Marketing Manager's Role and Training Importance

The provided report is about Marks & Spencer (M&S), a major retailing company in the UK with a flat organizational structure. It emphasizes the importance of employees as assets to M&S, who play various roles in achieving organizational objectives. The report also discusses the significance of training and development in improving employee performance. Additionally, it highlights the crucial role of marketing managers in organizations, making them a major part of the organizational structure.

COMMUNITY Engagement-
1

Table of Contents
1 INTRODUCTION........................................................................................................................3
2 DISCUSSION...............................................................................................................................4
Role of the employees in an organisation and how they help in achieving goals..................4
Training and development and its importance.......................................................................4
Selection of role and its importance.......................................................................................5
Skills and knowledge needed.................................................................................................5
3. PESTLE/ SWOT ANALYSIS.....................................................................................................6
4 CONCLUSION.............................................................................................................................7
REFERENCES................................................................................................................................9

1 INTRODUCTION
Community engagement may be defined as the process of working in collaboration
within the community groups in order to address the issues which has the impact on the well-
being of those groups (Baldus, Voorhees and Calantone, 2015). It is also the dynamic relational
process which facilitates the communication, involvement, interaction and exchange between a
community and organisation for the purpose of organisational and social outcomes (Erwin,
Mosavel and Marks, 2015). In this report Marks and Spencer is taken as an organisation, which
is the major multinational retailer company of Britain having its headquarters at Westminster,
London. Marks and Spencer operates in retail sector and is a public limited company which
specialises in selling home products, luxury products and clothing. Marks and Spencer was
founded by Michael Marks and Thomas Spencer in Leeds. It was the first company to make
profit over 1 billion euros before tax.
Size: Marks and Spencer is operating across the world, there are more than 80,787
employees working in M&S across the world. There are more than 979 stores of M&S in UK
and out of 979 only 615 store sell food products.
Structure: Organisational structure of M&S is flat, it follows flat organisational structure
and has got limited levels of management that lies between front line employees and
administrative level.
Goals: Goal of M&S is to play an important role in enabling healthy and sustainable
lifestyles and its plan is the 2025 must focus on customers and to be integrated into the brand
purpose.
Mission: Mission of M&S is to provide customers with quality products and efficient
service with the greatest overall value.
Values: M&S is committed to their core values of innovation, inspiration, integrity and
in touch. This is the key that they interact with their customers, colleagues, suppliers, etc across
the business and underpin the promise for customers to make every moment special for them.
Goods or Services: Marks and Spencer deals in selling of Luxury food products, home
products and also sells clothes across its retailing stores in the world.

2 DISCUSSION
Role of the employees in an organisation and how they help in achieving goals
M&S wants its employees to be like its business i.e. to grow and prosper. Employees of
M&S play major role within the business that a company is in. Following are the role played by
the employees of M&S:
Building atmosphere of trust: Employees who work in M&S help in building the
atmosphere of trust as they provide the goods and services to the which is exactly required by the
them and help in building loyal customers for the organisation (Bowen, 2016). So, employees
can help the organisation achieving the goals of building consumer loyalty.
Improving customer experience: Employees of M&S continuously focuses on
improving customer experience by setting effective communication which helps in satisfying
more people for the organisation. This will help in achieving more and more profits for the firm.
Organisational culture: Employees of M&S are always willing to accept the challenges
and are eager to learn something new which is the reason for the organisation's growth and
advancement. Thus, employees of M&S have played an important role in achieving the goal of
growth and advancement.
Training and development and its importance
Training represents the prime opportunity for the employees to expand the knowledge
and skills who are working in the organisation. But many of the employers find that development
is effective for the staff but development opportunities are expensive. In training and
development, the process of the employees does not mainly concentrate on projects for attending
the training sessions (Dhar, 2015). But it is important for the organisation to provide training and
developmental programmes for the employees which lack specific skills and knowledge. M&S
can provide training to employees which can be helpful for organisation in ways like:
 It increases the employees' confidence in delivering its services.
 It helps to meet the customers’ needs and increases the level of customer satisfaction.
 It increases the ability of the employees to respond to the change which may occur due to
diversity in the manpower.
 It increases employee’s performance and reduces errors.

Selection of role and its importance
The role selected is Marketing Manager of M&S. It plays an important role within the
organisation and has to manage the marketing activities of an organisation. The manager is
responsible for the several goods and services. He or she analyses the various industrial trends
and the demand of organisation's products and services and helps in creating the strategy to
market the company's products (Cross, Belich and Rudelius, 2015). Also, manager of M&S
collaborates with other departments like finance department, HR. department, etc. to ensure that
strategies are successfully implemented. He or she has a vital role within the organisation as
M&S deals in the retailing sector by playing vital role in selling and promoting of products and
services. They help in meeting the competition which exists in the industry and helps in
increasing the profits for the organisation. It also oversees the company's budget and also helps
in formulating of the marketing strategy for the organisation according the organisational
objectives. The management is also responsible for simplifying the functions and activities
which are involved in distribution of the goods and services. So, they form an important part of
M&S which can help the company in achieving the business goals and objectives.
Skills and knowledge needed
As marketing manager forms an important part of the organisation so, he should possess
the skills and knowledge which is required for becoming a good marketing manager for M&S.
Skills:
 Marketing manager should possess effective communication skills, so that he can
communicate with the employees in an organisation and can deliver the important
message.
 He should possess team working skills, i.e. how to work in a team and how to support a
team (Cosenza and Taylor, 2015 ).
 He should possess appropriate leadership skills, so that he could lead a team in an
effective way towards the goals and objectives.
 He should possess adaptability skills and should be able to adapt to the changing
marketing conditions.
Knowledge:
He should possess the knowledge of sales and marketing i.e. should have the knowledge
of methods and principles for promoting, showing and selling of products and services which

