Revamping Product Line of Marks & Spencer: Marketing Mix Strategy and Recommendations

This report covers the revamping of the product line of Marks & Spencer, examining the marketing mix strategy, strengths and weaknesses, and recommendations for improvement. It also evaluates the use of digital marketing strategies and their contribution to the success of the organization.

Marketing
Management

Table of Contents
INTRODUCTION...........................................................................................................................................3
TASK............................................................................................................................................................3
Description of organization and Information of product line to be revamped........................................3
Current Marketing Mix Strategy of Marks & Spencer and identification of strengths and weaknesses of
this strategy.............................................................................................................................................5
Recommendations on how the company can improve its Marketing Mix strategy with justification of
changes....................................................................................................................................................7
Evaluation of use of appropriate digital marketing strategies, E-Marketing and M-Marketing strategies
and their contribution to the success of organization.............................................................................8
CONCLUSION.............................................................................................................................................10
REFERENCES..............................................................................................................................................12

INTRODUCTION
A business organization is an entity formed for the purpose of earning profits by
conducting commercial activities of buying and selling of goods or services. To ensure long-term
profitability of the business by developing a large customer base and increased market share,
businesses should develop appropriate marketing strategies for boosting their sales revenues.
They should develop appropriate planning and procedures for getting competitive advantage in
the market (Reutlinger, C., 2022) . The following report will cover the revamping of the product
line of Marks & Spencer. It is a UK based multinational public limited company in retail sector
headquartered in London , England and dealing in the product line of clothing , home and food
products. It has more than 1400 locations or stores worldwide. This report will cover the
revamping in the product line of clothing business of Marks & Spencer. It will examine the
marketing mix of this company and strengths and need for improvement within this marketing
mix. It will also provide the recommendations on improvement of Marketing Mix strategy.
Further, the report will also evaluate the use of digital marketing strategies, E-Marketing and M-
Marketing strategies and their contribution in the success of the organization.
TASK
Description of organization and Information of product line to be revamped
Marks & Spencer is a multinational public limited company in retail sector. It was
established in 1884 in UK and currently operating with more than 1400 stores worldwide. It has
the business and wide product line of clothing , home and food products. It has more than 900
stores all across UK of which more than 600 stores deal in food products line. Its brands include
Per Una , Autograph , M & S Collection , Goodmove etc. for both men and women. Most of its
stores are in UK and Ireland and rest in other international markets. Its stores include full line
stores , food hall (in-store) , home stores, outlet stores etc. The company has its own website i.e.
marksandspencer.com through which it provides regular notifications to all its stakeholders. It
also provides additional services such as M & S Bank, M& S Energy etc. it started its online
deliveries I the year 2017 and bought half of Ocado retail ltd. in 2019 (Khan, S.A.R., end et. al.,
2022) . The Ocado’s website has large access of customers where they order food and clothing

products for getting online deliveries. As regards marketing, it has its own logo on the back of
food products and on the in – store ordering receipts. It also frequently organizes high profile
media campaigns. By the use of digital Marketing, it also announced its Technology
transformation programme in the year 2018 for ensuring growth of the business.
Revamping in the product line of clothing
Revamping refers to update the features of the product or adding new features to it for
making it more presentable and increasing its sales in the market. By way of revamping,
companies change the look of their products such as by effective packaging designs to bring
some updates. It does not mean that they are changing it to that extent that customers are not able
to recognize the brand, it simply means to make customers switched to the product by adding
advance features to it and spreading brand awareness by presenting effective and recognizable
logos for the products (Gurreri, L., end et. al., 2022) . Here, the revamping is being done in the
product line of clothing business of Marks & Spencer. For revamping of the product , the
promotional strategies are the most crucial factors for any business or product line. Marks must
consider the following points for revamping of its clothing business:
 New Features : Marks & Spencer mostly deal in the western clothing products that
satisfy the needs of those customers who follow western culture. As it is a multinational
company operating in various countries including Asia where people prefer traditional
clothing, it should revamp its clothing products by adding traditional features to them to
attract more customers from Asian countries as well.
 Eliminating the poor image : It has been the perspective of large customer base of
Marks & Spencer that it is not providing the apparels for young generation and kids and
providing quality products to older people. So, it should strive to eliminate this poor
image and should revamp the clothing products to attract more young generation by
adding advance and modern features to its products.
 Market Testing : The first step for revamping a product must be testing the trends of
market and identifying the needs of customers. The business should collect the opinions
and feedbacks of customers regarding customer satisfaction and should add new features
to the product according the opinions obtained (Hamilton, M., 2022).

