Marketing Strategies of Hennes & Mauritz (H&M): A Comprehensive Report

Desklib provides past papers and solved assignments for students. This report analyzes H&M's marketing strategies.

Marketing Essentials

Table of Contents
Introduction......................................................................................................................................3
Mission statement............................................................................................................................4
Situation analysis.............................................................................................................................4
Marketing objectives.......................................................................................................................4
Target market...................................................................................................................................5
Marketing strategy...........................................................................................................................5
Marketing control (implementation control)...................................................................................5
Conclusion.......................................................................................................................................7
Reference List..................................................................................................................................8

Introduction
Hennes & Mauritz is a multinational company of Swedish base offering a wide range of fast
fashion clothing and cosmetics. The company has around 4500 stores operating in around 62
countries. It has an employee base of around 132000. The company caters to the fashion needs of
the individuals at a very low price and offers a wide variety to choose from ranging from basic to
high- fashion. They also manufacture accessories and other items to support the collection and
works with around 700 independent suppliers and a whole host of designers to meet the fashion
needs of the country (hm.com, 2017). It holds the position of second largest fashion retailer in
the world and has a significant presence in the online platform, serving 32 countries.
Mission statement
The upcoming fashion retailers are focusing on providing good quality and high-fashion clothes
and accessories to support the fashion needs of their customers at a very low and convenient
price (Castelli and Sianesi, 2015). They also aim at incorporating Corporate Social
Responsibilities into their basic business activities in order to contribute to the upliftment of the
society.
Situation analysis
In order to understand how the fashion industry will perform in the future and to drive a
successful marketing strategy for the same, it is very important to understand the impact of
various macro-environmental factors on its operation. It can be briefly summarised as follows:-
 Political factors- It plays a significant role in the functioning of the clothing sector.
Despite political unrest around the globe, UK government provides a stable political
environment enabling smooth operation of various retail sectors.
 Economical factors- UK is considered to be the largest center for finance and has a
stable currency. Since the UK is rising from the period of recession, it is expected that the
retail sector will see a rise in the recent future. The price of the cotton is expected to rise,
leading to an increase in the price of the fashion garments leaving a severe impact on the
targeted markets.
 Social factors- It is expected that the female population in the UK will increase giving
rise to the need of women fashion apparel. The demand for body- shaper and large size
clothes will also see growth due to the growing rate of obesity in the UK.
 Technological factors- There will be a growth in the E-commerce sectors as the
advancement of technology has offered the opportunity to take businesses online and
expand sales (Evans, 2017). Social Media will also play a crucial role in the marketing of
products.
 Legal factors- The tax rate applicable on the fashion clothing has experienced a rise by
2.5 %, leading to an increase in the price of the garments. This would affect the demand
for the fashion apparel in the market.
 Environmental factors- The initiative undertaken by the government like green initiative
and other projects, has led to a shift in the demand pattern of the consumers. They are
seen to be opting for garments produced using environment friendly methods (Fernie et
al., 2015). Increase in the level of global warming has also played a significant role in the

