BM461 Global Business: SWOT & Operational Impact on M&S PLC

This report presents a SWOT analysis of Marks and Spencer (M&S), utilizing data from a PESTLE analysis to identify key internal and external drivers affecting the company's performance. It examines the impact of technological innovation, social media marketing, consumer buying habits, and legal and trade policies on M&S's marketing and HR functions. The analysis highlights how technology and consumer trends influence marketing strategies, while legal and trade policies shape HR practices. The report concludes that these drivers significantly impact M&S's operational and financial performance, requiring the company to adapt its strategies to maintain competitiveness. Desklib offers a wide range of solved assignments and study resources for students.

GLOBAL BUSINESS
ENVIRONMENT

Table of Contents
INTRODUCTION...........................................................................................................................3
Portfolio paper 2: SWOT analysis of Mark and Spenser............................................................3
Portfolio Paper 3: Operational Impact analysis...........................................................................4
CONCLUSION................................................................................................................................5
REFERENCES................................................................................................................................1

INTRODUCTION
Global Business Environment means the various external and internal environment factors
which puts the major impact on the organization decision-making power and capabilities to use
resources. This report will cover the SWOT analysis of Mark and Spenser Plc using the PESTLE
analysis data of the company provided in coursework 1. Further, the report will identify the key
drivers from the internal and external environment. Lastly, after identification of the Key drivers
from the SWOT analysis, the report will examine the ways in which these drivers can impact
upon the marketing and HR function area of M&S.
Portfolio paper 2: SWOT analysis of Mark and Spenser
The SWOT analysis of M&S company are as follows:
 Strength: The strength of the M&S company involve that the company can freely import
merchandized goods and services from other countries and sell them at cheap cost. The
company follow all the legal rules and regulations such as Trade policy, Labour Policy
and also update their employees regarding the same. The Green Policy adopted by the
M&S including the CSR is also one of the strength of the business (Bae, Cho and Yoo,
2021). The products sell by the company is highly valuable and has their own branded
labels. Presence is more than 40 countries with 1000 plus stores is also a strength of
M&S.
 Weaknesses: The weakness of M&S is that they unable to provide job satisfaction to its
employees during the time of Covid-19 and financial crises. The strong competition in
the retail industry is also one of the weakness of M&S which leads to the reduction in the
market share of the company. They also fail to protect their brand from the misuse of
fake imitation products.
 Opportunities: The various opportunities available to Mark and Spenser company in the
present time is technology and internet. The company can develop its own website and
introduce online distribution of goods and service to increase brand value and customer
base. By promoting their products on social media apps, the company can also identify
and analyse the current trend, expectations and demand of the customers. This is easily
possible with the analysis of the likes, comments and reviews on the online shopping
channels and social sites (Yorkovsky and Levenberg, 2021).

 Threat: The threat of M&S company are other retail stores which provide the similar
goods at the discounted price to the customers. The company also need to follow
different countries policies and regulations because of being a global retailer which is
also one of the threat of company.
Identification of Key Drivers:
From the analysis of the company internal and external environment, the key drivers which
affects the future performance of M&S company are as follows:
 Technological innovation and social media marketing: The first driver of the M&S
company is technology and social media marketing which helps the company in
improving its operational and financial performance of business. The adoption of new
technology and online distribution channel will have the big impact on the business
performance in future.
 Buying habits of consumers: The habit of the consumers changes over the period of
time. For example, because of the Covid-19, consumers have changes its preferences to
health foods from the unhealthy and fast foods. This helps the retail company in changing
their own products according to the demand and habits of the consumers (Dias, 2021).
 Legal and Trade Policies: The company have its presence in various countries and each
country have their own legal and trade policies. That’s why this is a key driver which
M&S company have to consider in order to keep themselves updated of all policies, rules
and regulations along with improving their performance.
Portfolio Paper 3: Operational Impact analysis
The impact of above identified key drivers on the two functional areas of M&S company
are as follows:
Marketing
Technological innovation and buying habits of the consumers are putting major impact
over the marketing function of company. It is because the ultimate outcome of the adoption of
the social media is promoting goods and service of M&S and attracting more and more
customers. Beside this, the marketing team need to identify the buying habit of consumers in

order to understand which product they further need promotion and which not. The marketing of
M&S company has the responsibility of promoting the products and services of the company in
such way that the sales and customers of the business get increased. In this way, it can be said
that this key driver has impact over the marketing department of the company. They also play
vital role in analysing the current trend and demand of the consumers along with the promotion
of the products to improve brand value of M&S (del Mar Ramos-González, Rubio-Andrés and
Sastre-Castillo, 2021). Thus, in order to do so the marketing area of the business require proper
technology, internet connection and platform. The social media platform helps the marketing in
providing the solutions to all their issues and directly connecting the customers with the
company products and services.
Human Resources
This is another function of M&S company which also affected by the key driver of M&S
company and that is legal and trade policy. The HR team of the company need to follow all the
rules and regulation along with the legal legislation of the country in which they operate. For
this, they also need to keep themselves up-to-date regarding the laws of Labour, work-life
balance, minimum wages etc. In this way, the key driver can impact upon the HR functional area
of M&S company. The changes occur in the legal and political environment have big impact
over the HR department of the company because their responsibilities are to provide their
employees with all the rules and regulation they need to follow. Fulfilling Social responsibility is
also one of the main role HR team of M&S (Garrido-Moreno, García-Morales and Martín-Rojas,
2021).
CONCLUSION
The report has concluded the SWOT analysis of the Mark and Spenser company using the
data covered in the coursework 1. Further, on the basis of this analysis, the report has concluded
the key drivers of the company such as technology, social media marketing, buying habit of
consumers and legal & trade policy. Lastly, the report has stated the way through which these
key drivers are impacting two function area of M&S i.e., marketing and HR.

REFERENCES
Books and journals
Bae, K., Cho, J. and Yoo, B. J., 2021. A Study on Establishment of AI Development Strategy for
Ground Operations innovation Applying PEST-7S-SWOT. Journal of the Korea
Academia-Industrial cooperation Society. 22(6). pp.67-74.
Yorkovsky, Y. and Levenberg, I., 2021. Characteristics of candidates wishing to study science
and mathematics toward a teaching certificate. Teaching and Teacher Education. 101.
p.103282.
Dias, V. M., 2021. Smart KPI-ORIENTED decision support Dashboard for measuring the
Digital Transformation success (Master's thesis, University of Twente).
del Mar Ramos-González, M., Rubio-Andrés, M. and Sastre-Castillo, M. Á., 2021. Effects of
socially responsible human resource management (SR-HRM) on innovation and
reputation in entrepreneurial SMEs. International Entrepreneurship and Management
Journal, pp.1-29.
Garrido-Moreno, A., García-Morales, V. J. and Martín-Rojas, R., 2021. Going beyond the curve:
Strategic measures to recover hotel activity in times of COVID-19. International Journal
of Hospitality Management. 96. p.102928.
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