MBA Dissertation: Multi-Channel Marketing Strategy at Sports Direct

This MBA dissertation presents a comprehensive case study on Sports Direct's multi-channel marketing strategy and its contribution to business expansion. The research, conducted by Nishanth Venu from Dublin Business School, explores the significance of multi-channel marketing in a competitive market, combining primary data from surveys and interviews with secondary data from various sources. The study investigates the impact of multi-channel marketing on consumer behavior, the development of effective strategies, and the evaluation of channel performance. The dissertation includes an introduction to multi-channel marketing, a literature review covering marketing channels and their characteristics, a detailed methodology section outlining the research approach, and an analysis of findings. The research delves into the various types of marketing channels, the benefits of multi-channel approaches, and the challenges faced by organizations in implementing them, with the aim of understanding how Sports Direct utilizes different channels to reach customers and achieve its business objectives. The findings offer insights into the effectiveness of multi-channel marketing in enhancing customer relationships and driving sales. The dissertation also highlights the practical application of multi-channel marketing strategies in the context of Sports Direct, with conclusions and recommendations.

the Multi-Channel Marketing and Business Expansion: a case of Sports Direct
The Case study of Multichannel Marketing used in Sports Direct
Student Name-NISHANTH VENU
Dissertation Submitted in partial fulfilment of the reuirement of the degree of
MBA
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DECLARATION
I Nishanth Venu Student of Dublin business school Student Number 10505923 declare that that
the dissertation submitted to for the award of MBA Marketing is the result of my own
investigation except stated otherwise, where it is clearly acknowledged by references.
Furthermore, my work is not submitted to any other University, institution diploma or degree.
Signed- Nishanth Venu
Student Number-10505923
Date-06 January 2020
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Acknowledgement
First all I really appreciate my supervisor Dr Sharon Harris Faculty of Dublin Business School
for all the support and motivation and valuable guidance and advice and her contribution will be
forever valued
Furthermore, I would like to appreciate all my friends, partners colleagues and everybody who
motivated me with their care and encouragement through this hard journey.
Also, I would like to thank all the employees of Sports Direct and their grateful customers to
help me during the research
And lastly, I am very thankful to my parents and family who encouraged me and motivated me
during the whole course and always gave their love, care and support without expecting anything
in return.
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Abstract
Multi-channel marketing is grounded upon the actuality that buyers involve greater options than
before with respect to attaining resourceful information related to products. Moreover, the
advancement of the available marketing networks, taking in the progress of email, social media
and mobile, has made marketing divisions to enhance their existence on such channels for
developing their customer relationship management (CRM) endeavours. The research aims to
understand the significance of the multichannel marketing strategy and analysis the same from
the perspective of business development of the organisation in a competitive market. This
research is a combination of both primary as well as secondary data. Firstly, the primary data
was collected through surveys and interview. There were 50 participants from different
designations. Among them, the majority i.e. 27 were working as a sales executive in different
outlets and 18 as marketing executives. 3 participants are designated as an operational executive
and 2 as the manager for the firm. Further, secondary information was gathered from library, past
studies, magazines, newspapers, online journals, textbooks etc. The research findings highlight
aspects and perceptions related to the notion of multi-channel marketing strategy and the manner
in which it helps business organisations in achieving higher success through more effective
marketing expertise.
