Marketing Essentials Task 3: Comprehensive Marketing Plan for H&M

This report presents a marketing plan for H&M, a multinational retail clothing company. It begins with an executive summary and defines marketing objectives using the SMART technique, focusing on increasing sales and market share. The report provides a company overview, followed by a ...Read More

MARKETING
ESSENTIALS

TASK 3
P4 Develop basic marketing plan for the given organisation
11 Executive Summary: Marketing Plan can be defined as a written document that outlines
company's efforts in terms of marketing & advertising product or services for coming
year. It mainly describes different activities that help the firm in attaining marketing
objective effectively and within a given time frame (Silver and et. al., 2012). The chosen
company over here is H&M, which is mainly popular for its fast-fashion clothing for
women, men children and teenager. They operate their business in more than 62
countries. It also includes various factors in terms of internal & external that impacts the
functioning of H&M.11 Marketing Planning Objective: Marketing objectives are normally consider as the short
term goal which help the company to attain its long term objective in an efficient way.
Companies are require to make constructive marketing objective by adopting SMART
techniques. H&M focus on manufacturing product according to the market trend and they
also aims at running their operation more economically & environmentally.
The SMART objectives of company are:
S - To create large consumer base who are loyal towards products of firm.
M - To enhance sales and profitability of company by 30%.
A - Provide high quality clothes to customers that has some value to them.
R – Gain customer loyalty by providing them high quality clothes.
T - To increase market share by 20% within 2 years.11 Company Overview: Company chosen is H&M which is known as Hennes and Mauritz
AB. This is a multinational company which mainly deals in retail clothing sector and has
over 4500 stores across the globe (Rossi, 2015). This company was established in 1947
by Erling Persson. This company has around 132,000 people working across the globe.
SWOT Analysis
Strengths
 Brand Awareness globally
 It is one of the leading global retailer as
they have acquired market of 55
Weaknesses
 Quality of merchandise is poor
 Customer service is very low
 They have low control over the cycle of

countries.
 Prices are affordable for Merchandise
 Active on social media
 They have variety of products. Collaboration with luxury designers
production
 E-commerce availability is some
countries are very poor
 Exposure is poor for the home good
lines.
 Opportunities
 E-commerce business can be expanded.
 Communication in E-Commerce can be
developed (Allenby and McCulloch,
2012)
 Home line brick and mortar stores can
be expanded.
 There can be more number of centres
from where the products can be
distributed. Penetrate in new marketplace.
 Threats
 They have high competition in market
from Zara, Forever21.
 Buying “Made in America” Trend.
 Enhancing in production cost in Asia.
PESTLE Analysis:
This is a process in which this kind of concept is being used as tool by an organisation in
order to monitor the environment in which they are operating or they are planning to launch a
new product into new market. PESTLE can be defined as Political, Economical, Social,
Technological, Legal and Environmental.
Political
Due to the changes in season, there is need of collaborating with franchiser partners so that their
brands can be operated in United Arab Emirates, Qatar, Saudi Arabia, Egypt, Oman, Israel,
Morocco, Indonesia, Thailand and many other countries as well.
Economical
Sales of H&M raised up-to 7 percent even after the Brexit affected in various countries in
negative manner and thus they grew about 10% when converted into Swedish country (Wilson,
2014).
Social

