Marketing Strategy Analysis for M&S

The assignment involves analyzing the marketing strategies of Marks & Spencer (M&S), evaluating its market position, and proposing a product development approach to support sustainable growth. The task also includes recommending effective measures to meet operational objectives and business operations.

Introduction to
Marketing

Table of Contents
Table of Contents...........................................................................................................................1
INTRODUCTION...........................................................................................................................2
MAIN BODY..................................................................................................................................2
TASK 1............................................................................................................................................2
Overview of organisation and its market place...........................................................................2
Identification and analysis of marketing strategies implemented at M&S and Tesco................2
TASK 2............................................................................................................................................5
Creating a new idea to improve selected marketing approach....................................................5
CONCLUSION AND RECOMMENDATIONS............................................................................7
REFERENCES................................................................................................................................9
Appendix........................................................................................................................................10
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INTRODUCTION
Marketing is an essential activity which includes the selling of manufactured goods that
will help in proper rise in company’s growth and development rate (Krishna and Schwarz, 2014).
For the present report, UK based retail enterprise, Marks and Spencer has been chosen. The
report will analyse the marketing strategies and its competitors and reason behind choosing it.
Also, proper innovative ideas related to improvement of its marketing strategy and approaches
will be recommended also covered in this report
MAIN BODY
TASK 1
Overview of organisation and its market place
Marks and Spencer, also known as M&S, is a UK based multinational retail enterprise,
that expertise in clothing, household items and luxury food items. Besides this, it also sells
branded foods. Headquartered at city of Westminster, London, it operates all over the world.
This makes it susceptible to many marketplaces and environment. The firm is known to provide
low cost but value for money products. At present, the firm has about 1,035 stores in UK with
428 other stores in various nations around the world (Hair Jr. and Lukas, 2014). Thus, this cause
the firm to have a wide variety of customer base and thus face a variation in the consumer
demands and operational activities that are been followed by cited retail entity. Currently, M&S
is one of the major market player in retail industry and has a good hold over its position at trade
place.
Besides this, the extensive planning and rise in capabilities help the organisation to
sustain in difficult time. The fluctuations in production and marketing activities may cause the
retail enterprise to alter its marketing strategies. This is required to be handled with proper care
and consideration in order to meet the objectives set by the management of M&S (Glesne, 2015).
Identification and analysis of marketing strategies implemented at M&S and Tesco
M&S and Tesco, both are major firms that operates in retail sector and have a good
consumer base that assist to handle their demands and meet their requirements in a better way.
Both the firms follows a specific marketing strategy that helps them to have a good connection
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with their market and assist to have a good market share and thus will lead to increase in
productivity of the firm.
Current State of Retail Market
In the present scenario, the retail sector is facing a tremendous hike in competition with
many new entrants truing to penetrate and establish themselves within market. The established
retail players like M&S and Tesco are facing stiff competition from the new emerging firms like
ASDA and Sainsbury. This has created a stiff rivalry among these firms and has provided
consumers with more options to select within.
Strategies followed by both the firms
The major strategies that are followed by both the organisations are as follows:
“One brand strategy” followed by M&S: Marks and Spencer follows the “One brand strategy”
which allows the firm to sell out majority of its product from various portfolios under one brand
name. This helps the firm to lay its focus upon the sales that takes place in the market
(Alexandris and Kaplanidou, 2014).
Besides this, collaboration with major food brands to sale their products at M&S stores
has been proved a major growth and popularity factor which has improved the performance of
the company. It will also help through improvement of their marketing process that is followed
by the organisation.
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Figure 1: Growth of M&S in recent years
(Source: Stipp, 2018)
Following this one brand strategy has helped M&S to increase their growth measures
within few years to a greater extent. M&S will support the overall growth and proper assessment
of the extent of growth factors. This will also assist cited retail entity to derive proper marking
elements and work upon them in order to enhance their performance.