 Research & Development : It is an essential part for revamping as it includes advancing
sustainability in manufacturing clothing products. These activities aim at manufacturing
the products in sustainable way such as Marks and Spencer must ensure sustainability by
not letting burn tones of clothes as wastage.
 Advertising campaigns : Businesses must organize and conduct advertising and
promotional campaigns for making the public aware about the revamping of products.
Marks and Spencer organizes high profile media campaigns for its brand awareness that
will also be beneficial for introducing revamping in the clothing business to make public
aware about the new upgrades.
 Consumer Friendliness : The new features through revamping must ensure consumer
friendliness. Businesses should revamp the product with the objective of consumer
friendly and cost effective product. Marks and Spencer must consider cost effective
methods of revamping the clothing products. It should also pay attention to creating
consumer friendly logos for labeling its products to ensure better sustainability.
Current Marketing Mix Strategy of Marks & Spencer and identification of
strengths and weaknesses of this strategy
Marketing Mix Strategy of Marks & Spencer
Marketing Mix is the mixture of various components or marketing tools that the company
uses to achieve the marketing objectives of the targeted market. It helps in preparing marketing
plans and in understanding what the product could offer to the customers. A proper marketing
mix assists in planning, formulating and executing the effective marketing strategies
(Воловикова, М. and Стратийчук, Е., 2022) . It includes the 4 P’s of marketing. The following
is the marketing mix strategy of Marks and Spencer :
 Product : Marks & Spencer is a top brand of UK in retail industry. Its product portfolio
in the marketing mix covers the products of all age groups including men, women, kids
and olds as well. Its brands include Classic, Indigo, Per Una, Autograph , foot glove etc.
For women, it offers the products like Skirts, shirts, cardigans, blazers , jeans etc. It
offers its wide range of products for men as well that include the brands like goodmove
and many others.

 Price : Marks and Spencer follows competitive pricing strategy for its marketing mix.
The company has its in- house brands for clothing of men, kids and women as well. As it
offers premium quality of the products , it prices its brands in medium or high category
(King, K., 2022). But the company has many competitors like Tesco, Morrisons, Asda
etc. that it has a big competition with. So, to compete in the market, it follows a
competitive pricing strategy because customers can switch to its competitors. It has also
competition with online suppliers of clothing products. In seasonal time, it follows
dynamic pricing strategy.
 Place : Marks & Spencer is a multinational company that has more than 1400 stores in
almost 50 countries. Most of its stores are located in UK. It has operations in India as
well where it has more than 50 stores. Further it has located its stores in other countries as
well such as France, Ireland , turkey , Spain , Finland etc. where the customers has easy
access to its products. Its website is also accessible to its customers where they can order
the products and can get home deliveries. It also provides international deliveries for
some of its limited clothing or food products.
 Promotion : For promotion of its products, it follows strategy of advertising campaigns
with digital marketing. It also uses social media campaigns, newspapers, print media and
televisions for promoting its products. It uses its website for promoting the brands for
men , women, and kids where it also shows blogs and tips for fashion for its customers. It
also promotes its seasonal sales by providing specific discounts. It has a specific program
for loyalty i.e. Sparks. In a nutshell, it has a high-profile promotional strategies for
developing a large customer base by way of digital marketing and social media platforms.
Identification of strengths and areas for improvement in marketing mix strategy
Strengths
 Large Global Presence : According to the marketing mix place strategy, M & S has
wide reach on global market with more than 1400 stores for clothing as well as food
products of which major percentage is of clothing products. It is operating in more than
50 countries and attracting the large customer base from those countries (Solomon, M.R.
and Mrad, M., 2022).

 Brand Awareness : M & S has strong brand awareness in domestic as well as global
market. In its marketing mix strategy, its brand plays a key role in promoting its
products as it has loyalty of customers towards the brand. It has brand for men,
women as well as kids.
Areas for improvement
 Technology : Although Marks & Spencer has an online store and own website as
well, but still it is far behind from the big retail stores such as Amazon or ebay
etc. So, it should enhance its online delivery process by effective use of E-
marketing and e-commerce for increasing sales of its existing as well as revamped
products.
 Need for Revamp : As it is a popular brand , it needs to protect its products from
being misused by fake imitation products. It should revamp its products so as to
make them more recognizable and make customers switch to the products
(Gordon, G.E., 2022). It should consider this aspect in marketing mix strategy to
develop its customer base and to ensure success of the business.
Recommendations on how the company can improve its Marketing Mix
strategy with justification of changes
Marks and Spencer has some limitations in its marketing mix strategy that it should
improve for better promotion of its existing as well as revamped products. It should consider the
following recommendations for improving its marketing mix strategy:
 Recommendation for product : M & S had to face downturns for its brand image of
apparel due to old fashion. As the clothing products are categorized as fashion products,
they fail due to outdated design or poor size fit, poor positioning or presentation; poor value
or pricing. Marks & Spencer is recommended to revamp its clothing products by having
better presentation, providing upgraded or contemporary designs in the products for
considering new generation. Apart from that, consumers have complaints regarding size of
its women apparels (Kitchen, P.J. and Tourky, M.E., 2022). Especially in Chinese market,
customers face size problems in the clothing products of M & S. so, it is recommended to

