Strategic Management Report: Analyzing Marks and Spencer's Strategies

This report provides a comprehensive strategic management analysis of Marks and Spencer (M&S), a multinational retail organization. The report begins with an introduction to strategic management and its importance, followed by an overview of Marks and Spencer, including its products and services. A detailed SWOT analysis is conducted to identify the company's strengths, weaknesses, opportunities, and threats. Furthermore, a PESTLE analysis examines the political, economic, social, technological, legal, and environmental factors affecting M&S. The report also explores the company's resources, capabilities, and competencies, along with strategic issues faced by the organization. Finally, the report offers recommendations for strategic options and concludes with a summary of the key findings, providing valuable insights into M&S's strategic position and future prospects.

STRATEGIC MANAGEMENT

TABLE OF CONTENTS
INTRODUCTION...........................................................................................................................1
Marks and Spencer......................................................................................................................1
Products of the organisation........................................................................................................1
SWOT analysis of the Marks and Spencer.................................................................................4
Pestle analysis of Marks and Spenser.........................................................................................6
Resources, capability and competencies.....................................................................................8
Strategies issues faced by the organisation...............................................................................11
Recommendation with the Strategies options...........................................................................12
CONCLUSION..............................................................................................................................12
REFERENCE.................................................................................................................................14

ILLUSTRATION INDEX
Illustration 1: Marks and Spencer resources....................................................................................9
Illustration 2: Capabilities of Marks and Spencer..........................................................................10

