SWOT Analysis and Service Marketing Challenges Faced by All Saints

This report discusses the SWOT analysis of All Saints, a British fashion retailer, and the service marketing challenges they may face in the next 3 years. The report also provides recommendations to overcome these challenges. The challenges include sustainability, digitalization, increasing fashion trends, intangibility, inseparability, variability, and perishability. The report suggests approaches like customer testimonials, tracking customer preferences, providing proper training to employees, and using aggressive promotion to overcome these challenges.

PRINCIPLES OF
MARKETING

TABLE OF CONTENTS
INTRODUCTION...........................................................................................................................3
MAIN BODY...................................................................................................................................3
SWOT Analysis of All Saints-.....................................................................................................3
Service Marketing challenges faced by All Saints in next 3 years-.............................................4
Principles of service market and their threats-.............................................................................5
CONCLUSION................................................................................................................................7
REFERENCES................................................................................................................................8

INTRODUCTION
Marketing is an act of promoting the company's goods and services . Marketing helps in
creating revenue, boosting the sales etc. All Saints is the British fashion retailer company which
is headquartered in London, UK. It was founded in 1994 by Stuart Trevor and kait Bolongaro.
This company has products of menswear, womenswear, footwear and accessories. It has 281
stores and approximately 2400 employees in around 27 countries as well as in UK. It is high
fashion brand, they have many unique designs. Fashion industry (Stone and Farnan, 2018)is the
most competitive sector around the world as there are any big leading companies in this sector
which are frequently coming with their unique products. This report will discuss the SWOT
analysis of the All saints and the challenges which All saints can face in the next 3 years.
Further, it will also provide recommendation to overcome the challenges which All saints are
facing through its strengths and opportunities.
MAIN BODY
SWOT Analysis of All Saints-
SWOT Analysis is tool used to evaluate the strengths, weaknesses, opportunities and
threats of the company. It is very important to know the external factors as well as the internal
factors which affects the present and future performance of the organization. This will help to
improve or apply new business strategy in the organization if needed.
SWOT Analysis of All saints-
1. Strengths- Strengths are the internal factors of the organizations which provides them
positive outcomes. All saints is generally known for its uniqueness in clothing sector. As
the customers enter the stores they are welcomed by the greeters standing on the gates.
They have a very big staff for handling individual customers in the stores, this adds the
vale to the customer and maintains the strong customer service in the store. They display
the vintage theme in its store like using vintage sewing machine ion the stores which h
creates uniqueness of ambience.
2. Weaknesses- Weaknesses are the internal factors of the organization which hinders for
becoming successful organization. The main weakness of All Saints is because of its
pricing and exclusive products which means the price of the clothes is very high that low

income or normal income people can't afford it. As this company is private label and its
products are sold only in their stores, so because of this drawback it limits the customer
for getting their product.
3. Opportunities- These are the external factors which can provide positive advantage to
the organization. The opportunity for All Saints is that they can increase their stores in
the countries where there are fewer stores. This will help this company to reach the stores
with high volume of customers.
4. Threats- These are the external factors that can affect the working of the performance
and have negative impact on it. These threats can be like new regulations, new or existing
competitors, new technologies, etc. All saints major threats can be high market
competition as well as increasing fashion trends. There are many other company's which
are providing clothes at better prices than All Saints. Fashion trends are changing rapidly
this is the biggest threat if the company doesn't come up with innovative products.
Service Marketing challenges faced by All Saints in next 3 years-
1. Sustainability- Fashion industry causes most pollution in the environment. All Saints is
trying to practice sustainability in the business as well as customers are also choosing
sustainable fashion (Khandual and Pradhan 2019). But it is not much to combat with the
increasing pollution and waste created by All Saints and every fashion industry. Many
millennials are going towards the sustainable brands which will increase sustainability in
the coming years. This is challenge which All Saint have to face as many other brands
has committed for making sustainable clothes.
2. Digitalization- Fashion industry has seen a downfall in their business because of
emerging new technology in the market. Increase in online shopping will cause a big
threat for the company. Nowadays, people are much interested in online shopping as
people are very busy that they don't have much time to visit to the stores. This company
is providing many offers to the customers but because of wider range of products, low
pricing strategy as well as convenience facility they are getting attracted more towards
the online shopping which will create big challenge for All Saints.
3. Increasing fashion trends- The fashion trends are increasing very rapidly which has
become very difficult to catch the needs and wants of the customers. Instead of having

