Retail Industry Analysis: Challenges and Strategies for M&S

This report provides an in-depth analysis of the retail industry, with a specific focus on Marks & Spencer (M&S). It begins with an introduction to retail practices and then dives into the key issues faced by fashion retail industries, using a PEST (Political, Economic, Social, and Technological) analysis to examine the factors affecting M&S's sales. The report identifies challenges such as changing customer preferences and economic factors. It then proposes various strategies for M&S to overcome these challenges, including improving sales and after-sales services, offering trendy products, leveraging social media, digitalizing the store, creating mobile apps with discounts, providing affordable products, gathering customer reviews, and offering free Wi-Fi. The report's structure includes an introduction, analysis of key issues and PEST analysis, and a discussion of proposed strategies.

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Table of Contents
FORMATIVE TASK.......................................................................................................................3

FORMATIVE TASK
The report drafted as summative assessment clears the concepts relating to the retail
industry and the recent trends or changes in the sector. It includes a detailed explanation of the
key issues that these industries are undergoing through due to the new changes in the lifestyles
and different buying patterns of the customers. The cited retail store taken in this report is Marks
& Spencer (M & S), which deals with its offerings in fashion as well as food products. In its
recent search report, it analysed and concluded that the sales of the cited firm has decreased
overtime and thus, depicting the needs to adopt or inculcate changes in its strategies or else, to
reframe the whole business related strategy adopted by the firm. In addition, the report present a
detailed explanation about the causes that has led to the downfall in the sales of the organisation.
Along with this,it also studies the various strategies that can be adopted by the concerned retail
store in respect of overcoming this issues related to the sales. .
There are various sources available with the cited fashion retail store to analyse and
conclude the reasons behind the failures occurring in the firm. The technique used in this report
for identifying the issues in the organisation is PEST analysis. This analysis includes determining
the factors in these four environments and the way in which these factors affects the sales
maximisation objective of the cited venture. The four environments include: Political environment – Government's tax related policies. Economic environment – Economic factors such as inflation and deflation inversely
affects the sales of the firm. Social environment – This includes the society, i.e. the population of the country and
their preferences.
 Technical environment – New trends prevailing with the people.
All these factors under different environments are studied in this report. It is concluded that the
offerings made by the firm were not in accordance with the growing trends. Accordingly, the
firm has to adopt certain measures or strategies to overcome the same.
The various strategies or plans that can be designed by the concerned organisation are:
1. The retail organisation should provide effective sales as well as after sales services to its
customers.

2. Offering trendy clothes in accordance with the current style statement penetrating in the
market.
3.Connecting the brand and its offerings with the social networking sites.
4. Undertaking digitalisation of its retail store for customer attraction.
5. Creating mobile apps in the name of the cited venture and thus, offering various discount
schemes on its installation.
6. Offering low cost and affordable products.
7. Giving customer privileged advantages through undertaking their reviews.
8. To be with the growing trend, enabling free Wi-Fi connections to the visitors or customers.
The report is presented in the following way: Introduction – It included a small introduction of retail practices and the cited venture,
Marks & Spencer. Question 1 – This part discusses the various key issues that are faced by the retail fashion
industries and the detail analysis of PEST for the cited organisation.
 Question 2 – This includes the strategies that can be adopted by the organisation to
overcome the same.