requires marketing strategy and tactics, sales techniques, demonstrations and sales control
system. He should also possess the knowledge of business and management principles which are
involved in resources allocation, strategic planning, leadership techniques and methods of
production and should also have the knowledge of coordination of resource and people. He
should also possess the knowledge of customer and personal service like meeting the quality
standards of products, customer assessment and should have the knowledge of how to evaluate
the customer satisfaction. He should possess the knowledge of media production and
communication and should also know how to disseminate the techniques and methods. This can
help M&S is meeting its goals and objectives in effective way.
3. PESTLE/ SWOT ANALYSIS
PESTLE analysis
Pestle analysis may be defined as a tool or a framework which is used to analyse the
macro environmental factors of the organisation which have a direct impact on the performance
of M&S. Pestle analysis of M&S is described below:
Political Factors: These are the factors which have a strong impact on the performance
of M&S. It includes the labour laws, trade policy, political stability, tariffs, etc. which have an
impact on the organisation (Widya and et.al., 2018). It also includes the goods and services
which are needed or provided by the government. For example, M&S have been positively
affected by the European Commission's free trade agreement. This has made the product imports
much easier for M&S which has resulted in decrease in the sourcing cost.
Economic Factors: Economic factors are those which determine the economy of the
country or an organisation. This factor has also got strong impact on M&S which can affect the
economic performance of the organisation for long term. It includes inflation, foreign exchange
rates, economic growth, etc. For example, rise in inflation rate of the economy will have the
negative impact on the company's price of their product and services, this will force the
organisation to set their products and service at higher price which may have the negative effect
on the performance of the organisation.
Socio-cultural Factors: These are the factors which are related to the society and have a
direct impact on the business of an organisation. These are the factors which do not control the
organisation but have a strong impact on the organisation. M&S has been successful in
modifying themselves a lot as per the customers changing needs and wants. Keeping in culture in

consideration M&S have changed the designs of their clothing which had a great fall due to
changing lifestyles of the customers. So this is a factor which has played a great role and have
effected M&S directly towards its operations and has also led to the closure of its many stores
across the world.
Technological Factors: Technological factor also effects the business of M&S, as this
factor is dynamic and keeps on changing constantly so it has become important for M&S to stay
updated with the technology in order to survive in the business. Customers across the world
harnessing the power of internet in order to purchase the products online and want the products
to be delivered at their door steps. For example, online shopping has enabled M&S to accelerate
and automate their services and has also helped the organisation to reduce the supply cycle as
products can be sold online. M&S are investing a huge amount of money in technology in order
to increase their efficiency.
Legal Factors: Legal factors are those factors which are related to the legal issue like
other companies M&S had also dealt with some legal issues. For example, BBC news had
reported that M&S was fined with 1 million GBP over the asbestos risk as it failed to protect the
customers and staff from asbestos risk.
Environmental Factors: Environmental factors is to be also considered by the
organisations and has become important for their survival and growth (Adamkasi., 2017). M&S
is one of the most sustainable brands of UK and they launched an initiative which is called the
Plan “A”. In this plan they set 100 commitments which have to be achieved in the period of 5
years. M&S is also formulated various strategies in order to contribute towards the environment.
4 CONCLUSION
It can be concluded from the above report that M&S is one of the major retailing
companies of UK which is huge and has got flat organisational structure. It can also be
summarised that the employees of the organisation are an important asset for M&S and play
various roles in achieving the objectives of an organisation. It can also be concluded that training
and development is part of an organisation and can help in improving the performance of the
employees. Also, present report concludes that Marketing Manager forms the major part and is
of great importance in an organisation.

REFERENCES
Books and Journals
Baldus, B. J., Voorhees, C. and Calantone, R., 2015. Online brand community engagement:
Scale development and validation. Journal of Business Research. 68(5). pp.978-985.
Bowen, D. E., 2016. The changing role of employees in service theory and practice: An
interdisciplinary view. Human Resource Management Review. 26(1). pp.4-13.
Cosenza, R. M. and Taylor, S. L., 2015. Determinant Skills for Developing Effective Marketing
Curriculum. In New Meanings for Marketing in a New Millennium (pp. 7-11). Springer,
Cham.
Cross, J. C., Belich, T. J. and Rudelius, W., 2015. How marketing managers use market
segmentation: An exploratory study. In Proceedings of the 1990 Academy of Marketing
Science (AMS) Annual Conference (pp. 531-536). Springer, Cham.
Dhar, R. L., 2015. Service quality and the training of employees: The mediating role of
organizational commitment. Tourism Management. 46. pp.419-430.
Erwin, K., Mosavel, M. and Marks, M., 2015. The inextricable link between community
engagement, community-based research and service learning: The case of an
international collaboration. South African Journal of Higher Education. 29(5). pp.214-
231.
Phadermrod, B., Crowder, R. M. and Wills, G. B., 2019. Importance-performance analysis based
SWOT analysis. International Journal of Information Management. 44. pp.194-203.
Widya and et.al., 2018. A PESTLE policy mapping and stakeholder analysis of Indonesia’s
fossil fuel energy industry. Energies. 11(5). p.1272.
Online
SWOT Analysis of Marks and Spencer 2017.[Online]. Available Through:
<https://www.freeswotanalysis.com/retailing-swot/761-swot-analysis-of-marks-and-
spencer-ms.html>.
Adamkasi., 2017. PESTLE Analysis of Marks and Spencer [Online]. Available Through:
<https://freepestelanalysis.com/pestle-analysis-of-mark-and-spencer-ms/>.