many retail stores of All Saints in many countries, it will become very hard to survive in
this rapidly changing market in the coming years. As the company evaluates the needs
and wants of the customers the changes are changed and the other companies who are
using better strategies will lead the market in the future.
Principles of service market and their threats-
Marketing services is different from marketing products(Ashour). The biggest difference
between products and services is that it services has the property of intangibility that consumers
can't touch or feel the services. Evaluating and understanding the marketing mix as well as the
principles of marketing services leads to successful businesses.
1. Service marketing mix- The people factor is responsible for providing or delivering
services to the customers so more emphasis should be given to them. Marketers should
also give importance to the processes used and experience of customers(Baron, Harris
and Hilton 2018).
2. Listen to consumers- Marketing research is very difficult process for every marketer
mostly in the case of services. Marketing research will help the company to know the
customers poor experience of the services provided. This helps in improving the negative
experience of the customer.
3. Stay current- The services providers should always keep update of the customers'
expectation, trend in the market, promotion of the current offerings. Services such as
lawn care, childcare will never be terminated or go out of trend.
Threats of service marketing-
1. Intangibility- Services cannot be seen, touched when buying it. In many cases, there are
services which have tangible surroundings. Challenges faced by All Saints is that as
services cannot be stored, services cannot be protected through patents, services cannot
be communicated as well as prices are difficult to be set.
2. Inseparability- It means services are consumed and produced at the same time. It also
states that services can't be separated from its providers. The production of services
occurs at the time of purchase of the products. All Saints have to face challenges because
it is very difficult to separate the services for its providers. The production and
consumption of services occurs at the same time which makes it difficult to store it.

3. Variability- The quality of services varies as it depends on who is proving the services
and when (Ramya, Kowsalya and Dharanipriya 2019). This is because of labour-
intensive nature of services. All Saints main aim is to provide the good quality services to
the customers but because of the variability it becomes challenges in providing the
services(Chitty, et.al. 2019).
4. Perishability- It means things which can't be saved for future use or sale. Services cannot
be inventoried for future use or sale. It causes major impact on the financial results of the
organization so this is the challenged faced by All Saints in providing the services.
Recommendations to overcome these challenges-
1. Services are key element of every organization. There are some approaches to overcome
the challenges faced by intangibility of the services, One of them is customer
testimonials. In this approach, All Saints can take written testimonial from the
experienced customers and can put this review on the company's website with attached
photo of the customer. Putting reviews on the websites also will help to attract the
customers towards the company.
1. To overcome the challenges of inseparability is recording the customers preferences. All
Saints by tracking the customers in the market that is by using the customer relationship
management will help to know their needs and wants and accordingly the services can be
provided. Using people and processes will help to overcome this challenge.
2. Variability challenge can be overcome by giving proper training to the employees by
which All Saints can achieve the higher level of services, by taking feedbacks of
customers through this analysing where mostly variations are happening (Mahr, Stead
and Odekerken-Schröder 2019).
3. There are several strategies that can be used to overcome the challenge of Perishability.
Like aggressive promotion involving online and offline advertising, providing sales offer
when there is low demand. These strategies will help All Saints to overcome this
challenge.

CONCLUSION
The above report has stated about the SWOT analysis of the fashion organization All
Saints. Along with this, it has discussed about the key challenges of marketing which can be
faced by All Saints in the next coming years. As the environment is changing very rapidly so
there is need to overcome service marketing challenges for surviving and lead in the highly
competitive market. The main key services of marketing are intangibility, inseparability,
Perishability and variability.

REFERENCES
Books and journals
Ashour, M.L., Services Marketing is Different.
Baron, S., Harris, K. and Hilton, T., 2018. Services marketing: text and cases. Bloomsbury
Publishing.
Chitty, et.al. 2019. Services marketing.
Gupta, S., Gwozdz, W. and Gentry, J., 2019. The role of style versus fashion orientation on
sustainable apparel consumption. Journal of Macromarketing. 39(2). pp.188-207.
Khandual, A. and Pradhan, S., 2019. Fashion brands and consumers approach towards
sustainable fashion. In Fast fashion, fashion brands and sustainable consumption (pp. 37-
54). Springer, Singapore.
Mahr, D., Stead, S. and Odekerken-Schröder, G., 2019. Making sense of customer service
experiences: a text mining review. Journal of Services Marketing.
Ramya, N., Kowsalya, A. and Dharanipriya, K., 2019. Service quality and its dimensions. EPRA
International Journal of Research & Development. 4. pp.38-41.
Stone, E. and Farnan, S.A., 2018. The dynamics of fashion. Bloomsbury Publishing USA.
1

2