Business Strategy Assignment Report - Strategy Management Plan

This report presents a business strategy assignment that evaluates the impact of internal, micro, and macro environmental factors on organizational performance. The analysis focuses on the retail industry, assessing the competitive landscape through Porter's Five Forces and emphasizing the importance of customer relationship management and marketing strategies. The report identifies the challenges posed by technological advancements and market trends, providing a strategic plan to improve business operations. This plan includes goals, activities, responsible authority, and timelines to enhance marketing and promotional activities, product offerings, customer interaction, and supply chain management. The report concludes that the implementation of this strategic plan is crucial for the selected organization to maintain a competitive edge in the UK retail market.

Running head: BUSINESS STRATEGY ASSIGNMENT
Business Strategy Assignment
Name of the Student
Name of the University
Author Note

1BUSINESS STRATEGY ASSIGNMENT
Table of Contents
Introduction:...............................................................................................................................3
Evaluation of the Environmental Factors:..................................................................................3
Strategic Plan:............................................................................................................................6
Conclusion:................................................................................................................................0
References:.................................................................................................................................1

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Assignment 2:
Introduction:
The impact of the internal, micro and macro environmental factors on the business
performances of the organizations is pretty significant. The effective analysis of these factors
enable the organizations for the effective management of modern market trends. Along with
that, the analysis helps the managers of the organizations in the effective identification of the
changes in the micro and macro environmental factors of the company which have the
potential to affect the business activities of the mentioned organization. The paper is focused
in assessing the findings of the macro and micro environmental analysis of the chosen
organization and with a precise focus on the analysis, the paper provides a strategic plan for
the improvement of the business operations of the mentioned organization.
Evaluation of the Environmental Factors:
It is quite observable that the current business market is revolving around the
emergence of new technologies, which are posing the significant challenges for the business
competitors. Therefore, it can be stated that the business organizations need to keep their
focus on the factors, which are affecting the operational activities. This will help the
companies to develop some crucial strategies that can lead them towards immense
profitability. The analysis of the porter’s five forces is thus ensuring the identified
competition coming from the retail giants like Sainsbury, ASDA, Tesco, and Marks and
Spencer. In addition to this, it can also be implied that the company requires maintaining a
stable customer relationship to make these effective strategies work and obtain more benefits.
Communication, notably, is the key to business success since it create the clear link between
the organization and the customers. It has been identified that while developing the efficient
customer interaction, the company needs to be focused on the demands and the preferences.

3BUSINESS STRATEGY ASSIGNMENT
This practice is quite fruitful in terms of achieving the customers’ expectation level. It is
noticeable that with the help of such effective interaction system, the customers can easily
communicate with the company to present their opinions, reviews, and setting their
expectations without any much effort (Zakaria et al. 2014). Accordingly, the retail companies
have been restructuring and customizing their services to achieve such expectation level. As a
result, the company can attract more customers and influence their repeat purchase behaviour
in a significant way. The repeat purchase and a string brand identity are necessary to
strengthen the competitive edge and develop the stronger sustainable position in this fast
changing business scenario.
The five force analysis also notifies the significant growth of Marks and Spencer as
well as Zara. These two companies have been remarkably increasing their design cycles to
achieve more customer supports. At the initial level, companies involved with fashion
segments used to have only one particular design cycle that established their brand identity. It
was observed that such practices restricted the method of achieving the fast changing trends.
Keeping pace with the fast moving competitive scenario, it became important for them to
focus on multiple areas instead of one particular segment. It was recognizable that the
product differentiation strategy is quite helpful to attain more customers’ preferences and
developing the brand image in a competitive scenario (Sulaiman, Abdullah and Ridzuan
2014). It became more crucial segmentation for the business companies to achieve the
competitive advantage in this changing business scenario. This customization has been now
leading the companies towards developing multiple design cycles to ensure more efficiency
in the product (Kant Hvass 2014). In fact, the companies are also focused on decreasing the
lead times, which are attracting more number of customers to get access to the value added
products. More product diversification ensures one step ahead towards business success in
the competitive era of business management.

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Keeping these strategic implementation aside, it is also much important for the
company to develop a stronger marketing and promotional strategy (Kant Hvass 2014). Most
of the organizations concentrate upon the attractive marketing and promotional activities
among which the use of the social media platform is the most popular. In usual cases, the
organizations achieve success due to their efficiency in promoting their products or services
and gaining the customers’ attention. When the customers are aware of the product offering
and specifications, they are more likely to purchase those products. The good experience can
even create the positive ‘word of mouth’, which eventually leads to develop a string brand
identity (Babić Rosario et al. 2016). Hence, it can be implied that the development of
effective promotional and marketing strategies can help in sustaining the competitive position
in a challenging business scenario.
It is quite true that the communication, marketing, and promotional strategy
development are crucial to business success. However, an effective value added product
chain is also another significant factor contributes to the business success. UK supermarkets
are generally divided into different segments, such as accessories, fashion retail products,
food and beverages, household products, and consumer electronics. This variations are quite
useful to meet the diversified needs of the customers, which gradually leads the company to
create a larger customer base. However, developing a proper and efficient management to
serve the customer demand is also necessary in such scenario. The effective management of
the customers’ preferences can develop the long term customer loyalty, which is a significant
contributor in generating more profit revenue (Çifci 2016). It stabilizes the financial
capability of the company to increase the market share.
Organizational success also depends on the effective supply chain management
process. The development of the effective supplier network enables the access to the
customers’ various preferences and meeting their needs with ease. The supplier efficiency