the company that while entering a new market, it is important to research consumers’ sizes ,
body structure and culture.
 For Price : For making price strategy, company must consider cost as well as customer
value. M & S got success in setting the pricing strategies for UK and other companies but
got failed in China. It set high prices due to which it had to face low demand and
ultimately low revenues. So, it is recommended to set the cost effective prices taking into
account the customers’ value and culture of the market.
 For Place : Although Marks and Spencer has large number of stores worldwide giving
the company brand advantage but still it faced location challenges in the Chinese market
due to its wrong presentation of the chosen location. It chose a location that did not create
brand impact on the customers there because of choosing an inappropriate location just
for expansion purpose. So, it is recommended to locate the stores in the location that
ensure viable business and create brand awareness by effective presentation of branded
products.
 For Promotion : In the Asian market, especially in Chinese market, people do not have
much brand awareness of the company. Its brand is not recognizable in the Chinese
market (Abraham, P. and Lakshminarayanan, S., 2022). So, it is recommended to the
company to conduct advertising campaigns in the Asian markets as well to develop large
customer base. It will provide great benefits in terms of revenues due to the large
population in Asian market.
Evaluation of use of appropriate digital marketing strategies, E-Marketing and
M-Marketing strategies and their contribution to the success of organization
Digital Marketing refers to the promotion of products and services of the business using
online platforms or other ways of digital communication. It is also known as online marketing. It
does not only include email, social media or website marketing, but also includes texts and
multimedia messages for marketing of products through these marketing channels. It helps the
company in increasing brand awareness as well as profitability (Hernandez, L.I.M.D., 2022) .
Marks and Spencer is a big retailer in UK dealing in wide variety of products. It has adopted
various marketing techniques for attracting customers globally.

The management of Marks & Spencer had taken the initiatives for digital marketing strategy in
the year 2018. It declared new Technology Transformation Programme as part of digital
marketing for promoting the business internationally. It also uses its website for taking orders of
customers and providing home deliveries. It had also joined with ‘Decoded’ for setting the M &
S data academy that promoted digital transformation throughout the organization by bringing
efficiency in the automation process of employees (Alyoshina, I.V., 2022) . It had also launched
an Artificial intelligence driven visual search technology for its mobile website. Although due to
covid19, it faced decline in clothing business sale, but due to the increase in online business, its
digital marketing strategies proved to be beneficial in increasing the sales revenues for the
business and ensuring contribution to success as well.
Role of E-Marketing and M-Marketing Strategies in contributing to the success of the
Organization
E- Marketing is a promotional activity that includes the marketing activities by the use of
electronic devices or internet. It is also a part of digital marketing that includes advertising
through email, social media , mobile and web banners etc. Digital marketing is a broader term
that includes E -Marketing. M- Marketing refers to Mobile Marketing that includes advertising
through mobile. It includes advertising of the products through mobile texts, websites and email
through mobiles by way of communication with customers. Both E-marketing and M-marketing
are part of digital marketing as digital marketing is a broader term (Sharma, L.K., 2022). The
role of E marketing and M-marketing in success of organization is explained below :
 Wider target market : These marketing techniques are used by the businesses to access
large market to satisfy the needs of large customer base effectively and efficiently to
ensure customer satisfaction. Under e-marketing, they have to use wide variety of content
marketing strategies, social media and e-commerce websites. Marks and Spencer must
use E marketing techniques to achieve brand awareness in Chinese market to spread
brand awareness there.
 Customer relations Management : E and M marketing helps in making strong customer
relations management that helps in achieving increased sales by retaining the customers
and thereby contributes to the success of the business (Iksyanti, D.Z. and Hidayat, A.M.,

