Business and the Business Environment: Company Analysis Report

This report provides a detailed analysis of the business environment, focusing on three major companies: Wesfarmers, Marks & Spencer (M&S), and Procter & Gamble (P&G). The report begins with an overview of each company, including their vision, mission, objectives, and organizational structures. The analysis then delves into the interrelation of different functions within M&S. A significant portion of the report is dedicated to a PESTLE analysis of Marks & Spencer, examining the political, economic, social, technological, legal, and environmental forces impacting the company. Furthermore, a SWOT analysis of M&S is conducted, highlighting its strengths, weaknesses, opportunities, and threats. The report concludes by exploring the interrelation between internal and external aspects of the business environment, providing a comprehensive understanding of the challenges and opportunities faced by the companies. The report uses the Harvard Referencing System.

Running head: BUSINESS ENVIRONMENT
Business Environment
7/5/2019

BUSINESS ENVIRONMENT 1
Table of Contents
Section 1.....................................................................................................................................2
Introduction................................................................................................................................2
Overview of Businesses.........................................................................................................2
Wesfarmers............................................................................................................................2
Vision and Mission............................................................................................................2
Objective............................................................................................................................3
Organizational and Legal Structure of Wesfarmers...........................................................3
Marks & Spencer....................................................................................................................4
The vision of Marks & Spencer.........................................................................................4
The mission of Marks & Spencer.......................................................................................4
The objective of Marks & Spencer....................................................................................4
Organizational and Legal Structure...................................................................................4
Procter & Gamble..................................................................................................................5
The vision of Procter & Gamble........................................................................................5
The mission of Procter & Gamble.....................................................................................5
Objective............................................................................................................................5
Organizational and Legal structure....................................................................................6
The interrelation between different functions of Marks & Spencer......................................6
Section 2.....................................................................................................................................7
PESTLE Analysis of Marks & Spencer.................................................................................7
SWOT Analysis of Marks & Spencer....................................................................................8
Strength..............................................................................................................................8
Weakness............................................................................................................................9
Opportunity........................................................................................................................9
Threat.................................................................................................................................9
The interrelation of Internal and external aspects..................................................................9
References................................................................................................................................10

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Section 1
Introduction
In recent time, the international business is growing at a fast pace due to strategic imperatives
and changes in the environment. Strategic imperatives are comprised of the need to leverage
abilities, seeking a new market, procuring resources, and matching the competitor's actions
(Cavusgil, Knight and John, 2014). This section of the report is comprised of a brief analysis
of three organizations of different size, type, and purpose that are Wesfarmers, Marks &
Spencer, and Procter & Gamble.
Overview of Businesses
Wesfarmers
Wesfarmers is a famous Australian conglomerate with headquarter in Path. The sectors in
which company majorly operates its business are coal mining, retail, industrial, as well as
chemical products. The operations of the organization are spread in the Australian and New
Zealand market. In the financial year 2016, Wesfarmers became the largest organization of
Australia with the revenue of over AU$65.95 billion. In addition to this, the company is the
largest employer in the private sector of Australia with around 220,000 personnel
(Wesfarmers, 2019a).
Vision and Mission
The mission of Wesfarmers is to establish and follow the highest ethical standards among all
the businesses that are working in different industrials like coal mining, chemical, and retail
of Australia and New Zealand.

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The vision of Wesfarmers Group is to maintain long term relationship with the suppliers,
customers, and other business partners and to have a sustainable and responsible sourced
supply chain.
Objective
The key objective of Wesfarmers is to deliver satisfactory returns to the shareholders.
Organizational and Legal Structure of Wesfarmers
Source [(Wesfarmers, 2019b)]
Wesfarmers follow limited liability Company as its corporate structure, where the owner of
the group is personally not liable for the liabilities and debts. The main stakeholders of the
company are government, consumer, supplier, media, community, shareholders, employees,
etc.

