Marketing Manager's Role & Disruptive Innovation at Mark & Spencer

This report examines the role of a marketing manager within Mark and Spencer, focusing on current marketing trends and opportunities for innovation through disruptive technologies. It begins by outlining the responsibilities of a marketing manager, including planning, advising top manageme...Read More

Table of Contents
INTRODUCTION .............................................................................................................................3
Overview of the organisation .......................................................................................................3
Aspects of a marketing manager roles...........................................................................................3
Current and relevant trend of the marketing..................................................................................4
Opportunity for innovation by disrupting the status quo..............................................................6
How disruptive innovation of technology help to grab the opportunities.....................................8
.........................................................................................................................................................11
CONCLUSION ...............................................................................................................................11
REFERENCES.................................................................................................................................12

INTRODUCTION
Modern concept of the marketing consider the customer's needs and wants as the guiding
spirit and concern for delivery of such services or goods that can satisfy customer's needs in most
effective manner. Hence, marketing start with the identification of customer needs and then plan
the product of product and service accordingly in order to provide a maximum satisfaction
(Dikcius and et. al., 2021). Marketing is a practice of increasing the awareness, consideration,
purchase and preference for any service or product through the customer driven benefits,
packaging, placement, advertising, pricing and promotion. In organisation, disruptive technology
displaces the established technology and shakes up an industry and a ground breaking product
which create a totally new industry. Firm chosen in this report is Mark and Spencer retaking
company. It is situated in UK. Michael Marks and Thomas Spencer has founded that organisation
in 1884. This report will be based on the role of marketing manager, current and relevant trend of
marketing with along with the theoretical knowledge of the brand company will demonstrate the
opportunities for an innovation by disrupting the status quo.
Overview of the organisation
Mark and Spencer was founded by tow partner Michael Marks and Thomas Spencer in
September 28, 1884. Its headquarter is in London, United Kingdom. is engaging in the retail of
food, clothes and home products. It is operating through United Kingdom and international
geographical division or segment. UK's segment consist of UK retail and other franchise
operations. International segment involve Mark and Spencer personally owned business in Asia
and Europe and international franchise operation.
Aspects of a marketing manager roles
Marketing manager is a hub of the sales administrative and he occupies a place of the
pivotal importance. Marketing manager embraces all functions, as far as the sales organisation is
concerned. Role of the marketing manager vary widely form organisation to organisation. It
depend upon nature and size of the business. In relation to the Mark and Spencer, its marketing
manager play essential role which are mentioned below:

 Planning for future- Marketing manager has to plan for a long range sales practices. It
include decision related to the are of marketing, nature and number of the products to be
distributed and to adopted the sales policy. In relation to Mark and Spencer, its mange
prepare a sale budget that help in providing the information of expected revenue, expenses
and sales.
 Advising the top management- An actual office operation re to be brought to the notice
of company's top management, as to what exactly is happening in his department (Ferro-
Soto and et. al., 2022). In relation to Mark and Spencer, its marketing manager give ideas
regarding expansion programs and how to attain these program successfully.
 Train the sales force- The marking manager, along with the training intradepartmental
head, plan to train the new employees. In Mark and Spencer its market manager provide a
continuing training in a form of the refresher course for existing workers to provide the
information regarding operation of the business viz, house customer, house policies,
employee's plan of the pay and benefits and many more.
 Direction and coordination- Marketing manger play an essential rile by selecting band of
the sales executive, salesmen, assistants, clerical, who might not be performing well in the
absence of coordination and direction. In relation to the Mark and Spencer, its marketing
manager promote the coordination by minimising workplace conflict and bringing about a
unity in diversity.
 Design viable sales policy- In organisation, formulation of the sales policy call for
divergent element that decide an exact nature of it which is a foundation for marketing of
the goods (Lin and et. al., 2021). Sale policy should consider the price, discount, ways of
distribution, types of product, term of payment, extent of publicity and many more, in
relation to the Mark and Spencer it marketing manager is liable for these effective
implementation. Much depend on efficiency of the marketing manger to make it so.
Current and relevant trend of the marketing
Marketing trend is considered as anything which alter the market where a company
operates. It could be anything as fa reaching as the artificial technology and as industry specific as
the new regulations. The marketing trend allow a company to break boundaries of a market.
Marketing trend put forwards opportunities and ideas. The trend allows a brand to communicate