2022). So, Marks and Spencer is also recommended to adopt the techniques of E
marketing and M marketing for ensuring customer retention.
 Cost effective : The digital marketing or e marketing are the cost effective methods of
marketing that involves less costs of promotion than traditional marketing techniques
such as press releases or advertising campaigns or newspapers etc. Advertising through
own website or mobile communication such as email, social media advertising are proved
to be more cost effective. So, Marks & Spencer must ensure conduct of digital marketing
campaigns to ensure boost in sales for clothing as well as food business.
 Research and Development : Digital marketing helps in getting opinions and feedbacks
of customers for launching a new product or revamping the existing product that helps in
making successful strategies for marketing. Getting opinions through social media
platforms is more cost effective than organizing physical advertising campaigns for
product promotion. So. Marks and Spencer should use websites and social media
platforms for promoting its products.
 Brand awareness and revamping : Digital marketing including E Marketing and M
Marketing helps in creating rand awareness and also in revamping of the product through
promotional strategies via online platforms on a global basis (Nandy, M., 2022). As in the
present case, Marks & Spencer is going to revamp the clothing business to improve its
marketing mix strategies, it must take into account the digital marketing strategies to
increase awareness about the revamped product in the international market.
CONCLUSION
From the above discussion, it has been concluded that the businesses should adopt
appropriate marketing strategies to promote their products and to increase the sale of their
products , they must strive to develop a large customer base by formulating a proper marketing
mix strategy. For the purpose of revamping the product, they should consider elimination of poor
image of the product to add advance features to it to make it more accessible in the global
market. They should conduct proper market research for successful launch of the revamped
product. The businesses should identify the strengths of their marketing mix strategies and
improve the weaknesses for ensuring better promotion and increased brand awareness. By
suggesting the proper marketing strategies, it is recommended to the businesses to choose the

right place and select right pricing strategies as a part of marketing mix. Businesses must use
digital marketing techniques to promote their products as it will provide cost and time benefits.
They should also take advantage of E marketing and M marketing for advertising their products
effectively and efficiently.

REFERENCES
(Books and journals)
Abraham, P. and Lakshminarayanan, S., 2022. Data Science and Its Applications. In Big Data
Applications in Industry 4.0 (pp. 1-38). CRC Press.
Alyoshina, I.V., 2022. Marketing in Russia in an Age of Digital Globalization. In Proceedings of
the International Scientific Conference “Smart Nations: Global Trends In The Digital
Economy” (pp. 189-197). Springer, Cham.
Gordon, G.E., 2022. Marketing Scotch whisky. In Whisky and Other Spirits (pp. 509-544).
Academic Press.
Gurreri, L., end et. al., 2022. Coupling of electromembrane processes with reverse osmosis for
seawater desalination: Pilot plant demonstration and testing. Desalination, 526, p.115541.
Hamilton, M., 2022. What Happens to Our Kids When We Fail to Grow Up: How to equip
ourselves for a better future. Hachette UK.
Hernandez, L.I.M.D., 2022. An integrated marketing communications campaign for Razza
Consulting Group.
Iksyanti, D.Z. and Hidayat, A.M., 2022. Pengaruh Social Media Marketing melalui Electronic
Word Of Mouth pada Platform Tiktok terhadap Keputusan Pembelian di Shopee. YUME:
Journal of Management, 5(2), pp.11-18.
Khan, S.A.R., end et. al., 2022. A systematic literature review on circular economy practices:
challenges, opportunities and future trends. Journal of Entrepreneurship in Emerging
Economies.
King, K., 2022. AI Strategy for Sales and Marketing: Connecting Marketing, Sales and
Customer Experience. Kogan Page Publishers.
Kitchen, P.J. and Tourky, M.E., 2022. The Global Marketplace Considerations. In Integrated
Marketing Communications (pp. 31-48). Palgrave Macmillan, Cham.
Nandy, M., 2022. Introduction to Pharmaceutical Marketing Management. In Relationship
between R&D and Financial Performance in Indian Pharmaceutical Industry (pp. 1-27).
Palgrave Macmillan, Singapore.
Reutlinger, C., 2022. “It’s Meant to Be a Hazing Process”: Deciphering Ableism Surrounding
Academic Accommodations. In Redefining Disability (pp. 240-255). Brill.
Sharma, L.K., 2022. Impact of Augmented Reality in Sales and Marketing. Integrating New
Technologies in International Business: Opportunities and Challenges, p.253.
Solomon, M.R. and Mrad, M., 2022. Fashion & Luxury Marketing. SAGE.

Воловикова, М. and Стратийчук, Е., 2022. The Course of English for University Students (Step
2). Litres.