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Marks & Spencer
Marks & Spencer Group Plc is the multinational retailer with headquarter in Westminster,
London. It is involved in offering high-quality food products, home products, and clothing.
The stocks of the company are listed on the stock exchange of London and are one of the
important constituents of the FTSE 100 Index. Presently, the M&S has 959 stores all over
UK (Marks & Spencer, 2019).
Marks & Spencer - Vision
The Marks & Spencer’s vision is to establish higher standards against which all the players in
the industry are measured.
Marks & Spencer - Mission
The Marks & Spencer’s mission is to provide access to the aspirational quality to all.
The objective of M&S
The company’s objective is to establish a sustainable business by reliable, profitable growth
and ensuring that the company works in a responsible manner for meeting its accountability
towards stakeholders and shareholders.
Organizational and Legal Structure
Source [(Connor, McFadden and McLean, 2019)]

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Marks & Spencer follows the Limited Liability Company as its legal structure in order to
have limited liability for the debts to the extent of the amount of the capital is invested. The
key stakeholder of the company is employees, consumers, suppliers, etc.
Procter & Gamble
Procter & Gamble is a well-known MNC of consumer goods with headquarter in the United
States. In the year 1837 the operations of the company were established by William Procter
and James Gamble. The company specializes in providing a variety of personal care,
consumer/ personal health, and hygiene product. All these products are arranged in diverse
divisions such as health care, grooming, baby care, beauty, fabric, family care, etc. P&G
presented $83.1 billion of sales in 2014 (Procter & Gamble, 2019a).
Procter & Gamble - Vision
The company’s vision is to offer superior service and product to the target market across the
world (P&G, 2019).
Procter & Gamble - Mission
The company’s mission is to offer products with high quality that could contribute to
enhancing the lives of the consumer across the world now and in the future.
Objective
 Establishing faster-developing business with global leadership potential
 Creating the existing business in the more stronger leaders
 Attaining growth in the main emerging markets

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Organizational and Legal structure
Source [https://www.slideshare.net/PRIYAJNVCTC/organizational-structure-comparision-
proctor-gamble-and-unilever]
P&G is a publically traded company with the dispersed ownership among the general public
in terms of stock that are traded in the New York stock exchange (Procter & Gamble, 2019b).
The stakeholders of the company are consumer, employees, suppliers, investors,
communities, and shareholders.
The interrelation between different functions of Marks & Spencer

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Under the functional organizational structure, diverse functions are handover to a separate
department that provides reporting to the manager of the department, who then provide a
report to the board of directors (Jones, 2013). From the report of the different department, the
top management takes proper decisions. The finance department of the company provides a
report related to the budget for the marketing department by analyzing the requirement of
marketing department report. In addition to this, the human resource department of the
company provides report related to available human resource for the marketing department
for the promotion of the business. All the function of the company performs an important role
in the development of the company.
Section 2
PESTLE Analysis (Marks & Spencer)
Political Force – As per the analysis, it has been analyzed that M&S has gained benefit from
the agreement of free trade of the European Commission, however, the increasing discussion
on Brexit has resulted in decreasing the sales of the company (Cole, 2019).
Economic Force – During the worldwide economic downturn in 2008, opponents like Tesco
and Aldi adopted the discounting strategy, but M&S emphasized on offering a high-quality
product to increase the consumer satisfaction. Due to this strategy the sales of the company
declined in the short-term but in long-term it increased the confidence of the customer due to
the desire of the customer to look for high value as well as quality.
Social Force – The aspects that impact the retailer in the industry are changing value for the
population and generation shift as the generation of baby boomer is retiring, due to which
company has to shift its attention to generation X. Different generation carries different
consumer behavior the way they do shopping, use technology, and channel. This