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Table of Contents
Chapter 1: Introduction:...................................................................................................................4
1.1 Overview................................................................................................................................4
1.2 Aim of the Research..............................................................................................................4
1.3 Research Objective................................................................................................................5
1.4 Research Question:................................................................................................................5
1.5 Research Rationale................................................................................................................5
Chapter 2: Literature Review...........................................................................................................6
2.1 Introduction:..........................................................................................................................6
2.2 What is Marketing Channel?.................................................................................................6
2.3 Characteristics of the Marketing Channel.............................................................................6
2.4 Evaluating channel performance:..........................................................................................7
2.5 Types of Marketing Channels................................................................................................8
2.6 Significance of Multi-Channel Marketing:..........................................................................10
2.7 Analysis of the Impact of Multi-Channel Business on Consumer Behaviour.....................10
2.8 Development of an Effective Multi-Channel Strategy:.......................................................12
Chapter-3 Methodology.................................................................................................................13
3.0 Introduction..........................................................................................................................13
3.1 Research Outline..................................................................................................................13
3.2 Research Philosophy............................................................................................................14
3.2.1 Justification for selecting the philosophy of interpretivism.............................................15
3.3 Research Approach..............................................................................................................15
3.3.1 Justification for selecting the deductive approach............................................................16
3.4 Research Design..................................................................................................................16
3.4.1 Justification for selecting the explanatory research design..............................................17
3.5 Data collection method........................................................................................................17
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3.5.1 Justification for selecting the primary data collection method.........................................18
3.6 Sampling technique and size...............................................................................................18
3.6 Data analysis tool.................................................................................................................18
3.7 Research timeline.................................................................................................................18
3.8 Ethical consideration...........................................................................................................19
3.9 Research limitation..............................................................................................................20
Chapter 4. Finding and Analysis...................................................................................................21
4.1 Introduction..........................................................................................................................21
4.2 Finding.................................................................................................................................21
Demographic Analysis...............................................................................................................21
Survey:.......................................................................................................................................25
Chapter 5: Conclusions and Recommendations...........................................................................38
Reference List................................................................................................................................41
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Chapter 1: Introduction:
1.1 Overview
To start with, the buyers in the present day have several preferences with respect to from where
they purchase their products. Few buyers at all times prefer viewing the product at retail outlets
prior to making any purchase. Others may search the particular product on applications and make
the decision. Still other buyers might go through some advertisement and decide to buy the
product. Moreover, there will be still other buyers who decide to purchase the particular product
from some exhibition. In such a situation, cross-channel advertising has progressed steadily and
considerably as a means for reaching the buyers (Rosenbloom, 2007). Television, the Internet as
well as other means are utilized collectively for marketing products. Additionally, search
engines have transformed the manner in which individuals search for information. Moreover,
online advertising is advancing speedily and taking away budgets from traditional marketing
networks (Chaffey and Ellis-Chadwick, 2012). Additionally, the Internet doesn’t operate in
isolation, nevertheless and discussion about its spread shouldn’t overlook the roles other means
should perform (Arikan, 2008). Moving ahead, coincidental with the development in digital
ecosystem, a number of different marketing approaches are moving from passive approaches in
communicating with buyers towards higher proactive ones with involvement in manifold
communication networks. Even though, several marketers are laying higher focus upon online
advertising being an option, it still needs to reach its complete ability within the marketing mix (Kotler
and Keller, 2009). Thus, in such a case paid listings making use of search engines frequently aren’t
the foremost aspect of that media mix.
Moving ahead, there are a number of buyers out there and every buyer has a favoured purchase
channel. Gone are the days at the time when corporations attempted to target buyers by means of
just one marketing channel i.e. Retail (Arikan, 2008). However, the present era is basically of
Multi-channel or Hybrid Marketing and this approach proves highly effective for brands
(Rosenbloom, 2007). Moreover, as the name signifies, multi-channel marketing supposes that
there are diverse buyers purchasing the same items from diverse channels. As a result, they
develop their communications and message for different channels and also, strategize for
different channels (Chaffey and Ellis-Chadwick, 2012). Thus, their marketplace
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potential becomes bigger and they are more expected to experience a greater level of sales as
compared to corporations targeting just one or two channel.
Multichannel marketing refers to the practice by which companies interact with customers via
multiple channels, both direct and indirect, in order to sell them goods and services (Chaffey and
Ellis-Chadwick, 2012). Companies use direct channels, or ones in which the company
proactively reaches the customer – such as physical stores, catalogs or direct mail – or indirect
ones in which they push content via websites or social media, also known as inbound marketing.
Other means of reaching customers with multichannel marketing include via mobile devices, text
messaging, email, company website, social media, search engine optimization (SEO) or GPS to
track customers' proximity to goods and services. Multichannel marketing combines the practices
of inbound and outbound marketing with the goal of reaching customers on the channel of their
choice. In this way, the buying process is more controlled by the customer than the marketer
(Rosenbloom, 2007).