“Corporate marketing strategy” followed by Tesco: Tesco plc follows the corporate
marketing strategy that is based on the principle of “Every little helps”. This supports firm to
prevent stagnation in growth and customer engagement with controlling lack of agility. Other
than this, they also follow digital marketing approach, which supports the universal connectivity
of Tesco with its customers. Along with it, it proved to be time saving and easy to follow
approach that enables the customers to meet organisational requirements.
Assessment of marketing strategies
Both these approaches are followed by M&S and Tesco respectively, will support and
enhance their market presence and thus help in meeting all operations and activities in a better
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way. For instance, the one brand strategy that is followed by M&S will help in development of
proper marketing plan and campaign (Fine, 2017).
Covering a wide range of products under one brand name supports which will support its
growth and development in a better way. On the other hand, Tesco plc has a competitive
advantage of being one of the largest retailer in world. Hence, it has a very good market image
and customer support. Addition to it, the digital technology adds an innovation and technological
element within the retail firm.
The marketing strategy, campaign and plan that is decided by management of firm that
leads to their growth and development. Also, these strategies will assist the firm to handle their
business and marketing related operations that will support a proper and distinctive growth of a
business entity in a better way. Both Tesco and M&S has chosen these factors to enhance their
work performance, especially marketing. This will help in proper growth and development of the
organisation (Needham and Smith, 2015).
Besides this, the strategies will support a proper growth and rise in capability and knowledge of
the organisation about the changes that they require to handle in a much effective way. Managers
and leaders of both the firm will analyse and handle this strategies in order to have a better and
significant output from the marketing activities that are been followed by both the cited retail
entities.
TASK 2
Creating a new idea to improve selected marketing approach
A new and innovative idea is required to be implemented within M&S that will support a
good rise in the marketing skills of the firm and thus improves its customer base. Although the
one brand strategy is beneficial for M&S as discussed above, it needs to be improved and
upgraded in order to enhance performance level of the firm. The proper implementation of
interaction will help the organisation to carry out business operations and activities related to
retail operations by the firm. The timely and regular update of the marketing strategy of firm will
support the better growth and rise of business organisation (Fill and Turnbull, 2016).
Looking at the current situation of M&S and its marketplaces around the world, the retail
enterprise requires to adopt and implement a new marketing strategy which will support a good
rise in capability and management of firm. Looking at the current one brand marketing strategy
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followed by cited retail entity, the approach of product development can be taken within
consideration that helps the organisation to improve their work performance to a greater extent.
The existing product portfolio that is been developed by the firm will help the
organisation to meet their customer’s needs and demands with more efficiency and effectiveness.
M&S has to see through the better rise in the innovation and researching that is been performed
by the organisation in order to improve the quality and features of the existing product.
Product development strategy: This is the approach that include the following of proper
research and development process to improve the product quality and enhance its features that
helps in proper rise in its demands and customer satisfaction level. Other than this, it will create a
curiosity among the customers, leading to increase in its demands. The firm can develop a proper
marketing plan related to the effective management of the marketing process that is been taken in
consideration by the organisation (Armstrong and et.al., 2015).
The well and proper implementation of these strategy will help the organisation to have a
good customer base and thus handle the business operations and activities that will help in proper
rise in the business operations and activities in a much effective and better way. The effective
implementation plan that will be followed by M&S to apply the product development strategy is
as follows:
 Defining goals: This is the first stage, where the goals and objectives related to product
development for M&S will be defined and set.
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Product
development
strategy
Defining goals Setting up the
schedule
Define the
measures of
success
Resource and
role allocation

 Setting up the schedule: The strategy will only be feasible, when applied within a
particular and generative time phase. Thus, particular milestones are required to be set for
successful implementation of product development (Kim, Hulland and Eom, 2018).
 Resource and role allocation: The vital resources for the strategy implementation will
be provided to various departments so that their functionality carries out in more suitable
and smooth manner. The team working upon it will be allotted the proper roles and
responsibilities in order to make the implementation process more successful.