about their value in diverse manner. There are various current marketing trend including, e
commerce, artificial intelligence, social media and many more. In relation to the Mark and
Spencer certain of these current marketing trends are mentioned below:
 Artificial intelligence- It is where computer and machines undertake task which require
the human intelligence such as speech recognition, decision making. In marketing and
advertising, artificial intelligence leverage a historic sales and other marketing data for
predicting the consumer's next step in sales cycle. In relation to the Mark and Spencer,
artificial intelligence allow the company to predict their customer journey, bring
improvement in weak points and gap in process.
 Social media trend- In marketing social selling has trending since the Facebook
introduces Shops throughout its network in the May 2020. Mark and Spencer uses the
social media such as e commerce website, uploading various products to be purchase by
customer directly through different platforms.
 Programmatic advertising- It is an automation of the buying digital advertising space. It
facilitates a real time data analysis and the audience targeting (Mpuon and et. al., 2021).
Through the programmatic advertising, the brand can enjoy agile and automated ad
buying, that increase the ROI and also save employee time. Through the programmatic
advertising, brand of Mark and Spencer can bid for the ad space in milliseconds, freeing
up the marketers to spend extra time on the campaign optimization rather than the
administration.
 Continued digital transformation- In marketing, through digital transformation, business
changing the marketing mix to more digital channels, moving away from the print
advertising to the social media. In relation to the Mark and Spencer, with the help of the
digital transformation, company is leveraging the new technology in order to optimize
their marketing efforts and also improving the customer experience.
 Conversational marketing- In this, user interact and have the conversation with the brand
through voice assistant and chat box. It is widely used in the online marketing campaigns,
with the click to messenger being most popular alternative for the paid advertisement
(Sowa, Przegalinska and Ciechanowski, 2021). In relation to the Mark and Spencer,
machine learning and artificial intelligence are main technologies behind the
conversational marketing. For a customer's perspective the conversational marketing help

in building the trust and also improve customer experience. By leveraging the
conversational marketing, Mark and Spencer can provide instant responses at the different
touchpoints and it increase a loyalty and the brand buy in.
Opportunity for innovation by disrupting the status quo
According to Christensen, the distributive innovation is a process in which organisation
usually lesser resources, is able to challenges an established business by entering at bottom of the
market area and continuing to move up- market. This process normally happens over a number of
the steps. These steps are mentioned below:
 Incumbent business innovate and then develop their service and product to appeal to their
most profitable and demanding customer/ buyer ignoring needs of those downmarket
(Bansal, 2022).
 The entrants target this ignored segment of the market and then gain traction by meeting
their requirements at a reduced cost as compared to what is offered or provided by the
incumbent.
 The incumbents do not respond to new market, continuing to focus on their more
profitable division.
 Entrants finally move upmarket by offering the solution that appeal to incumbents
“mainstream” customers or buyers.
 Once new entrants has start to gain attention of the incumbents business's mainstream
consumers en masses, disruption has occurred.
Opportunities
Disruptive technology can be utilized to create a new market segment, proving greater,
quality, efficiency and advantages for the customer as well as the organisation. It provide various
opportunities to the organisation (Chandrasekaran, Tellis and James, 2022).
According to Managing direction of Mark and Spencer, “creating a dedicated team with a sole
purpose to drive the disruptive innovation will support the respective company in being more
relevant to their customers. But it is not only about the relevancy nowadays, innovation hub will
enable the the organisation to track various emerging trend and insights. In that case, Mark and
Spencer is one step ahead in responding to their customer's needs and requirement in future. Its
team will play key role in helping the company to build bigger and greatest food range and also

show the customer that company is taking action in order to address the sustainability problems or
issues they care about most- so that their action today protect this planet for tomorrow. In relation
to the Mark and Spencer many opportunities are facilitated by the disruptive innovation.
Mark and Spencer food is going to launch the innovation hub. In this a new specialist team will
focus on the disruptive innovation in order to create an industry- leading product and also address
certain biggest sector- wide challenges.
The innovation Hub supports the Mark and Spencer food's strategy to protect the magic whilst
modernising rest- building on brand's market leading innovation and a long history of first to the
market products like developing the refrigeration in company's supply chain in order to offer the
retail's first fresh chicken in 1960.
 Creation of the new market- The disruptive innovation ordinary lead to certain of a new
market segment (Hung and Lai, 2022). The idea stream into the certain of a new product
and service that disrupt market share of an established organisation like Mark and Spencer
and hence, lead to the creation of a new market. Normally, creation of the new market take
considerable person as market for an established product or services take time in order to
get eroded. By once the targeted customer get satisfy by uses of the new product then it
hardly take time for crating the awareness resulting in a chain reaction on uses of the new
services and product.
 Cost reduction- The idea creation and translation of same into the new service or product
through lengthy time period can be costly affair (Yu and et. al., 2022). But availability of
the technology and host of the web related services can reduce cost of the newly crated
product or services in Mark and Spencer. Several macro environmental elements also
pressurise the respective company to come up with cost effective and environment friendly
product. Therefore, the disruptive innovation might be costly in initial phase but are very
cost effective for long time period due to learning curve effect and economies of scale.
 Value addition- It is generally in a form of extra feature which has been added to the
service and product before it is offered to final customers for the consumption of usage. In
relation to the Mark and Spencer, by mixing the traditional concept and inherent brand
values with the new ideas or mission, respective company has been able to make most out
losing sight of modern requirement and expectation of their customers.

