Changes and Strategies in UK Fashion Retail Industry - Marks and Spencer

This report discusses the changes and trends affecting the fashion retail industry in the UK, with a focus on Marks and Spencer. It covers political, technological, economic, environmental, social, and legal changes, as well as changing trends in the industry. The report also provides strategies and suggestions for fashion retailers to respond to these changes, including using both traditional and digital marketing, forecasting, continuous innovation, staff training, promoting lesser-known products, using governmental support, embracing the new reality, creating style guides, and using video marketing.

Retail Theory and
Practice

Table of Contents
INTRODUCTION ..........................................................................................................................3
TASK ..............................................................................................................................................3
Changes faced by fashion retailers in UK...................................................................................3
Strategies and suggestions that could be used to respond the changes occurring in the retail
fashion industry...........................................................................................................................6
CONCLUSION ...............................................................................................................................9
REFERNCES:................................................................................................................................10
Books and Journals:..................................................................................................................10

INTRODUCTION
The retail industry is one of the biggest but yet challenging industries among all. It
affected by hundred of factors, consisting advanced technologies to economic uncertainties. The
UK exit from EU has been one of the biggest change in the history of UK. The European Union
has been regulating its import and export activities in its member regions but this exit of UK
creates new environment for fashion retailers in the UK market (Amasiatu and Shah, 2018). The
report is based on the famous fashion retailer i.e. Marks and Spencer (M&S). It is headquartered
in London, England. It is a multinational fashion retailer which specialises in merchandising
food products, home products and clothing. The company was established by Michael Marks and
Thomas Spencer in 1884. It has allocated their business operations across UK with 959 stores.
The following report is discussing some relevant changes and trends that affects fashion industry
in UK while developing some business strategies that could be useful to respond to the big
changes happening in the retail industry.
TASK
Changes faced by fashion retailers in UK.
The clothing industry has been severely affected by the changes and trends occurring in
the fast-moving retail market. It is vital for brand and retailers like Marks and Spencer to keep
their eye on the changes and trends, The following are some changes that affects the fashion
retail industry: Political changes in the UK fashion: After an exit from EU, many organizations face
political instability which affects their trades across Europe. The company worry about
tariff rates that will rise and by how much rate. As the trade policies of European Union
was free, the M&S paid zero tariffs on their import and export activities to UK, which
means that the company could sell their merchandise at the same prices. But now the
company has to pay import and export duties for their products which increases their cost
on goods. Selling products at high prices than their rivalries such as Arcadia group in UK
will adversely effects on the business. Before Brexit, the policies have not been created
which brings fall outs in the business (Bär, Herbert-Hansen and Khalid, 2018). Technological changes: UK is one of the countries which is high in advancing the
technologies. The smartphones penetration in the UK has been increasing in the past

years. This made the customers to change their shopping habits from offline shopping
such as go to store and shop, to online shopping that means shop desired products on
their smart phones or computers. Customers are now like to prefer shop over the
company's official websites (Filser and Et.al., 2018). Economic changes: In UK, the population rate is high and enabling infrastructure allows
companies to smoothing out their business operations which makes the nation attain 5th
largest GDP in the whole universe after the US, Germany and Japan. However, the
country was affected by recession and the conditions of recessions are just decreasing.
The M&S also has been affected which results that their target could not be attained. This
recession situation creates a high cost of living which affects the buying patterns to buy
the cloths all time. Hence, the M&S had to store its cloths for a longer period of time.
The inflation rate also affects the retail industry in UK which is increasing. In 2017, it has
reached to 3.1% which resulted increased prices on merchandise of M&S. Hence, the
organization is facing some challenging situations in order to regain their customer
confidence while selling them at such prices which delivers profits to the company. Environmental changes that affects the retail industry: The recessionary time creates
such an environment that makes every retail company struggling and finds difficulties to
rise at the expected rate. In context of M&S, the company tries to expand more by
enhancing their overall sales in the country, the recessionary environment discourages
such a step. It makes them difficult to meet the targets (Guenther, Johan and Schweizer,
2018). Social changes: The UK consists with diversified population and have multi-ethnic
cultures that affects the various companies. Every citizen has different needs and desires
that affects the business. Legal changes: In 2018, GDPR (General Data Protection Regulatory) came into an
action in which company requires to use transparent customer data on every e-commerce
sites and social media. In context of M&S, the company require to follow this rule and
regulation in order to avoid any litigations.
Changing trends in the UK Fashion Retail Industry: Online shopping: In the past years, customers have a switching intention from offline
shopping from malls to shop over e-commerce websites. Most of the customers prefer

