SWOT Analysis of Marks and Spencer Company

This report provides a SWOT analysis of Marks and Spencer Company, evaluating its internal strengths and weaknesses, as well as the opportunities and threats in its business environment. The report also examines the impact of business environment drivers on the company's marketing and sales departments.

Global Business
Environment
Table of Contents

INTRODUCTION.................................................................................................................................3
Task.......................................................................................................................................................3
SWOT Analysis.................................................................................................................................3
Essential areas...................................................................................................................................4
CONCLUSION.....................................................................................................................................5
REFERENCES......................................................................................................................................7

INTRODUCTION
Business environment is a sum of various internal and external factors that put an
impact over the business organisation as a part of the business operations. This report is based
on a case study on Marks and Spencer Company. The organisation is a retail organisation
based in UK. Micheal Marks and Thomas Spencer are the two founders of the company. In
this report analysis of company’s business environment would be conducted. SWOT Analysis
would summarise in this report to sum up the factors created impact over organisation related
to business environment. Furthermore, report will also evaluate the impact over the key
functional areas of company related to the drivers of business environment.
Task
SWOT Analysis
The SWOT Analysis helps in evaluating the internal strengths and weaknesses of the
company or organisations where the different internal factors that affect the overall
performance of the business and its decision making are evaluated accordingly. For M&S as
well, this can be done in a following manner:
Strengths
The major strengths of the company are:
The market experience of M&S is wide and
enormous as the company has been working
with a numerous number of partners
internationally as well.
The brand recognition is very high
throughout the world and the superiors
quality products are the major strengths
(Phadermrod, Crowder and Wills, 2019).
The international presence if the company
also acts as a beneficial point as this can help
the company in gaining prominence and
customers throughout the world. This
increases their overall revenue generation and
Weaknesses
There are certain inherent weaknesses of the
company as well which can be enumerated
as:
Off late, the sales of the company has
consistently declined on a global level and
this is mainly due to out of date fashion, lack
of adequate stock maintenance and the
increased maintenance costs as well.
The perception of the public regarding the
company and its products has changed where
the teenagers are not attracted to their styling
and even older people no longer find the
clothes as per the latest fashion practices.

profitability.
Opportunities
The different opportunities form which
company can benefit are:
The company can focus on rigorous
expansion at the international level where
they can exploit heavy advertising and
marketing strategies as well.
The online presence of the brand is not very
prominent and this is affecting their sales as
well. They can use digital media and its tools
to expand themselves more intricately into
the whole process.
Threats
The major threats that company faces are:
The competition has increased severely in the
clothing as well as the retail i.e. food
industry. Brands like Tesco, ASDA,
Sainsbury’s etc. in the food retailing industry
and Debenhams, H&M, Gap etc. in the
clothing industry are gaining much
prominence (Gürel and Tat, 2017). This acts
as a serious threat.
The declining number of stores is further
limiting the presence of the brand at both
national and international levels causing
further damage.
Essential areas
Drivers associated with the business environment put a huge impact over the business
operations of company. All the different functional areas of company are deeply affected with
such drivers of business environment.
Marketing department: Marketing department of Marks and Spencer Company is engaged
in channelizing key campaigns for company’s marketing and promotions. Drivers of business
environment like technology potentially influenced the company’s operations. Technological
advancements has significantly impacted over the company’s marketing approaches.
Technological drivers have guides the company to channelize different technological
advancements in conducting product promotions of company’s products. Marketing is among
the key essential areas involve in the functional areas of company as it significantly
influences the company’s potential to generate sales in market (Shageeva and et.al., 2017).

Technology driver of business environment has enhanced the growth of company with the
support of company’s promotional campaigns. Political driver has further improved the
marketing of company. The government has supported company to expand its business
operations. It can be projected that marketing is among the primary functional areas of
company as it directly contribute in the growth of company. The different drivers of business
environment has created a volatile culture for company’s marketing campaigns as with the
support of digital promotions company get to establish a strong brand image in market.
Sales department: Sales department is one of the key functional departments of company.
Sales department directly contribute in the growth of company. Sales department carry the
responsibility of channelizing sales of company. Drivers like technology and legal drivers of
business environment put an impact over the sales of company. With the support of
technology company get to meet up its sales targets. Different platforms like e-commerce
websites, digital selling and many other platforms are available for the Marks and Spencer
Company to achieve its sales targets (Singh and Agrawal, 2017). Legal driver is also a crucial
driver involve in business environment that put an impact over the business operations of
company. Due to government support no restrictions is opposed over retail company in
respect to sale of any of the retail sector products. This has supported company in expanding
the sales of company and also to expand the profitability of company. It can be projected that
drivers of business environment put a direct impact over the business operations of company.
Positive aspects involve in drivers has given a huge support to Marks and Spencer Company
for achieving all its business objectives.
The above mentioned points are the key functional areas of the Marks and Spencer
Company. These factors have supported company to achieve its overall objectives behind the
business operations of company.
CONCLUSION
This report has projected the internal analysis of company with the support of SWOT
Analysis tool. The analysis project about various strengths of company diversified products
and many others. Different impacts have also shown that drivers related with business
environment have put over the business of company. Marketing and sales of company are the
department that directly influenced with the drivers of business environment like technology,

legal and many other drivers. Business environment is the key factors that directly impacted
over the business capacity of company.

REFERENCES
Books and Journals
Gürel, E. and Tat, M., 2017. SWOT analysis: a theoretical review. Journal of International
Social Research 10(51).
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.
Shageeva, F. T. and et.al., 2017, September. Training the achievement-oriented engineers for
the global business environment. In International Conference on Interactive
Collaborative Learning (pp. 343-348). Springer, Cham.
Singh, V. and Agrawal, A., 2017. Impact of business environment on balancing innovation
process in Indian SMEs. International Journal of Business Innovation and
Research. 12(2). pp.224-239.