, opened 88 stores in the mainland in the third quarter of 2017.

At the same time, according to the 2018 China Fast Fashion clothing Industry Analysis report-the market operation situation and investment prospects study, the number of fast fashion brands in China is still growing, Uniqlo has the highest increase, reaching 19.52%. China’s fast fashion apparel market has been presented by Uniqlo and H & M & M Inditex Group “three feet” (Table 6).

Source: open data collation.

Source: open data collation.

Resource allocation efficiency is one of the important indicators to measure market performance, while profit rate is the main index to measure resource allocation efficiency. The higher the profit margin and the more operational cost, the higher the resource allocation efficiency. The profit of China’s fast fashion industry is higher than that of the whole garment industry, and the gross profit rate is above 45%. The higher the gross profit rate and the higher the profit margin of the fast fashion garment industry, the higher the resource allocation efficiency is, and the higher the market concentration and monopoly is, the more oligopolistic the market is (Table 7).

The main reason for the high efficiency of resource allocation in the fast fashion clothing industry is the high efficiency of the supply chain. The production and operation cycle of the fast fashion clothing industry is from two weeks to one month, while the production cycle of the general clothing industry is divorced from the fashion industry. The period is 3 months, compared with the fast fashion industry, the production and operation cycle is much faster than the general industry, and on this basis, the fast fashion clothing industry can make a profit first. The second is the production of fast fashion clothing in heavy type, light quantity, and different from the general clothing industry in batch production of the same clothing, therefore, fast fashion clothing industry in the stock backlog pressure is also smaller than the overall clothing industry.

The level of scale economy is an important index to measure the market performance of enterprises, among which the mode of enterprise management is the important reason for the formation of scale economy of enterprises. The enterprises above the scale in the fast fashion clothing market in our country are all SPA business model, that is, the independent brand professional retailer management mode, from commodity planning, manufacturing to retail integration of vertical sales model. In this mode, the production is directly connected to the retail, the product is directly faced with the customer, and the customer and the supplier are effectively connected at the same time, so that the rapid response to the market is realized, which not only increases the speed of flow, but also compresses the operating cost. Such a business model has effectively increased the size of the enterprise Economic level [11] .

Take ZARA’s business model as an example, from design products to ready-to-wear shelves, fabric procurement to clothing production, store sales display, commodity distribution to customer feedback, each link with the extreme,

sensitive supply chain is the key factor to win of ZARA [12] . Fast fashion clothing enterprises in the relatively complete business model framework, can faster meet the existing needs of consumers. It is this kind of efficient management mode that makes the market performance of our country’s fast fashion clothing industry grow rapidly.