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results in impacting the business of the company and enforce it to change its strategies and
services.
Technological Force – Marks & Spencer is at a better strategic position for enjoying the
benefits of the altering background of media, the circulation of the social networks and
accumulative mobile surf. In consideration of the fashion business, the speed of introduction
of the latest trends has augmented this majorly impacts the business.
Legal Force – Regulations for the health of consumer, environmental, consumer rights and
antitrust affect the company. The company has taken a number of initiatives such as ‘Behind
the Barcode' provide patrons an omnichannel experience which allows them to place the
order of the products on online medium and get the delivery of the product at home or in-
store collection through scanning of product in-store.
Environmental Force – With the increasing pressure at the European and international level
in relation to the environmental rules and augmented consumer concern related to the
practices of business, a number of retailers and brands have to inspect their product lifecycle
and disposal need to be entirely transparent about their tactical practices and be accountable.
SWOT Analysis of Marks & Spencer
Strength
Marks & Spencer has extended operations at different locations in the world with a
diversified portfolio which allows the organization to augment its share in the market and
customer base. The company has around 1,382 stores all over the world (Bhasin, 2019). In
addition to this, the company has a strong financial position in the market in comparison to its
rivals.

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Weakness
The weakness of the M&S is the low satisfaction of the company's customer. Due to the
company's western collection company is unable to gain the trust of Asian market customer
who gives preference to their traditional dresses.
Opportunity
The possible market opportunity for Marks & Spencer is to expand its market by
incorporating traditional clothes in its product line, as it will enable organization to gain the
trust and increase the satisfaction of the market.
Threat
The major threat for M&S in the international market is the competition. The competitors like
Tesco, Zara, UCB, Gap, and Tommy Hilfiger raise challenges in front of the company by
increasing their market share.
From the internal and external analysis of the company, it could be said that the business
could deal with the challenges in its decision making procedure. The decision of Brexit will
result in changing all the existing strategies of the company which requires an investment of
more efforts, time and money.
The interrelation of Internal and external aspects
The expanded operations of the company in different locations could help the company in
effectively competing with the competitors and it could also support the company in
overcoming the losses that business experience from the Brexit decision. In addition to this,
the weakness of the company of incapability to target the Asian customer could be overcome
by investing in adding some traditional options for them.

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References
Bhasin, H. (2019) SWOT analysis of Marks & Spencer [online]. Available from
https://www.marketing91.com/swot-analysis-of-marks-spencer/ [accessed 5 July 2019]
Cavusgil, S.T., Knight, G., and John R. (2014) International Business 3rd ed. Australia:
Pearson.
Cole, B.M. (2019) The Brexit Effect: How Will Small And Medium Sized Businesses Cope?
[online]. Available from https://www.forbes.com/sites/biancamillercole/2019/01/17/the-
brexit-effect-how-will-small-medium-businesses-cope/#67181f9d7b2c [accessed 5 July
2019]
Connor, G., McFadden, M., and McLean, I. (2019) Organisational Design [online].
Available
fromhttps://pdfs.semanticscholar.org/7249/d6ab15ba1876a44c5551f83059c7f4cadcc7.pdf
[accessed 5 July 2019]
Jones, G.R. (2013) Organizational theory, design, and change 1st ed. New Zealand Pearson.
Marks & Spencer (2019) About us [online]. Available from
https://corporate.marksandspencer.com/aboutus [accessed 5 July 2019]
P&G (2019) Our Purpose, Values and Principles [online]. Available from
https://www.pg.com/translations/pvp_pdf/english_PVP.pdf [accessed 5 July 2019]
Procter & Gamble (2019a) About P&G [online]. Available from
https://news.pg.com/about/core_strengths [accessed 5 July 2019]

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Procter & Gamble (2019b) Corporate structure [online]. Available from
https://us.pg.com/structure-and-governance/corporate-structure/ [accessed 5 July 2019]
Wesfarmers (2019a) About Wesfarmers [online]. Available from
https://sustainability.wesfarmers.com.au/our-report/about-wesfarmers/ [accessed 5 July 2019]
Wesfarmers (2019b) Group structure [online]. Available from
http://media.corporate-ir.net/media_files/IROL/14/144042/wesfarmers_sr/wesfarmers/
group.html [accessed 5 July 2019]