Moving ahead, multi-channel marketing is grounded upon the actuality that buyers involve
greater options than before with respect to attaining resourceful information related to products
(Chaffey and Ellis-Chadwick, 2012). Moreover, the advancement of the available marketing
networks, taking in the progress of email, social media and mobile, has made marketing
divisions to enhance their existence on such channels for developing their customer relationship
management (CRM) endeavours (Rosenbloom, 2007). The previous marketing methods, like
making use of print sources, broadcasting on radio and TV or telemarketing are no more the only
emphasis of marketing divisions. Such techniques are present even now, nevertheless are fraction
of a wider approach, which involves new media and evolves along with altering buyer
preferences and communication means. Companies in the present day, attempt to build analytics
for determining which buyers receive which messages grounded upon their demographic data
along with other conducts (Kotler and Keller, 2009). Apart from understanding who exactly the
buyer is and what he/she actually requires, corporations attempt to comprehend which marketing
channel a specific buyer prefers for maximizing the prominence of their messages (Arikan,
2008). This allows corporations to target the correct buyers with the appropriate content for
facilitating sales.
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Additionally, for ensuring success within multichannel marketing or some other digital
marketing approach, corporations attempt to develop campaigns, which cover various channels
effortlessly (Gensler, et al., 2007). As expecting buyers to become accustomed with the
corporation’s favoured means is an impractical hope, corporations cater to the buyers and
customize campaigns to ensure that they are in line with multiple marketing networks (Chaffey
and Ellis-Chadwick, 2012). Other objective of corporations is knowing, exactly which
campaigns on which channels result in maximum sales, making possible for them to decide the
efficiency of their endeavours and computing the return on investment of their existence on
every relevant channel (Melis, et al., 2005). Corporations could easily coordinate their online as
well as offline marketing endeavours for optimizing both (Rosenbloom, 2007). For instance,
keyword testing from online marketing could very well notify the efficiency of particular
campaigns before they are actually converted into print adverts or some other advertisements.
Taking a step ahead, the concept of multichannel marketing could prove to be highly beneficial
for companies today (Kotler and Keller, 2009). Through maximizing marketing endeavours by
promoting a message by means of several different channels, corporations hold the ability of
collecting feedback from diverse buyer segments. Complete performance could be decided by
means of this feedback and enhancements could be done through crowdsourcing data (Arikan,
2008). By making sure that the resources are being employed efficiently and effectively, the
operational cost goes down. Moreover, a highly visible message helps in attracting more
customers for any corporation. Through focussing efforts towards any one channel, the potential
of reaching the highly prospective buyers is decreased (Kotler and Keller, 2009). Corporations
could utilize their presence on several different networks for building a personalized image,
which could help in developing a strong consumer following and improve loyalty and retention.
At the time when corporations gather feedback from buyers, they could effectively comprehend
what exactly is expected by the customer segment and ways of improving product as well as
service offerings. Corporations could after that enhance marketing endeavours and recognize
which particular channels work most effectively for specific buyer segments and strategize for
satisfying the requirement of that specific buyers’ group (Rosenbloom, 2007). Additionally,
corporations struggle for centralizing objectives and understanding aspects such as computing
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the message's frequency or reach at the time when developing multichannel approaches.
Moreover, issues arise from the incapability of coordinating the message across different
divisions along with brands for ensuring that it is unswerving on every channel (Kotler and
Keller, 2009). Because of an absence of common technique for satisfying each channel,
employees as well as IT support is also highly essential in devising multichannel campaigns
(Arikan, 2008). Common issues corporations face when devising the overall CRM like obtaining
a single repository for buyer data, is also seen as being a limitation of multichannel marketing.
There are different kinds of marketing models available to the organisation and the organisation
must understand the market scenarios before choosing the appropriate one. There are broadly
three kinds of marketing channel strategies namely omnichannel, multichannel marketing
strategy and cross channel marketing strategy. The omnichannel marketing strategy is the key
focus over here for this research. The term omnichannel marketing strategy can be defined as the
implementation of the same kind of sales strategy in different platforms where each platform is
completely separated from the other. This marketing model is helpful for the company as it is
maximizing the opportunity to interact with all the consumers (Verhoef, et al., 2015). To
structure an effective multichannel marketing plan the organisation must focus on some of the
basic elements, which are helpful in the development of better communication with the
customers in terms of their product offering, view offers and other details. Different
communication channels which are often used by the companies in the multi-channel marketing
strategies include websites, catalogues, physical stores, e-mail marketing strategy, text message
for promotion, blogging and so on (Verhoef et al., 2015). One of the key parameters that act like
a success parameter for the multichannel marketing model for any organisation is integration.
