Principles of Practice Marketing for Next plc: Applying SOSTAC Model and Porter's Five Forces Analysis

Principles of Practice Marketing

Table of Contents
1.0 INTRODUCTION.....................................................................................................................1
2.0 OVERVIEW OF THE COMPANY..........................................................................................1
3.0 APPLYING SOSTAC MODEL................................................................................................2
3.1 PESTLE analysis...................................................................................................................3
3.2 Industry analysis- Porter’s five forces model........................................................................5
4.0 EVALUATING THE EFFECTIVENESS OF NEXT PLC’S CURRENT SOSTAC
STRATEGY....................................................................................................................................8
5.0 IMPLEMENTING CURRENT MARKETING STRATEGY USED BY NEXT PLC IN AN
INTERNATIONAL MARKET.......................................................................................................9
6.0 CONCLUSION........................................................................................................................10
REFERENCES..............................................................................................................................11
List of figures
Figure 1: Procedure of SOSTAC model..........................................................................................3
Figure 2: Porter's five forces model.................................................................................................5

1.0 INTRODUCTION
Marketing is a procedure for making existing and potential consumers to be interested in
the goods and services (Oyedijo, Idris and Aliu, 2012; Zwick and Cayla, 2011). Marketing
practices include the advertising, promotion, distribution of goods and services for sale etc. With
the help of marketing practices, it becomes convenient for the seller to deliver the products with
higher satisfaction to the consumers. In this context, the current report is based on marketing
practices of UK based company of fashion retailer Next plc which deals in clothing and other
accessories as electricity, home products, technology etc. Moreover, a SOSTAC model has been
used to know about the marketing practices of Next plc by including PESTLE analysis. Further,
industry analysis has been done in consideration of Next plc through Porter’s five forces model
to analyze the competitive situation in local and international retail market. Apart from this, the
effectiveness of current SOSTAC strategy has been identified in the context of Next plc and a
comparison is done for the achievement of potential growth. At the end, it has also been analyzed
that the current marketing strategy of Next plc can be implemented at the international level due
to suitability for the company as well as customers expectations.
2.0 OVERVIEW OF THE COMPANY
Next plc is a multinational clothing company which deals in fashionable products for
men, women and children. The company is operating the business since 1982 and has a wide
variety of clothing products along with shoes, home products and other accessories for the all age
group of people. By considering the fashion aspects, Next plc is offering the most stylish and
quality products to grab the entire international retail market (Next plc, 2018). From the year
2014, the company is gradually expanding the outlets all over the world. Moreover, Next plc has
more than 500 stores in home country UK as well as Eire. Furthermore, also associated with 200
stores in around 40 foreign countries. Apart from this, the company is also operating the online
business at a global level to meet the demand of customers at least 70 countries in and outside
the UK (Next plc, 2018).
Next plc has strong corporate connections with 702 family corporations and has 28
subsidiaries along with 673 branches all over the world of the retail sector. Further, the company
has a strong base of skilled employees approximate 58,706 who are capable to produce quality
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products. Besides these, Marks & Spencer Group, Debenhams, Arcadia group ltd. etc. are the top
competitors of Next plc in the UK and global market (Dun & Bradstreet, 2018).
3.0 APPLYING SOSTAC MODEL
The SOSTAC is a marketing model which was founded by PR Smith in 1990 and the
model refers to main six elements such as situation analysis, objectives, strategy, tactics, actions
and control (Smith and Zook, 2011). According to the SOSTAC model, the macro environment
and situational analysis has been done with respect to Next plc as follows-
 Situational analysis- On the basis of the situational analysis, the current situation of the
company has been identified that what is the market position, about competitors,
strengths and weaknesses of the company etc. Moreover, the managers of the company
apply the situational analysis to measure the internal and external environment with
respect to organization's customers, capabilities as well as the business environment
(Morse et al., 2016). Situational analysis can be done through industry analysis-Porter’s
five forces model, SWOT (Strengths, Weaknesses, Opportunities and Threats) and
PESTLE (Political, Economic, Social, Technological, Legal and environmental). Hence,
on the basis of these analyses, the current situation of Next plc can be easily analyzed that
where it is lying in a competitive market.
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