Digital Skills Research Project: M&S, VR, and Technology Challenges

This project delves into the digital transformation of Marks and Spencer (M&S), a major British retail multinational. It explores the importance of digital literacy and modern technologies like virtual reality (VR) in enhancing customer experience and driving business growth. The project examines M&S's background, its adoption of VR, and the challenges it faced before embracing technology, such as declining sales and the need to adapt to changing consumer preferences and online shopping. The project highlights the insights gained from introducing VR, including its impact on customer engagement and brand perception, and the lessons learned. The project also discusses various modern technologies, including artificial intelligence and augmented reality, emphasizing how M&S uses VR headsets to create immersive experiences and improve its competitiveness in the retail sector, particularly in the homeware market. The project concludes by highlighting the significance of integrating technology into business strategies to overcome challenges and maintain a competitive advantage.

DIGITAL SKILLS
RESEARCH METHODS
PROJECT

INTRODUCTION
 Digital literacy can be defined as a kind of functional skills that are required for
operating and communicating new and advance technology.
 Today it has become important for individuals to learn digital literacy skills so that they
can easily use, handle and communicate using advance digital technologies, find and
access digital content as per their need and requirement so that one can develop their
own understanding in an appropriate manner.
 This presentation will lay emphasis upon Marks and Spencer organization, modern
technology used by M&S, challenges faced by them before introduction of modern
technology, insight of technology, impact of technology and lessons learnt from it.
Modern technology focused upon in this presentation is Virtual reality.
 It is a stimulated experience that can either be similar or different from real world
experience. This technology is used in organizations for different purposes such as for
entertainment purpose, educating clients, enhance their shopping experience and for
many other purposes.

Background of Marks and Spencer
organization
 Marks and Spencer or M&S is a major British retail sector multinational organization that
operates globally.
 M&S was established in 1884 by Michael Marks and Thomas Spencer. Its main
headquarter is in London, England.
 They sell different kinds of products but are specialized in selling products like cloths,
home products and food products. most of these products are developed by Marks and
Spencer on its own.
 They have their stores in more than 57 countries all over the world and have approximately
1463 stores globally. Out of these 1463 stores more than 900 stores are in UK itself in
which 600 stores only sell food products. They are one of the largest UK’s clothing
retailers.
 They are market leaders in UK especially in terms of Womenswear and Menswear clothing
items. they have more than 80,000 employees working for them. Other than this they also
have a subsidiary i.e. M&S Bank which is owned by HSBC bank since 2004.

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 M&S was established by partnership of Michael Marks and
Thomas Spencer and started their own business in 1884.
 In 1901 they opened their own stall in centre aisle famous Penny
Bazaar. Within 20 years they opened many stalls in various
locations of North West of England.
 Till early 20th century they made a reputation of selling British
made goods and after some times they established relationship
with British manufactures and started selling their cloths under St
Michael Brand name.
 M&S is a public limited company which is listed on London stock
Exchange and is also a constitute of FTSE 250 Index and
previously in FTSE 100 Index from its creation until 2019. In
clothing sector their market share in UK is 11 percent in UK.

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 Marks and Spencer have always been slow in adopting new and advance technologies
due to which from time to time they had to face issues.
 Such as in 2001 usage of credit cards had started but they did not accept credit cards for
payment. As a result, their sales declined and they faced huge financial loss. They faced
decline in overall profit by more than 30 percent.
 So as a result of this loss they had started accepting credit cards for payment which
further helped them to enhance their sales and recover profit till a certain extent.
 But today slowly they had started adopting advance technologies for enhancement of
their slae, profit and revenue.
 In fact, they have included some of these advance technologies within their business
model as well. they nave set a research and development department where they spend
some amount upon advance technologies for transforming M&S into digital first retailers.
They also sell their products online and provide free home delivery to their customers as
well in order to enhance their shopping experience.

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 Due to advancement in technology it has become a compulsion for organizations to adopt
advance and new digital technology within business.
 In order to sustain within the marketing environment in which Marks and Spencer
operates they need to focus upon adopting new and advance digital technology within
their business.
 Marks and Spencer already have a negative brand image of selling cloths for older
people.
 Youngsters think that it is a brad for older people and that do not sell cloths for
youngsters. They have many times faced losses because of not adopting advance
technology.
 So, in order to overcome this image, they have focused upon development of five years
transformation plan in which they have focused upon introducing new and advance
technology within their business in order to boose sales, attract more customers and
enhance their profitability.