online purchasing rather than shopping in the stores. In the fashion retail industry, the
retailer such as M&S are exerting this kind of pressure by using their sites to improve the
sales. In the retail industry, the firms are required to use the e-commerce websites
because of the set level of competitions. Increased competition in the Retail fashion market: In UK, there are so many firms in
the retail industry which brings undue competition in the fashion market. This
competitions has led to decline in the product's prices by some fashion retailers. Hence,
big offers and discounts have been offered to attract the customers. Changing in marketing strategies: Earlier times, print media and television were the
popular and reliable channels of marketing. However, advancement in technologies have
bring major changes to use digital channels to promote product and services. Marketing
on social media is a big trend in clothing industry. Social media sites such as Facebook,
Twitter, Instagram, YouTube and many more are being utilized to advertise the brand and
its offerings. Links are provided on social media pages which allow the customer to go
directly to company's websites (Kirk and Rifkin, 2020). Engagement retail: Retailers priority is always to make their customers engaged with
their brand and its products. Fashion retailers require to identify the methods of customer
engagement in such way that it delivers several benefits to them. It is based on three
themes that are convenience, information and entertainment. This is only the activity to
know and understand the potential customers as well as their needs in order to make
them happy and satisfied with maximum benefits. Through Customer Relationship
Management (CRM), retailers are obtaining the information and content related with
customers' preferences, preferred product and their buying behaviour and patterns so that
retailers will be more intuitive in how customer engage. Instant fashion recognition: In the forthcoming future, street fashion be signified and
make it possible to capture any product, find it and then purchase it. It is found that
mobile image recognition and other visual research is a new change in the fashion
industry which makes customers to access any information on their cell phones. So, in
UK, many retailers accept this change in order to cope up with other members in the
industry.

 Body versus fashion: Nowadays, personal style is fading away from the wardrobe.
Fashion is becoming the side show as the people like to inked tattoos on their body, nose
piercings, multiple piercings and hair-dos. It is researched that 54% population have
multiple tattoos on their body, non-traditional colour, earlobe piercing. It is a major
change in the retail industry that fashion of clothes has been decreasing day by day as
millennials turn to pared-back fashion (Mou, Robb and DeHoratius, 2018).
 Retailers led communities: Fashion retailers are rapidly catching the reality that effective
brand group could support in developing closer relationships with customers, which
impacts positively on their loyalty with brand.
Strategies and suggestions that could be used to respond the changes occurring in the retail
fashion industry.
Fashion retailers have to rethink about their marketing strategies in order to respond the
rapid changes and trends that have been takes place in the industry. It is important to find out the
methods and solution to overcome that challenging situations in the fashion retail industry. In
context of Marks and Spencer, the following are some strategies that could help in coping with
the changes: Use both traditional and digital marketing: Traditional marketing like print media or
television and digital marketing that uses social media platforms are both useful for the
organization. It is impactful to use both kind of marketing strategies in order to reach the
customers. The brand should use both the strategies to increase their sales without
avoiding either of them. Millennials are using internet very thoroughly and targeting
those people through social media marketing can be viewed as a wide idea. However,
both the media are not same but when mutually work can enhance the sales and company
could reach their customers in a most effective way. Bot media cannot be replaced but
works significantly for the company. Forecasting: Every part of the universe, people gets encouraged and influenced by
others' cloths. It is important for the company to carrying a research on the customers'
choices, preferences, likes or even culture. Customers get influenced and like the dressing
of others which makes them to purchase the same cloths and adopts others culture in
fashion sense. Such kind of research helps marketers to reduce the risks related with
apparel.

 Continuous innovation: Retailers in the industries are focused on to innovate the
business strategies to create more sales for the brand. Retailers in fashion industry should
be innovative enough to gain the competitive benefits (Mountfield and Et.al., 2021). One
of the big challenges that fashion retailers face increased competition in the UK market.
Innovation is an effective and useful tool that can be utilized to reduce the immense
competition in the market. There are multiple digital platforms which sell branded
products without being involved personally with customers. M&S should enhance their
sells by developing more on social media channels.
 Staff training: The most biggest challenge in the fashion industry is ever changing
trends. A new design in clothes can enhance the sales but can become outdated or old
fashioned after year or months. If clothes are not being used by the customers for a year
then it can be ignored by them for new fashions. Although Marks and Spencer using their
stores with latest fashion collection, staff training is important. These trainings include
how the staff should respond to ever changing trends in the fashion retailing. Companies
also practicing advanced technologies in their business processes in which they are
required to train their staff and employees on how to use the latest technologies. The staff
members in the stores are also interacting with the customers which shows the legacy of
brand. They influence customer to buy the clothes while developing the long-term loyalty
for the future. Hence, every staff members should be well trained in order to develop and
maintain a good relations with customers (Wen and Et.al., 2019). Promote lesser-known products: Covid-19 is also one of the biggest change in the
history of industry. The pandemic has changed the spending habits of customers. For
some retailers such as pharmacies and grocers, this never been questioned and affected.
Fashion retailers such as M&S, faced a different experience. Fashion retailers turned on
the market for the products and services which are lesser-known to customers such as
fitness accessories, home décor, electronics that are associated with the needs of
customers rather than their wants. As a result, the demand for home essentials has been
increased during that situation, redecorating their home became the second priority their
customers. Content alteration and marketing shifts are the essential strategies to follow
when reacting to these changes.

