How macro factors influence decision-making in the fashion industry value chain

Sammanfattning: The complexity of the macroenvironment and value chains within the fashion industry has increased the importance of strategic value chain configurations. The global influence and awareness of macro factors has made it more challenging for decision-makers to integrate macro-environmental changes in their strategic decisions. This thesis explores how macro factors influence the decision-making process of a case company in the fashion industry and how beneficial scenario planning is for systematising the planning of possible reconfigurations. Using semi-structured interviews with decision-makers this thesis explores how they process information about the macroenvironment and transform it into value chain (re)configurations. Our data indicates this process to be highly dependent on the focus and responsibilities of decision-makers: strategy-setting roles are more occupied with developments in the macroenvironment and the right strategy for the business while operational decision-makers work with that strategy set and the realisation of macro-environmental changes to find the most feasible and efficient value chain reconfigurations. Overall, the culture of the company, its networks and strategic partners play a pivotal role in the influence macro factors have on the value chain. Looking into the possible effectiveness of using scenario planning to systematise future planning, we again find a difference between strategy-setting and operational roles: due to their involvement in setting the future direction of the value chain, strategy-setting decision-makers can benefit more from scenario planning to contemplate various possible scenarios and different strategic responses to them. For the operational teams scenario planning might need more input than it grants benefits as their responsibilities depend on the realisation of macro factors.