International Business Solved Assignment - Marks and Spencer

INTERNATIONAL
BUSINESS

Table of Contents
INTRODUCTION...........................................................................................................................1
TASK 1............................................................................................................................................1
In what manner international business support systems enables international trade..................1
Situational Analysis....................................................................................................................2
Conclusion and Recommendation...............................................................................................3
TASK 2............................................................................................................................................4
Cultural factors impacting the business of Marks and Spencer..................................................4
CONCLUSION................................................................................................................................8
REFERENCES................................................................................................................................9

INTRODUCTION
Today, it has been seen as one of the most important aspect across the organisations to
have such business in place which is able to achieve set growth and development. The below
report explores the international business and the factors which impacts countries while they
want to grow internationally. The report investigates the external factors which influence the
international businesses along with investigating the cultural differences. The chosen business
for the report is Marks and Spencer (Toms and Zhang, 2016). Marks and Spencer is Group plc is
a major British multinational retailer headquartered in Westminster, London. The chose
countries in which it wants to expand its products and service into are China and India.
TASK 1
In what manner international business support systems enables international trade
Business support systems or (BSS) refers to a group of business elements which are used
in networking to help Marks and Spencer in gaining customer insight, introducing new revenue
generating services and compiling real time subscriptions. It is critical because business service
providers helps the organisation to extend and support operations in order to enhance the services
of the businesses.
BSS provides Marks and Spencer with a synchronized, convergent and integrated
business environment. A good business support system provides control over the system and
tailors scheduling to Marks and Spencer and facilitates the implementation of required changes
without impacting the satisfaction of the customers. It activities typically includes billing and
rating, customer order management, customer data management, and Business to Business (B2B)
and Business to Consumer (B2C) services (Scott and Walker, 2017). The primary areas of
Business Support System are fulfillment management, product management, revenue
management, and customer management.
These business support systems are used by Marks and Spencer in order to enable
international trade within the organisation. These systems are known to provide better
controlling over the systems used by the Marks and Spencer. Having an effective control over
the system helps Marks and Spencer to understand how its own systems can be managed while
developing its products and services in the international market and promote itself on large scale.

The other important aspect which the business support systems covers includes gaining customer
insight. Understanding the customers wants and needs is one of the core requirement of business.
The business support systems help Marks and Spencer to understand the requirements of the
international customers and later it builds its products and services as per the these consumer
requirements and provides the with required satisfaction (Morgan, 2015). The system helps the
businesses to easily identify the important needs of the international customers which is difficult
because different customers have different needs, and identifying the needs of a particular area or
a community is difficult for Marks and Spencer at once.
The other aspect which is covered by the BSS that helps Marks and Spencer to enable
international trade is customer data management. Today, it has become difficult for the
organizations to manage the customer data on a large scale and ensure that set growth is being
achieved. It is one of the most important requirements of a business as well, because of customer
data allows the organisation to make use of the old data at required times. It becomes difficult
while large data needs to be stored in a single system (Maxwell, 2017). The business support
systems provides Marks and Spencer with opportunities where it can store large amount of data
in a single system. In order to grow itself internationally, it is important for Marks and Spence
that the data of the customers is being managed safely and this is only achieved with the help of
Business support systems in the organisation.
Situational Analysis
Below explored is the situation analysis (SWOT) of China and India, explaining the
external influencing factors and their impact on Marks and Spencer:
Strengths: The market of China is one of the rapidly growing market in the Asian
countries. The demand for new products and services is high, and the customers are seeking new
options to fulfill their desires. As being a retail organisation, Marks and Spencer can achieve
required growth in the market of China as the social factors are supportive towards the
organisation in order to grow in new markets. India is another beneficiary for Marks and Spencer
because the Indian population is in constant need of new options and the government has also
opened doorways for retail companies to be a part of the country. It can be seen that both
political and social situations are supportive for Marks and Spencer in order to grow its business