 Define the measures of success: Effective qualitative and quantitative measures are been
set that will help them or the organisation as a whole to determine their success level.
Proper data related to this will be collected and analysed that will help the organisation to
get the precise idea about extent of feasibility of data.
The major challenges related to it are:
 The uncertainty of failure of product is the major concern that has to be looked after by
M&S in order to maintain the goodwill and customer satisfaction level.
 Cited retail entity has to look after the proper balance between the production cost and
selling price of developed product. High price may cause customer to avoid purchasing
these product and low pricing may lead to lose faced by the production unit of the firm
(Sargeant and MACQUILLIN, 2016).
 Proper marketing of the developed product is also necessary as failing to it may adversely
affect the overall sales and growth of the business entity.
The proper outcome to this is the effective improvement in the strategic planning and the
marketing growth measures that are been taken in consideration by M&S. It can prove as a
fruitful opportunity for the firm.
CONCLUSION AND RECOMMENDATIONS
On the basis of analysis performed above, this can be said that marketing plays a vital and
crucial role in the setting up of growth and development measures by M&S. The assessment with
the competitors strategy and development of a proper marketing strategy will help the firm to
carry out its business operations effectively.
Some recommendations for the better enhancement of business marketing strategy are:
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 Proper market assessment followed by effective planning can be performed that will help
in suitable rise in marketing effectiveness of the firm.
 On the primary level, the development strategy can be applied to a selected market place
and stores. After getting the satisfactory result, the strategy can be proceeded further.
 Proper feedbacks and remarks can be collected and evaluated from customers to make the
product and services as well as the marketing process more elaborative and supporting.
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REFERENCES
Books and Journals
Alexandris, K. and Kaplanidou, K., 2014. Marketing sport event tourism: Sport tourist behaviors
and destination provisions. Sport Marketing Quarterly. 23(3). pp.125.
Armstrong, G and et.al., 2015. Marketing: an introduction.
Fill, C. and Turnbull, S., 2016. Marketing Communications. Pearson Higher Ed.
Fine, S.H., 2017. Introduction to social marketing. In Marketing the Public Sector (pp. 1-12).
Routledge.
Glesne, C., 2015. Becoming qualitative researchers: An introduction. Pearson.
Hair Jr, J.F. and Lukas, B., 2014. Marketing research (Vol. 2). McGraw-Hill Education
Australia.
Kim, S.H., Hulland, J. and Eom, H.J., 2018, July. USE OF ITEM RESPONSE THEORY IN
MARKETING RESEARCH. In 2018 Global Marketing Conference at Tokyo (pp. 1503-
1503).
Krishna, A. and Schwarz, N., 2014. Sensory marketing, embodiment, and grounded cognition: A
review and introduction. Journal of consumer psychology. 24(2). pp.159-168.
Needham, C. and Smith, G., 2015. Introduction: Political Marketing. Journal of Political
Marketing, pp.1-6.
Sargeant, A. and MACQUILLIN, I., 2016. Marketing for nonprofit organizations. In The
Marketing Book (pp. 555-576). Routledge.
Online
Stipp, H., 2018. Marks & Spencer revenue worldwide 2010-2018. [Online]. Available through: <
https://www.statista.com/statistics/413349/group-revenue-marks-and-spencer-mands/ >
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Appendix
Speaker Note
Task 1
In this task, we have discussed the overview of selected organization and its market
place. From the various marketing strategies that are been analyzed in reference to selected firm
as well as its competitors, the market position of M&S is been identified. The reasons of
choosing specific marketing strategy is been evaluated to identify its feasibility and take
preventive measures against factors, that can affect firms performance.
Task 2
This task involves the various factors that will help an organization to grow and develop.
The product development approach is been proposed which will play a crucial role in strategic
development of the organization. Besides this, effective recommendations are been suggested
that will support the selected firm to have a sustainable market growth and meet its operational
objectives and business operations or activities to a greater extent. This task will help us to get
the proper exposure to the strategic measures that are been taken in consideration by selected
retail business entity.
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