How disruptive innovation of technology help to grab the opportunities
It is suggested that organisational leader should disrupt themselves form technology
disrupt their business. By understanding power of the innovation such as artificial intelligence and
information technology Mark and Spencer can increase the business growth and opportunities.
 Artificial intelligence- Looking at role of the artificial intelligence, expert RL Adams
defines the artificial intelligent system as one which can learn on its own (Kim and et. al.,
2022). In relation to Mark and Spencer by putting the artificial intelligence to use it can
focus on the more strategic or business oriented tasks. The artificial intelligence help
Mark and Spencer to analyse the customer data to shed a light on pattern of the customer
behaviour and the future prediction. Thus, this behaviour can aid inform decision regarding
direction of the product development which is going to meet the future customer demand.
 Social media- The social media is another example of the disruptive innovation. It help the
Mark and Spencer to grab opportunities in market by advertising company's product in
market. Through promotion and advertising (Sidiqqui and Tansen, 2022). Mark and
Spencer can gain attention of the customer as they share about their product on social
media platform. Respective uses various channel of the social media including Instagram,
Facebook Twitter and many more.
 Cloud computing- It provide the business organisation to grab the opportunities. In
relation Mark and Spencer access to the automatic updates for their IT requirement may be
involved in their services fee. Depending on organisational cloud computing service
provider, company's system will regularly be updated with latest technology. It could
include up to date version of the software as well upgrade in order to serve and computer
processing power.
Advantages and disadvantage of the disruptive technology
In business, disruptive technology offer various distinct benefits to bother organisation and
customer. These advantages are mentioned below:
 Stratus opportunities- The disruptive innovation provide an opportunity to start up a
business in order to gain an essential foothold within existing industry or sector
(Kusumasari and Sanica, 2022). Those who begin offering the latest technology become
able to establish themselves as thought leader within fresh market. It provide unique
chance to start-up to experience a rapid growth and more well established organisations.

 Room for business growth- In this, when established organisation willingly embraces the
disruptive technology then it enjoy a prime opportunity to grow either in its current sector
or in new industry which has been created by ethnology. In relation to Mark and Spencer,
it can smoothly incorporate the disruptive technology in its existing line of services and
product can help the existing customer transition into utilisation of disruptive technology
when also capturing the new customer with their entry into fresh market.
Disadvantages
While the disruptive innovation are beneficial once they are well established, they can
create certain challenges in their early phase which are mentioned below:
 Unrefined inventions- Latest technology is typically unrefined and untested during its
early phase and development can continue for the year. At this time period, business
offering technology may struggler to the market the innovative product (Omoge, Gala and
Horky, 2022).
 Early performance problems- Mostly all innovation go through from a problem solving
time period. Modern customer are used to experiencing it with a piece of software or
newly developed app. Patch and updates are essential to overcome the glitches and another
challenges that technology might present. Same process is applies to other disruptive
technology and can make and early adoption more challenging (Pilyugina, and et. al.,
2022).
Disruptive the retail business : a breakdown on star up driven innovation
In retail industry, with the introduction of the online shopping, e commerce business, on
demand delivery and customer preference and behaviour have shifted towards an era that dictated
by all these preference. Individuality and personalisation are high in demand that causing retailer
to turn to the disruptive technologies in order to keep their target customer satisfy and serve these
from all the slant (Sheidow, McCart and Drazdowski, 2022). In relation to the Mark and Spencer
one example of its efforts to motivate customer to visit company's stores is called “just walk out
technology”. The concept is deep learning algorithms, computer vision and sensor fusion for
simplifying customer's shopping experience: walk in, grab product and walk out. Finally ,
technological development with new expectation of the customers will deeply effect the entire

retail industry and organisation like Mark and Spencer, making tomorrow's shopping as
personalised faster and convenient experience.

CONCLUSION
Form the above report it is concluded that marketing is a task oriented practice. Role of the
marketing manger is mainly to structure the relationship between organisation and customers.
Responsibilities and job of the marketing manager in organisation certainly one of the significant
thing. It is most essential job post in any company and the individuals need to have all the
knowledge and ideas regarding the post and job function as well. In business world, disruptive
technology is more than the innovation in current economy as it is a chance for outperforming
existing completion and get more better. There are various disruptive innovation model that bring
new technology and ideas within existing market. It can either be high demand or low demand
repressed demands where either more price sensitive consumer or more premium buyers get
addressed. Accepting disruption empower the enterprise establishment in order to overcome
potential risk or obstacle and to stay afloat within this competitive environment. In coming year,
disruptive innovation will be game changer, if organisation maintain “wait and watch” policy in
order to measure their full impact on economy, then it would be too late. Therefore, worldwide
business organisation have to adopt the investing culture in disruptive innovation in order to grow
efficiently.

REFERENCES
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