 Use governmental support: Governments are providing several support such as
contribution to the interests on bank loans or tax reduction. Governmental support can be
an effective option as well as cheap. It will allow businesses to keep paying their
expenses without facing the problem of bankruptcy. Although, this support will be
cheaper to companies but they require to pay it back to them as earlier as possible. This
can create the problem for firms that are not able to continue their business at the same
rate. Support can be viewed as request that can provide the opportunity to carry on their
business activities (Pandey, Singh and Pathak, 2021). Embrace the new reality: Accepting the change and new reality is the best option to
manage the outbreaks. This will help company to understand the new trends and changes
in the habits of customers. Firms must pay close attention to these changes in the
environment (Vogt, Andereck and Pham, 2020). For example, many customers have
been working remotely due to the covid-19 pandemic which have a great influence on the
customer preferences and habits of buying anything. It also affects the demand for
apparel. It is important to acknowledge that people now wear more informal cloths rather
than formal clothes as they work are working from home. It completely changes their
shopping preferences. Hence, shopping for casual clothes have been increasing.
 Create style guides: Being in the fashion retail industry, it seems that pairing shoes,
accessories and clothing are easy and natural to customers. However, the customers do
not have that much knowledge and guide to the fashion. In order to help the customers to
look best, create style books or guides. This will be a great tool for the companies to
guide and customers to look good with best styling tips.
 Use video marketing: It is not a secret at all that marketers who use video marketing in
their strategies are grow revenue faster than those who do not use the video. There are
multiple methods to use and make an attractive video in the fashion industry. In order to

show summer or spring or winter collection to the customers, video can be an effective
option to provide a sneak peak into the new collection (Rooderkerk, DeHoratius and
Musalem, 2021). This kind of marketing can be useful for official websites of company,
social media ads, email marketing campaigns and many more.
 Quality blog: Blogging is not only a best strategy to share free content with the viewers
buy it can be an effective fashion retailing method. Running a quality and consistent blog
can help to grow among competitions by leading more traffic to the company. This is a
great way to connect directly with the viewers to develop loyalty (Swoboda and Winters,
2021).
CONCLUSION
It has been concluded from the above sections is that fashion retail industry is a fast
growing industry throughout the world. The fashion retail industry consist with major challenges
that have a direct influence on the customer purchase. There are several changes and trends takes
place in the retail industry, which is important for retailers to accept and go with the flow to meet
the targets. By developing and applying appropriate strategies to meet those changes and latest
trends, retailers could be able to meet the customers needs and expectations.

REFERNCES:
Books and Journals:
Amasiatu, C. V. and Shah, M. H., 2018. First party fraud management: framework for the retail
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Bär, K., Herbert-Hansen, Z. N. L. and Khalid, W., 2018. Considering Industry 4.0 aspects in the
supply chain for an SME. Production Engineering, 12(6), pp.747-758.
Filser, M. and Et.al., 2018. Tracing the roots of innovativeness in family SMEs: The effect of
family functionality and socioemotional wealth. Journal of Product Innovation
Management, 35(4), pp.609-628.
Guenther, C., Johan, S. and Schweizer, D., 2018. Is the crowd sensitive to distance?—How
investment decisions differ by investor type. Small Business Economics, 50(2), pp.289-
305.
Kirk, C. P. and Rifkin, L. S., 2020. I'll trade you diamonds for toilet paper: Consumer reacting,
coping and adapting behaviors in the COVID-19 pandemic. Journal of Business
Research, 117, pp.124-131.
Mou, S., Robb, D. J. and DeHoratius, N., 2018. Retail store operations: Literature review and
research directions. European Journal of Operational Research, 265(2), pp.399-422.
Mountfield, A., and Et.al., 2021. Barriers to implementing sustainability experienced by middle
managers in the fast-moving consumer goods and retail sector. In Research Handbook
of Sustainability Agency. Edward Elgar Publishing.
Pandey, P., Singh, S. and Pathak, P., 2021. An exploratory study on factors contributing to job
dissatisfaction of retail employees in India. Journal of Retailing and Consumer
Services, 61, p.102571.
Rooderkerk, R. P., DeHoratius, N. and Musalem, A., 2021. Retail Analytics: The Quest for
Actionable Insights from Big Data on Consumer Behavior and Operational
Execution. Chicago Booth Research Paper, (21-18).
Swoboda, B. and Winters, A., 2021. Reciprocity within major retail purchase channels and their
effects on overall, offline and online loyalty. Journal of Business Research, 125, pp.279-
294.

Vogt, C. A., Andereck, K. L. and Pham, K., 2020. Designing for quality of life and
sustainability. Annals of Tourism Research, 83, p.102963.
Wen, F. and Et.al., 2019. Retail investor attention and stock price crash risk: evidence from
China. International Review of Financial Analysis, 65, p.101376.