EBSC7430 - Consumer Behavior: Impact of COVID-19 on Marks & Spencer

This report examines consumer behavior, focusing on the impact of the COVID-19 pandemic on Marks & Spencer (M&S). It covers consumer behavior and consumption studies, including economic, symbolic, and cultural viewpoints. The report analyzes M&S's response to the pandemic, highlighting their shift to online capabilities and agile project management. It discusses the decline in consumer buying intention, the rise of sustainable fashion, and M&S's commitment to environmental responsibility through initiatives like recycling programs. The analysis demonstrates how M&S adapted to changing consumer preferences and the need for digital transformation during unprecedented times.

EBSC7430 understanding
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Table of Contents
INTRODUCTION...........................................................................................................................3
MAIN BODY...................................................................................................................................3
Consumer behaviour and consumption studies............................................................................3
Theories of consumer behaviour and consumption.....................................................................3
Analysing the impact real life impact of pandemic.....................................................................4
CONCLUSION................................................................................................................................5
REFERENCES................................................................................................................................1

INTRODUCTION
Understanding consumer behaviour is essential for every industry as it is the consumer
who purchase or pays for the products and services that the firms within the particular industry
produces. Better consumer understanding enables the firms to produce the goods and services
that are desired by the consumer for satisfying the needs. Covid 19 pandemic largely impacted
almost every industry. It had it impact on creative industry too especially fashion industry. This
report will analyse the consumer behaviour and relative consumption studies will be highlighted.
The real life examples of leading fashion company of United Kingdom, Marks & Spencer will
support the report.
MAIN BODY
Consumer behaviour and consumption studies
Consumer Behaviour is a term comprising the systematic way of studying individual
persons, groups or firms and sum total of all those activities that associates their specific
decisions regarding purchases, consumption and discard of products and services. Consumer
behaviour is greatly influenced by their sentiments, attitudes and preferences. The consumer
consumption pattern can be understood on the basis of consumer culture theory abbreviated as
CCT (Trudel, 2019). The theory represents the study of choices and behaviours of consumers in
relation to consumption. Consumers consumption based choices and behaviours are formed from
social and cultural perspective of consumer (Sheth, 2020). The pandemic has hit the Marks and
Spencer, the company adapted to it and moved forward successfully.
Theories of consumer behaviour and consumption
The consumer behaviour that initiates the person to buy something for consumption is
based on economic, symbolic and culture viewpoints of the consumer. A lot of research work has
been done on these three dimensions of consumer behaviour. All the three perspective interacts
with each other to form the consumer behaviour resulting in forming up of decision to consume
some product or experience any service (do Paço, Shiel and Alves, 2019). The economic
dimension is concerned with the tendency of consumer to evaluate the satisfaction derived from
consumption in economic terms. Symbolic perspective is concerned with the status symbol that
the product or service entails as per the societal norms. The cultural viewpoint of the consumer
makes him consume the product not just for the basic satisfaction but for the cultural necessity

for consumption. All the three theories are responsible for the consumption decision by the
customer (Arnould and et.al., 2019).
Analysing the impact real life impact of pandemic
Covid 19 pandemic resulted in companies sales decline by 6 % approximately. The
company's chief executive stated that the company has recognized that crises are being faced by
the company due to the pandemic and claimed that the after affects of the pandemic will affect
the company as the consumer behaviour of some customers in market will never be same as
before. The company was in the struggling situation even before the affects of the pandemic hit
the business (Daeid, Hackman and Spencer, 2021). Reason for struggle was the terminal decline
in the clothing sector. The pandemic apart from its anticipated adversity of the affect got the
golden opportunity to reshape and mould its business according to the changing customer needs.
The company worked upon its online capabilities to do better.
Company was experiencing that it has heavenly rigid structure that was the result of its
complexity in organizational bureaucracy over the years. Pandemic brought the call for change in
the structure that was seen as an opportunity for the company to make its business structure and
culture swiftly responsive towards the changes that are the part of evolving business environment
(Morales and et.al., 2021). The pandemic helped the company of recognize the need of being
more digital than before and making its business agile. Agile is an approach that the company
follows for managing its projects and developing the software that helped Marks and Spencer to
deliver value to its consumers faster than ever with fewer efforts involved on consumer side.
The new normal of pandemic times encouraged the company to work upon digital store
fronts. Consumer studies by the company revealed that the customer intention regarding
purchase fell drastically. The decline rate was different for the advanced (online) medium and
the traditional (offline) channels (Jung, Oh and Kim, 2021). There was much higher decline in
the consumer buying intention in the offline channel as compared to the online one. This helped
the companies rising initiative to shift towards the online medium for selling to be successful
based on the consumption pattern or preferences by the consumer. The reason behind the
differed fall is clear, the demand of the time to maintain social distance. Many customers were
fearful from showing up at the physical store to purchase products. To remain profitable shift in
the online market was the best option for the company based on the consumer behaviour to resist
the physical stores. The sustainability in fashion increasingly gained its importance with more

and more customers becoming aware about the damage fashion industry implies on the
environment. Company carried out research to know the consumer preferences revealed out that
the consumers are increasingly shifting their preferences to sustainable fashion. Understanding of
consumers regarding the damage the fashion industry cause to the environment has increased. In
response to the cause the company initiated a sustainable approach to fashion.
The company promised to its customers that they can be confident about the clothes they
wear as the company offers the clothes that are made with due respect to the people,
communities and our mother Earth (Klepp, Laitala and Wiedemann, 2020). The company plays
its part in the creation of a fashion industry that is sustainable and makes difference through its
environment friendly processes. Based on the consumer behaviour company is committed in
making clothes that are not at the cost to the planet and are of high quality and durable. The
company helps the consumer with the recycling of the clothes that to be disposed through
shwopping. The company values people by making the factory deals fair for them.
CONCLUSION
Based on the report the meaning and significance of consumer behaviour has been
highlighted. The report has outline consumer behaviour and consumption studies. The report has
further demonstrated the knowledge regarding consumer behaviour and knowledge. Analysis to
real life experiences and business cases has been done.

REFERENCES
Books and Journals
Trudel, R., 2019. Sustainable consumer behavior. Consumer psychology review. 2(1). pp.85-96.
Sheth, J., 2020. Impact of Covid-19 on consumer behavior: Will the old habits return or
die?. Journal of business research. 117. pp.280-283.
do Paço, A., Shiel, C. and Alves, H., 2019. A new model for testing green consumer
behaviour. Journal of cleaner production. 207. pp.998-1006.
Arnould, E. and et.al., 2019. Consumer culture theory: Development, critique, application and
prospects. Foundations and Trends in Marketing. 12(2). pp.80-166.
Daeid, N. N., Hackman, L. and Spencer, M. A., 2021. Forensic botany: time to embrace natural
history collections, large scale environmental data and environmental DNA. Emerging
Topics in Life Sciences. 5(3). pp.475-485.
Morales, C. S. and et.al., 2021, March. Business Decision Making Based on Social Media
Analysis. In World Conference on Information Systems and Technologies (pp. 203-
213). Springer, Cham.
Jung, H. J., Oh, K. W. and Kim, H. M., 2021. Country differences in determinants of behavioral
intention towards sustainable apparel products. Sustainability. 13(2). p.558.
Klepp, I. G., Laitala, K. and Wiedemann, S., 2020. Clothing lifespans: what should be measured
and how. Sustainability. 12(15). p.6219.
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