Analysis of Marks & Spencer Grocery Marketing Strategies and Tactics

This report provides a comprehensive analysis of Marks & Spencer's (M&S) grocery marketing strategies, promotional tactics, and promotional mix policies. It begins with an introduction to marketing and the context of M&S as a multinational retailer. The report details M&S's marketing strategies, including in-store promotions like discounts and music, and digital tactics such as social media campaigns and paid advertising. It examines promotional tactics like special offers, free shipping, and flash promotions. The report further explores the marketing mix (product, price, place, and promotion), segmentation, targeting, and positioning (STP) analysis. It highlights the AIDA model used by M&S to drive business growth, considering both internal and external marketing efforts. The report also includes competitor analysis and provides insights into how M&S adapts to the changing market landscape and consumer behavior to maintain its competitive advantage.

Principles and practice of
marketing

INTRODUCTION
Marketing refers to the activities of a business related to buying and selling a product or
service. It involves finding out what consumer want and determining whether it is possible to
produce it at the right price. The company then makes and sells it. Present study is based on
Marks & Spencer company which is a multinational retailer company founded in 1884, deals in
clothing, grocery and furniture etc. It is also listed in London Stock Exchange. Over thousands of
employees are working with this company.
Report will include the role of marketing consultant to describe marketing strategies and
different promotional tactics that is used for Marks & Spence grocery's marketing. It explains
promotional mix police as well as current marketing mix that is implemented by Marks &
Spence for their grocery's target market. Last point explains the AIDA model that is followed by
Marks & Spencer to achieve business growth and profitability in relation to its competitors.
TASK 1
Explain Marks & Spence's marketing strategy, promotional tactics and promotional mix policies
Marketing strategy: -
It is a long-term, forward looking approach to planning with the fundamental goal for
achieving a sustainable competitive advantage. it is also the section of the business plan that
outlines your overall game plan for finding clients and customers for your business. Marketing
strategy provides an organization an edge over its competitors. The marketing-strategy used by
mark & spencer might be totally innovative or they can be previously tried or tested strategies.
Effective marketing strategies help to get ahead in the competition. Marketing strategy is used by
Marks & Spencer to collaborate with their customers. It is also employed to aware the customers
about the features, specifications and benefits of mark & spencer's grocery products. It is
basically focused on encouraging target population to buy grocery products.
Defining target population is main and necessary step in choosing mark & spencer
marketing strategy. It gives the proper demographics which help in selecting the most
appropriate marketing plan for grocery products. Create a hypothetical process of buying to test
their audience. Once you know the buying behaviour of their target customer than they can select
more appropriate marketing strategy.
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A marketing strategy helps to fix the advertising budget in advance, and it also develops a
method which determines the scope of the plan, i.e., it determines the revenue generated by the
advertising plan.
The marketing strategy of mark & spencer includes multiple approaches like tvc's and
print media advertising. Also, one of the most well-known marketing approach is internet
marketing. It includes various methods like pay per click and paid advertising.
Mark & spencer also use word of mouth in their marketing strategy. It totally relies on what
impression you leave on people. It is traditionally the most important type of marketing strategy.
Being heard is important in business world. When you give quality grocery product to customers,
it is likely that they promote their grocery product. Mark & spencer marketing strategy helps in
developing new ideas for grocery product with best profit making potential and also discovering
the areas that affects mark & spencer's growth and thereby helps in creating an organizational
plan to cater to the customer needs.
Marketing strategy of Marks & spencer's: inside the store-
M&S is the leading supermarket firm that perform very well in supermarket industry and
has global presence. In order to promote the brand inside the store Marks and Spencer provides
various offers such as discount offers to consumers. This discounting strategy supports the firm
in accomplishing goal of business unit to great extent.
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Figure 1:M&S STUDENT DISCOUNT CODES, 2018
Furthermore, Marks and Spencer plays slow music in order to provide amazing
experience to consumers so that more people can get attracted towards the store. This musical
promotional thing always supports to organisation in enhancing sales of business unit to great
extent. M&S always organise event for new product launch. This tactic of organisation aids the
firm in gaining attention of regular buyers and influence their mind. By this way they also
promote the products and services of company to great extent.
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Figure 2:Marks & Spencer just launched a major sale on all their low calorie ready meals,2018
Marks and Spencer use CRM strategy, it time to time organises social event so that it can
fulfil its corporate social responsibility. Company uses demographic segmentation strategy and
apply differentiated targeting strategy in order to attract more people towards the brand.
Marketing/Promotional tactics use by Marks & Spencer outside the store: -
This is the strategic actions that direct the promotion of a product or service to influence
specific business goals.
Special sales for Facebook fans:
With help of this promotional tactic, Marks & Spencer offers their Facebook fans 50%
off all grocery products. They have over 300 thousand fans and they may be able to get almost a
thousand orders from that promotion.
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Figure 3:Marks and spencer customer dialogue,2018
Free shipping:
As a marketing consultant for Marks & Spencer in the international market of grocery
product, free shipping incentives are becoming a trend, provides free shipping for the buying of
1000$.
Flash Promotions:
Through flash promotions such as Marks & Spencer's “grocery products” – where
customers who become visit their website, Facebook and twitter and order their grocery first
time that get free frozen foods with their buying grocery has been able to increase its social
media base, ultimately impacting its number of customers.
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Figure 4:Marks and Spencer Black Friday 2018 deals: Furniture, wine and clothing up to 50%
off, 2018
Shorter promotional windows:
The promotion that has worked best for us to win back former customers is a discounted
promotion with an expiration. While our normal subscription is $444 for a year, we offer former
customers a discounted price such as $199, but it expires after a promotional window of a couple
weeks. We predictably see many customers come back with that promotion.
Customer bonus:
Marks & Spencer's offer a repeat customer bonus. Returning customer who buys ten or
more grocery product gets a free one.
Pay to promote:
Advertising Marks & Spencer content is a fairly new concept that can work well,
especially compared to traditional direct marketing tactics. Pay per click or by number of
impression to help your content get more reach on a variety of platforms.
Connect with influencers outside of social:
Social media is not the only place you should target influencers. Email is another option
likely to capture more attention, especially if their influencer has a busy social profile. A cold
email to a previously identified influence can help Marks & Spencer with a lot of things-
building links, getting comments or encouraging sharing.
Ask to include your content:
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Marks & Spencer getting their content to appear in round-ups. Round-ups is a great way
to get more reach and build backlinks at the same time. They can find relevant link round-ups to
target with the help of google.
Build content that solves problems:
One of the fastest routes to success in the Marks & Spencer is to solve a problem that's
plaguing a large enough group of people. Look to see what questions and complaints they
receiving on social media and build content that answers those questions and helps resolve their
pain points.
Marketing strategy use by Marks & Spacer digitally
Consider paid ads:
Snapchat, Facebook and twitter are just a few of the many social media platforms that
provide paid advertisement services. On a large scale, paid ads can tell anything that Marks &
Spencer’s want to know about their audience including their location, their age, the device
they’re using and even the time they’re most likely to be on social media.
Social media
This is another promotional tactic that is used by Marks and Spencer to promote its goods
and services. It uses Facebook, Twitter in order to circulate information about goods and services
and by this platform company gets connected with mass audience.
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Figure 5Marks & Spencer And Customer Have Some Excellent Pokémon Banter On Twitter,
2019
Outside agencies are saying about mark and spencer’s performance
 The performance was worse than analyst consensus forecasts in clothing and home, but
slightly better in food. Online sales grew 14% and now account for 22.5% of the total,
driven by improvements to the website and investment in logistics.
 M&s is transforming its marketing team into specialists rather than generalists
 M&s has been losing share for more than two decades. In 1997 it achieved its peak
clothing market share of 13.5% in the uk. Its position seemed unassailable, but since then
its market share has been on a declining trend
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Illustration 1: market share
(source:-global data retail intelligence centre,2018)
 marks & spencer and ocado have confirmed a deal which will give the high street retailer
a home delivery service for the first time. M&S will buy a 50% share of ocado's retail
business for £750m. The joint venture will be called ocado and will deliver M&S grocery
products from september 2020 at the latest, when ocado's deal with waitrose expires.
promotional mix polices
business information:-
Marks & Spencer is a leading multinational retailer based in the united kingdom. The company
has a long history within the UK market, with its first store dating back to 1884. as of 2018, there
were 1035 marks & spencer stores located in the UK, and 428 other store locations situated
around the world. Across its operations worldwide, the company employs approximately 81
thousand people, 72 percent of which are female.
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Competitors:-
Bases Mark& Spencer Tesco
location London, GB Welwyn Garden City, GB
Annual revenue £10.7b £57.5b
Employee 80787 327916
Gross profit £4b £3.4b
Customers 32m N/A
Stores(UK) 1k N/A
Marketing strategy:-
Marketing strategy of marks & spencer analyses the brand which covers following factors i.e.:-
11 Product11 Price11 Place11 Promotion
Product:-
It outlines a company's strategic vision for its product offerings by stating where the
products are going, how they will get there and why they will succeed. The product strategy
enables to focus on a specific target market and feature set, instead of trying to be everything to
everyone.
Marks & spencer tries to follow certain value system to maintain the good quality of the product.
Price:-
A business can use a variety of pricing strategies when selling a product or service. The
price can be set to maximize profitability for each unit sold or from the market overall. It can be
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