Due to the changes in trend of market, people taste are changing and the main reason behind
those changes are influencing nature of celebrities and their followers. People get highly
influenced by their lifestyle and demand for luxury goods automatically improves.
Technological
They have been contributing in developing their app for smartphones which in turn will allow
consumers to purchase their favourite clothes by just one click and that product will be delivered
at their address.
Environmental
They have adopted the policy of renewing their old products and by 2030 this process will be
started and products which are recyclable and durable will be used again for production (Danson,
2015).
Legal
They have copyright issues and due to being dealer in overall world they sometime faces
litigation changes.11 STP approach:
Segmentation: H&M mainly segmented their product line into merchandise, shoes, accessories,
bags, jewellery etc. They bifurcate their entire product line according to the different age group
of people.
Targeting: They mainly target middle income group of consumer as they offer affordable
products which gives them higher competitive advantage over their rivals. Their main aim is to
target such income group of people so that they can also take the benefit of trendy clothes.
Positioning: It mainly deals with how company is draft the image of their product in the mind of
target audience. They are using electronic media, digital media, direct sales for promoting their
product in the market place.11 Marketing Mix: It refers to the set of activities that involves advertising company's
product in the market place. It generally compromise of:
Product: H&M focuses on providing latest fashion clothes with great quality to its consumer.
They mainly deal in providing merchandise, shoes, jewellery, shoes etc. Their strength is they
manufacture product according to the demand of the consumer (Thomson, 2014). They almost
cover the market area of 62 countries. They also sell their clothes through online forums.

Price: They follow their own pricing strategy which gives them the benefit over their rivals.
They set price at discounted rate which stimulates the buyers to purchase their product. They
even offer discount and various schemes on fresh stock which result in increasing their sales
volume.
Promotion: They have used various promotion platform in terms of social media, electronic
media and direct sales.
Place: Their network spread across 62 countries and they are having 4500 outlets all across the
globe. They have direct distribution which means they manufacture and directly sell to their
target audience (Kalyani, 2015).
People: Their stores are mainly operated by mangers or administrator. Their sales team wears
their merchandise only.
Physical Evidence: It is mainly in the form of shopping item that target audience purchase from
their stores.
Process: Their distribution channel is flexible as they directly sell their product to potential
buyers.
6. Marketing Budget: It assists firm in conducting their marketing activities in proper and
effective manner so that sales can be enhanced and objectives can be achieve on time.

7. Marketing Plan monitoring and controlling : Monitoring and control of activities is
very necessary in order to ensure that whether the work is done in proper manner or not
and ensure that objectives are attain on time. So, it is required for managers of H&M to
monitor all marketing activities on regular basis and they are also require to take
measures that helps in effectively managing all marketing activities. They needs to do
proper monitoring of all the activities to identify improvement areas and take corrective
measures for that so that goals and objectives can be attained on defined time. This helps
in providing high quality of clothes to customers and gain high profitability and
sustainability in market.
7. Long Term Plan: Their long term plan can be in the form of expanding their
market share by covering the market of untouched region or country. For instance,
H&M is focusing on covering the market share of India.

Time line Expected
Outcome
Implementation
Plan
Measure/Control Comments
1st Quarter 5 to 8% STP Approach,
Marketing mix,
Effective
strategies related
with pricing
techniques.
 Lead
Generation
 Improving
productivit
y and
efficiency
Focus on making
effective
strategies
2nd Quarter 8 to 15% Establish great
communication
channel,
This can be
measure by
monitoring the
number of new
customers
Focus on
establish strong
relation with
customer
3rd Quarter 20.00% Choosing
effective
promotional tools
such as social
media platform,
print media,
advertisement,
This can be
monitor by
comparing the
sales and profit of
last 2 quarters.
Using
appropriate
promotional
channels.
4th Quarter 25.00% Maintain strong
public relation
and create
strategies that
also promotes the
interest and
welfare of
society.
This can be
analysed by
comparing sales
revenues and
number of target
audience of three
quarter
Strong public
relation.

REFRENCES
Books and Journals
Malhotra, N. K., Birks, D. F. and Wills, P., 2013. Essentials of marketing research. Pearson.
Mihart, C., 2012. Impact of integrated marketing communication on consumer behaviour: effects
on consumer decision–making process. International Journal of Marketing Studies. 4(2).
p.121.
Papasolomou, I. and Melanthiou, Y., 2012. Social media: Marketing public relations’ new best
friend. Journal o f Promotion Management. 18(3). pp.319-328.
Peter, J. P. and Donnelly, J. H., 2011. Marketing management: knowledge and skills: text,
analysis, cases, plans. Plano: Business pub., INC.