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contributes to develop the proper pricing strategy and ensure the ethical sourcing, which
helps the organizations to gain the competitive advantage. However, in UK, the fashion retail
industry has been facing the adverse effects due to the impact of Brexit. Especially, in terms
of developing the effective supply chain process, the international suppliers have to come
across huge restrictions (Wright et al. 2016). Due to the emergence of Brexit, the rule is
imposed on the tariff rates, which are restricting the foreign suppliers to make preferable
negotiations (Wright et al. 2016). Hence, it becomes more challenging for the business
organizations to import or export the products, which has remarkable scope of generating
more revenues. A strong supply chain management can be really effective since it connects
the ideas of the customers to the final outcome. UK retail industry is fast going and keeping
the pace with the competitive scenario. Therefore, it is quite essential for the companies to
develop the appropriate strategic vision that can help in improving their supply chain process
and create the product differentiation properly to gather the customers’ attention. A defined
and sound strategic decision thus can change the retail industry scenario and strengthen the
competitive edge in a remarkable way.
Strategic Plan:
Some course of actions are thus can be really helpful in such terms. The following actions
will be preferable in overcoming these identified challenges:

Running head: BUSINESS STRATEGY ASSIGNMENT
Goals Activities Authority Required
Time
To improve the
marketing and the
promotions of the
selected
organization.
To increase the number of launching events that are to be conducted from the part of the
company.
To increase the number of advertisements in the magazines and newspapers for the offline
marketing activities.
To increase the number of social media posts regarding the product offerings of the
selected organization and the news regarding the discounts.
To create consumer engaging promotional activities in order to involve the customers in an
efficient manner.
Marketing and
Sales Department
of the selected
organization.
18
weeks
To increase the
product offerings
of the selected
organization
To conduct market survey for evaluating the scope of introducing new products.
To identify the bestseller products of the competitor organizations that the selected
organization are yet to introduce.
To identify the product offerings that is comparatively less contested by the organizations
operating in the mentioned industry.
Research and
Development
Department.
Marketing and
Sales Department.
24
weeks
To reduce the
design cycles in
the fashion
segment of the
selected
organization.
To conduct the required research for the identification of the customers preferences and he
modern market trends.
To evaluate the capability of the supplies of the organizations and to evaluate the scope of
introducing 3 to 4 design cycle per year.
Research and
Development
Department.
Manufacturing
Department of the
selected
organization.
24
weeks
To improve the
customer
interaction of the
To increase the activities of the social media and online customer management teams of
the organization with a precise focus on the effective management of the customer queries
and the grievances of the customers.
Customer
Relationship
Management
12
weeks

1BUSINESS STRATEGY ASSIGNMENT
organization. To conduct increased number of exhibitions for sales where the probable and the existing
customers of the selected organization will be able to effectively exchange their opinions
regarding the products offerings of the selected organization.
Team of the
selected
organization.

Running head: BUSINESS STRATEGY ASSIGNMENT
Conclusion:
On a concluding note, it is pretty evident that the selected organization is one of
brightest names in the UK retail industry. From the in depth analysis of the environmental
factors of the mentioned organization, the effective management of the customer preferences,
improvement in the CRM operations, increment in the product chain of the organization and
the marketing and promotional activities of the organization are observed to have the
potential of placing the selected organization in the list of the top of organizations of the
mentioned industry in coming years. Hence the implementation of the activities mentioned in
the strategic plan is crucial for the success of the organization.

1BUSINESS STRATEGY ASSIGNMENT
References:
Babić Rosario, A., Sotgiu, F., De Valck, K. and Bijmolt, T.H., 2016. The effect of electronic
word of mouth on sales: A meta-analytic review of platform, product, and metric factors.
Journal of Marketing Research, 53(3), pp.297-318.
Çifci, S., Ekinci, Y., Whyatt, G., Japutra, A., Molinillo, S. and Siala, H., 2016. A cross
validation of Consumer-Based Brand Equity models: Driving customer equity in retail
brands. Journal of Business Research, 69(9), pp.3740-3747.
Kant Hvass, K., 2014. Post-retail responsibility of garments–a fashion industry perspective.
Journal of Fashion Marketing and Management, 18(4), pp.413-430.
Sulaiman, M.A., Abdullah, M.A. and Ridzuan, A., 2014. Customer relationship management
(CRM) strategies practices in Malaysia retailers. Procedia-Social and Behavioral Sciences,
130, pp.354-361.
Wright, M., Wilson, N., Gilligan, J., Bacon, N. and Amess, K., 2016. Brexit, private equity
and management. British Journal of Management, 27(4), pp.682-686.
Zakaria, I., Rahman, B.A., Othman, A.K., Yunus, N.A.M., Dzulkipli, M.R. and Osman,
M.A.F., 2014. The relationship between loyalty program, customer satisfaction and customer
loyalty in retail industry: A case study. Procedia-Social and Behavioral Sciences, 129, pp.23-
30.