Some of the key points that must be included in a multichannel marketing plan include
A detail customer profiling
Design relevant communication profile for each customer
Design SMART objective
Designing proper tactics with a specific inbound focus (Jeanpert and Paché, 2016)
The key focus of this research is to understand how the multichannel marketing strategy will
help Sports Direct when it is planning to expand its business in nations such as Ireland and
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whether it is necessary to change the strategy from multichannel marketing to opt for other
option or not.
SportsDirect
Sports Direct is a British retailing company which was founded by Mike Ashley in the year 1982
in the United Kingdom and currently operates 670 stores across the globe. It is under the name of
Fraser group PLC formerly known as Sports Direct PLC. All the major sporting Brands are
traded under the sportsdirect.com brand. Low margins are the operational strategy of Sports
direct and how it beats its competition(Millar, 2013). Sports direct is listed on the London Stock
Exchange and it is the constituent of the FTSE 250 index. The various subsidiaries of Sports
Direct is SportsDirect.com House of Fraser Flannels Slazenger Lillywhites USC Everlast
Lonsdale Eastern Mountain Sports Game. SportsDirect Approximately consists 29400 people
working in the organization. For the year 2019 Sports Direct had a group revenue of £3,701.9m.
Today Sports Direct is UK largest sports retailer in terms of revenue
1.2 Aim of the Research
The research aims to understand the significance of the multichannel marketing strategy and
analysis the same from the perspective of business development of the organisation in a
competitive market.
1.3 Research Objective
The research objectives are:
Evaluation of multi-channel marketing strategy from the organisational perspective
Critical analysis of the impact of this strategy on consumer behaviour
An impact of the strategy for expansion in Ireland
1.4 Research Question:
How Multi-Channel Marketing Strategy helping the business organisations to achieve
marketing expertise
How the multi-channel marketing strategy controls consumer behaviour
How Sports Direct is using Multi-Channel Marketing Strategy?
How it can use the Multi-Channel Marketing Strategy to expand business in the
Ireland Market?
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1.5 Research Rationale
There is no doubt in the fact that Internet has transformed commerce, introducing buyers to an
unparalleled amount of data along with an effective interaction means amid companies and
buyers globally. Presently, emerging techniques are improving this collaboration further.
Nowadays, there prevail higher options than before for customers and businesses to interact and
carry out business with prospective buyers. Moreover, multichannel marketing offers buyers
with more than one means of completing any sales transaction, like by means of a retail outlet, a
web page on the Internet, or via smartphones. In addition, it very well identifies that diverse
buyers not just favour particular channels, but may commonly use multiple channels throughout
the purchasing process—for instance, through locating useful data on some web page,
nevertheless actually making the purchase at a physical store. Additionally, as the world gets
highly linked via mobile technology and Internet, multichannel communications will turn out to
be a standard facet of commerce instead of being an exception. While several buyers still prefer
interacting with one channel, incrementing numbers make use of multiple channels during their
purchasing procedure and those who do buy around 30% higher. The concept of multichannel
marketing requires augmenting the contact points with buyers and reaching further buyer
segments through offering access points, which they prefer. For being efficient, it is vital that the
business work for coordinating its message and data.
In addition, promotions in print, TV, direct mail (and email), radio, Internet adverts and other
means should offer steady brand experiences. At the time when diverse agencies are contracted
for these ways, building a steady message could certainly prove to be difficult. Likewise, buyers’
experiences by direct sales, websites, call centers and retail surroundings must also be in line
with the steady brand. Then, it is extremely significant that diverse channels synchronize their
information. Sales done via website or call-center are likely to gather higher buyer information
as compared to ones made within a retail outlet. Storing such data within diverse databases (one
utilized through the call center, one utilized through the website and others) denies a corporation
of several prospects to customize any buyer experience. When the information is combined
across different means, new prospects proliferate. For instance, direct marketing lists could be
highly targeted and modified for including particular data; an extremely customized mailer might
be two times more expensive than the print, nevertheless creates five times the reaction rate.
Companies could also make use of information for creating follow-up prospects. For instance, a
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