demand pattern change. Consumers are seen to be demanding for products that could be
used in different seasons thus fashion sector must focus on producing garments that
would deliver comfort to the consumers in the varying seasons.
Marketing objectives
The goals of the fashion retail sectors should be the maximisation of profit by expanding sales
volume to achieve various objectives, which are as follows:-
 To expand its market by providing new product
 To modify and diversify its product range after proper analyzation of the macro-
environmental factors
 To cater to the fashion needs of the people at the most convenient prices.
 To help meet the fashion needs of people suffering from obesity and other problems.
Target market
The target market is defined as the market demography where the product or the service is
introduced in order to reach to the potential consumers. The marketing team plays a vital role in
undertaking these activities and identify the proper target audience. This helps the organisation to
identify the opportunities and prospect of the particular product and assess the measure of profit
that the product would be likely to contribute to the organisational gains. The target market is
assessed through the analytics of marketing mix and Segmentation, Targeting and Positioning
(STP). The marketing mix or 4P’s is one of the tools that is used by the organisation makes use
of the features of product, price, place and promotion to implement the ideas of the positioning
strategy (Khan, 2014). This is performed after the segmentation of the market is undertaken
through the procedures of STP (Khan, 2013).
Marketing strategy
The marketing strategy is a plan that is devised by the organisation in order to promote or launch
a new product on the lines of apparel section. It is implemented by the organisation sometimes,
to revamp the existing line of products in order to regenerate the sales value (Baker, 2014). The
marketing strategy makes use of the Porter’s generic strategies that help the organisation to
understand the strategies that would provide the organisation with a competetitive advantage in
the targeted market demography. This is very necessary as the organisation needs to sustain the
competitions in the market info graphics that is provided by the existing local organisation in the
clothing industry. The porter’s five forces is an integral part of the marketing strategy as it sheds
light on identifying the business operations, on how it would fair against the competitive forces
of suppliers, consumers, competitive rivalries and introduction of new products. The strategy
also incorporates the measures of competitive analysis by assessing the market parameters of
market share, gross profit and annual turnover that is necessary to alleviate the existing line of
business (Wensley, 2016). The BCG matrix is important in the marketing strategy as it would
help the organisation to identify the clothing line of product that is draining the vital resources
and channelling the finances to brighter prospects. The instantiation of budget planning is
essential as the marketing strategy is alleviated through the means of actualising viability to the
undertakings that are devised by the strategy.

Marketing control (implementation control)
The advents of marketing control are very important to instantiate success on the marketing
strategy as it monitors the progression of the plan if it is in accordance to the marketing
objectives or not. The features of Key Performance Indicators (KPI) are one of the analytical
tools that help in providing strategic and operational improvement to the prevalent marketing
plan. It helps in identifying the leading and lagging indicators. The leading indicators describe
the precursors of future prospects and the lagging indicators reflect on the success of the clothing
product line in the past (Calabrò et al., 2015). The analytical measures of SAF are also
implemented to assess the realistic implication of the marketing plan. The features of suitability
is undertaken in order to understand if the marketing plan coincides with the organisational
objectives. The features of acceptability revolve around the return and stakeholder reactions from
the implementation of the prevalent strategy on promoting the clothing product line. The features
of feasibility describes if the organisation has the resources in order to make the strategy a
success.
Conclusion
Through the report, it can be concluded that organisations perform the analysis of pestle in order
to identify the prevalent scenarios that could alleviate or decrement the sustainability of the
business. It has been observed that the organisation instantiates the mission statement, in order to
achieve marketing objectives. It can be analysed that the identification of the target market is of
paramount importance to the generation of revenue. Through the study, it can be assessed that
the marketing strategy is vital to the penetration in the targeted market demography. It has also
been identified that the marketing control is important to the evaluation of the marketing
strategy’s success.

Reference List
Baker, M.J., 2014. Marketing strategy and management. Macmillan International Higher
Education.
Castelli, C.M. and Sianesi, A., 2015. Supply chain strategy for companies in the luxury-fashion
market: Aligning the supply chain towards the critical success factors. International Journal of
Retail & Distribution Management, 43(10/11), pp.940-966.
Evans, N.N., 2017. The internationalisation strategies of small and medium-sized enterprises
(SMEs) clothing suppliers in the UK (Doctoral dissertation, Manchester Metropolitan
University).
Fernie, J., Fernie, S. and Moore, C., 2015. Principles of retailing. Routledge.
Khan, M.T., 2014. The concept of'marketing mix'and its elements (a conceptual review
paper). International journal of information, business and management, 6(2), p.95.
Khan, T., 2013. STP strategy for New Product Launch-a Work in Progress. International Journal
of Business and Management Invention, 2(3), pp.56-65.
Wensley, R., 2016. The basics of marketing strategy. In The marketing book (pp. 75-107).
Routledge.
hm.com, 2017. H&M Group [Online] Available at: https://about.hm.com/en/about-us.html
[Accessed 8th Jan.2019]

Calabrò, A., Lonetti, F. and Marchetti, E., 2015, October. KPI evaluation of the business process
execution through event monitoring activity. In Enterprise Systems (ES), 2015 International
Conference on (pp. 169-176). IEEE.