Strategic Management: Developing Competitive Position in a Challenging Business Scenario

Strategic Management
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Introduction
Strategic management is considered as the key to develop the competitive business
position in a fierce competitive landscape. The effective strategic development provides the
companies to develop their strengthen position in a challenging business scenario. The
companies look forward to achieve the competitive advantage by meeting their goals and
objectives. Strategic management provides the platform to enable their potential activeness to
work as per the business demands. The main purpose of the study is to develop the
understanding regarding the key issues faced by the multinational companies in order to
develop their strategic decisions and strengthening their competitive position in current
business scenario.
Marks and Spencer has achieved the leading position in the UK retail market and
strengthened their competitive position in a secured way. However, the extensive and
continuous growth in the retail market has been imposing threats to the existing retail
supermarket chains. Therefore, there is the continuous need for assessing the internal and
external business opportunities. The further sections of the study will thus analyse these
opportunities and present the significance of strategic management. The identification of the
potential challenges will lead to develop the effective strategic decisions that can sustain the
competitive position of the company in a competitive business scenario.
Company Overview
Marks and Spencer has been known as the leading retail company in UK. The
company has maintained the remarkable profit revenue since its establishment in offering
high quality food, clothes, and home appliances. Almost 65,000 employees have been serving
for M&S currently and they are much dedicated to perform their organisational
functionalities in almost 450 stores. The amount of food sales has accounted for almost
49.8%, which has captured almost 4.3% of the overall market share in UK retail industry.
Considering such steady growth in the market share, the company is looking forward to
develop its strategic decisions to retail the competitive position against emerging retail
companies. The following section of the study will thus concentrate on the internal and
external market of M&S to review the business potentiality based on which the company will
determine the business growth.
Part A: 1) Internal and External Opportunities and Strengths

The identification of the internal and external market provides the clear
understanding of the strengths and weakness of the company to deal with the external
opportunities and threats. Marks and Spencer is the leading retail chain in UK retail industry
that has been focusing on enhancing the value proposition to gather more customer base. The
internal market analysis of the company is presented below:
TOWS Matrix of M&S:
The analysis of the internal strengths and opportunities provides the idea of the
business potentiality to operate in the competitive market. The TOWS Matrix is generally
used for generating, comparing, and selecting the suitable strategies. Despite being the
similar roots as SWOT, TOWS matrix goes beyond the general description of business
strengths and opportunities. This technical tool creates the trade-off between the external and
internal factors. The TOWS matrix consists of four potential strategies that help in deriving
the importance of the business. The strategies are as follows:
Figure 1: TOWS Matrix
(Source: )
Strength and Opportunities (SO):