Challenges faced by organization before
introduction of modern technology
Some of the main challenges that were faced by organization before introduction of modern
technology (virtual reality) are:
 One of the main challenges that was faced by Marks and Spencer before introducing virtual
reality was changing taste of people and maintained of too many physical shops.
 As it is already known that Marks and Spencer also sell homeware products. But maintenance of physical
stores that sells homeware products was quite cost consuming and its maintenance was also too high.
 Changing taste of customers in terms of homeware products was also making it difficult for Marks and
Spencer to maintain homeware physical stores as per the need, requirement and changing taste of
customers.
 Decreasing sales of Marks and Spencer was also making it difficult for Marks and Spencer to maintain
too many physical homeware stores as per the changing needs and taste of customers.
 Another challenge for Marks and Spencer was their high dependency upon market of UK.
 There is no doubt that M&S have their stores present globally but they are majorly dependent upon
market of UK.
 Any kind of changes within marketing trends of UK can directly impact sales and profitability of the
organization. Marks and Spencer capture 89 percent of British market. So, there are at major risk of
exposure of if any kind of changes within customers perceptions changes or if they lose customers of
UK.

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 Shift to online shopping is another challenge that was faced by M&S.
 They have always been facing competition by its competitors. Introduction of internet
shopping has made it much easier for customers to shop, compare prices of the product and
then purchase those products accordingly.
 According to a global data it has been reported that more than 30 percent of clothing shopping
is done by customers online. Slowly a greater number of customers are moving towards
online shopping.
 Internet has provided a platform to customers and has also increased their convenience in
terms of shopping. Dominance of internet or online shopping had forced Marks and Spencer
to enter into online shopping.

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 Another challenge faced by Marks and Spencer before introducing Virtual reality
technology within the organization is their current issues of brand itself that can impact
their attributes.
 Marks and Spencer had been facing a challenge with themselves and as a result their
competitiveness was slowly deteriorating as they were failing to acknowledge and result to
the changing requirements of the business.
 Marks and Spencer did not acknowledge changes that were required to be brought within the
business because of which they were losing their loyal customers.
 For example, requirement of adaptation of advance technology by M&S for enhancement of
their customer experience was not acknowledged by M&S and as a result they struggled in
maintaining their customer base and maintain loyalty within their current loyal customers.
 Due to this failure of adopting change in technology within the business they were not able to
keep pace with changing fashion trend as a result they were not able to fulfil needs and
requirement of young generation customers

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 Lastly Marks and Spencer were also facing issues in terms of business strategies.
 They never focused upon including technological advancement within their business strategy.
In order to sustain within the market and maintain competitive advantage it is important for
organizations to move with the market.
 But failing to bring changes within business strategy and focus upon digital advancement was
an important challenge faced by Marks and Spencer.
 They were required to lay emphasis upon adopting different kinds of business strategies and
techniques that can be used or adopted by them so that they can bring required changes within
their strategy.
 Not bringing any kind of changes within business strategy was making them lose their
competitiveness within the market which was not only increasing or making current
competition within market tough for them but was also resulting them in losing market share.
 There was serious requirement of bringing changes within their brand and business strategy
by introducing or adopting advance technology within their business.

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 These are some of the main challenges that were faced by Marks and Spencer before
introduction of virtual reality headsets modern technology within their business for
enhancement of their customers overall shopping experience.
 These challenges were increasing market competition for Marks and Spencer. They
were also losing their customer loyalty within their existing customers.
 These challenges had impacted overall sales, revenue and profitability of the
organization. In fact, they had also lost approximately 5 percent of their overall market
share in UK.
 But from an analysis of these challenges it was identified that the major challenge that
was faced by Marks and Spencer was less focus upon introduction of advance and
modern technology within the business.

Insights to the modern technology
introduced
Different kinds of modern technologies
 There are various kinds of modern technologies that are being used or adopted by
organizations.
 Today due to advancement in technology it has become important for organizations to
adopt these modern technologies within their workplace.
 This advancement has also given rise to different kinds of business needs and requirements.
 Virtual reality and augmented reality are one of those modern technology which is
increasingly used within organizations.
 Another technology used most commonly within organizations is artificial intelligence.
Artificial intelligence is used within organizations for taking accurate and appropriate
marketing decisions and enhancing their accuracy of predictability.
 It is also used in retail sector organizations can take appropriate decisions and expand their
business accordingly.