Fast Fashion Supply Chain Management in China: Critical Success Factors and Their Supply Chain Performance Implications

The consumer-driven fast fashion (FF) approach has become a formidable business strategy to create, boost, and sustain competitive advantage in the global fashion industry. FF firms in China have adopted this approach, together with its supporting supply chain management (SCM) practices, to yield superior supply chain (SC) performance to compete with their global rivals. We seek to identify the critical success factors (CSFs) of SCM and their SC performance implications focusing on FF in China. We conducted a large-scale survey of FF firms in China and analyzed the data. We identify six CSFs of SCM that are significantly and positively associated with six SC performance measures of FF in China. Specifically, we find that Consumer Orientation and Production Management are the two most prominent CSFs of SCM of FF in China, as they are significantly and positively associated with all the six SC performance measures identified. In addition, we conducted a case on a prominent FF firm in China to validate and triangulate the empirical findings. We provide practical insights to FF firms in China, enabling them to prioritize and allocate necessary resources to develop, maintain, and enhance the most relevant and appropriate CSFs of SCM to deliver desirable SC performance outcomes.