INTRODUCTION
Strategic management is essential for going towards set objectives properly to achieve
organisation's effectiveness and improving its quality services. It is helpful for management of
all business activities and setting plan for increasing efficiency of business operations. The
present report is based on understanding strategic management aspects for Marks and Spencer to
improve its product services at higher level. It is retail sector organisation of UK which provides
groceries and food items to a million customers worldwide. In this regard, appropriate
knowledge related to organisation and its services are to be described. However, analysis of
entity can be identified using SWOT and PESTLE by which different strategies can be made
regarding further business operations. Along with this, issues faced by entity are to be introduced
that occur during business operations as well recommendations to reducing them through this
assignment effectively. Thus, students are able to understand several aspects of strategic
management for Marks and Spencer to improve its product services and competitiveness through
this report.
Marks and Spencer
The organisation is the multinational retailer which is located in the City of Westminster,
London. They are listed in the London Stock exchange and constituted of the FTSE 100 indexes.
The firm is specialised in merchandising the clothing, luxury food and home products (Hill,
Jones and Schilling, 2014). It is the organisation which is introduced by the Thomas Spencer and
Michel Marks in 1884, by 2008, they had start selling Kellogg's Corn Flakes as well. It is
currently having 959 stores in the UK in which 615 outlets are of food products. In the year
1998, they become the first British retailer who make a pre-tax profit of around £1 billion. They
have 52 stores in India, 48 in Turkey, 37 in Russia, 27 in Greece, 17 in Ireland, 14 in France, 11
in Poland, 6 in Hungary and Finland and 5 in Spain. In the recent years the sales of the clothing
have been decreased whereas the sales of the food items have been increased. The company has
great policy of selling only British made goods which has made their brand reputation in the 20th
century. They have made long term relationship with the British manufactures and sold their
cloths brand under St Michael.
Products of the organisation
Brand Line Gender Products
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Limited Limited collection
for the junior
Unisex Party wear
posh cloths
smart shoes
designer cloths
Limited with the large
stores only
Women Smart casual clothing
designer fashion
garments, belts, tunics,
hats, shoes, bags,
scarf, night clothes,
bags, umbrellas, belts,
Limited collection with
limited stores only
Men Cloth with young age
style
Cool, easy and relaxed
casual, scarf and hats
Portfolio Perfect Unisex oats, posh skirts,
tunics, scarf, belts,
lingerie and hosiery
Indigo collection Casual, denim,
denim Junior
Unisex Casual shirts, casual
jeans and play wear,
Children's
high-end/upmarket
jeans, Women's jeans,
Women's casual tops,
Casual women's
clothes, scarf, gloves,
hand bags and belts
Indigo baby Unisex Hats, baby clothes,
blanket sleepers,
Romper suits, cot
blankets, babies' and
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bibs by the Indigo line
Autograph Unisex Mixed ranges of hats,
belts, scarves, gloves,
bags, Smart-casual
clothing exclusively
designed for M&S by
designers such as
Nigel Hall, Jeffrey
West and Timothy
Everest. Formal shirts,
ties, and suits. Boys'
smart clothes, bags,
belts, shoes, coats and
party wear
Marks and Spencer own products
Brand Line Gender Products
M&S Skirts Female Cheap, utilitarian
'good value' skirts
M&S soft linen cloths Female Linen casual tops
M&S Jeans Female Cheap, good value,
utilitarian jeans
M&S Luxury Men Higher-end casual
clothing
M&S Golf Men Higher-end casual
clothing
M&S Stormwear unisex Water-repellent
clothing, includes
denim, shorts, chinos,
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coats, footwear,
thermal gloves and
suits
Furniture Beds, sofas, tables,
cupboards, bedroom
suites, toilet furniture,
dining suites.
Kitchens Maxim Crockery, kitchen
electrical, utensils,
pans
Other products of the organisation:
 Technology: They have 36 stores that offer these products which includes are Blu-ray
players, audio and video equipments such as TV and DVD players, mobile phones and
games consoles (Eden and Ackermann, 2013). This category also consists of household
electrical and white goods. They also serve technical help television installation for this
category.
 M&S Energy: In the year 2005, the organisation has made partnership with the Scottish
& Southern Energy to provide electricity and gas to the household individual (Skjølsvik,
Pemer and Løwendahl, 2017).
 Food and drink: In this sector, the company have very big product portfolio that
includes Diet food, Multi-ethnic Take-away meals, ready-made Chinese and Indian food,
special diet products that is consumed to reduce or main the health, Bistro inspired ready
meals, fair trade food, tea, coffee and wine, free-range eggs, Oak-ham chicken and field-
bred pork (Bergh and et.al., 2014).
SWOT analysis of the Marks and Spencer
Strengths:
 High Brand recognition: The organisation is well-known brand in the UK where every
outlet is known by every individual on the basis of the quality they serve (Chen, Kim and
Yamaguchi, 2014). The brand value of the company is high as the customer which go to
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the high street which have high quality products will always prefer to buy products from
the Marks and Spencer so that they can able to finish their whole shopping
 Wide range of products: The organisation has very large product mix as seen above, so
the customer has high choice and can choose the best products according to their needs
and buying capacity (Li and et.al., 2016). The organisation starts selling fresh fruits and
vegetables such as Canary tomatoes, avocados and English apples, carrots. They have
good relationship with the farmers so that they can able to serve the large variety of
products. After the 1970, they also start selling strawberries in their store.
 Large Number of outlets and stores: They have around 900 stores in the world, in
which 600 in the UK and more than 300 in the 40 different countries. The count clearly
defines that the business of the Marks and Spencer is very high and their sales is
increasing due to wide range of goods and services (Gao and Low, 2014).
 Popular designed brand: The organisation have wide range of brand in their retail
outlet such as Collezione and Airflex for men, Insola, Classic, Footglove, Limited
Collection, Per Una, Portfolio, Shoes, shoes, shoes for women, Autograph, Wide Fit
wide fitting shoes. Secret Support shoes for weak feet for both me and women, Sienna X,
Moroccan, UltraSun, H20 Plus, NUXE etc. for skin care and Philip Kingsley, Floral
Collection, Roger & Dallet for Body and bath (Kosolapov and Kotov, 2015). Due to
these range of products the company goes strength by strength
Weakness:
 Bad publicity with the non-trendy products: The goods and services they offer is out
dated and non-trendy, although, the company serve large range of products as well as
different brands in their retail outlet, the customer have thinking that the men's and
women's wear is for the aged people not for the teenagers (Islam and Mamun, 2017).
 They are depended on the manual working: The biggest drawback the Marks and
Spencer is they are following the old technology rather than new techniques which
increase several factors such as time, effort and cost (Strategic Management, 2017). The
competitors of the company are implementing the new technology which is effective and
efficient, so the company should also adopt so that they can reduce these factors and gain
competitive advantage.
Opportunities:
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 The organisation can develop their websites which help them to attract large number of
customer who prefer to purchase the products from the virtual stores
 Market segmentation: The company should adopt the process of setting the splitting their
target market into small segments where the customers have the same level of interest
and needs so that they can able to satisfy the needs of the distinct marketing proposition
(Hill, Jones and Schilling, 2014).
Threats
 Other retail stores are the biggest threat for the organisation who can serve discount
prices.
 Different political factors that can affect the organisation decision related to the
marketing, selling etc.
 There are different governmental policies in the different counties related to the retail
stores will affect the company (Trigeorgis and Reuer, 2017).
 Different competitors who is eating the firm's market share such as Aldi, Asda and
Tesco.
Pestle analysis of Marks and Spenser
 Political factors: The government sets several rules and regulation for the different
companies such as health and safety, planning for hazards identification, risk
identification and control. If the company does not follow these rules and regulation, will
need to pay some fines, even some cases can be filed against them so that they can able
to slow down. In the UK there is free trade agreement and European integration has
opened up the new market so that other companies and counties that can invest in Europe
(Skjølsvik, Pemer and Løwendahl, 2017). This policy have affected the organisation at
the large scale, it is very hard for them to fight and maintain their position and market
share. They need to adopt the aggressive and innovative strategies so that they can able to
have competitive advantage over their rivals such as Asda, Tesco etc. They need to deal
with the labour laws ans industrial relationship, so they need to put efforts related to the
organisation development with the labour law infringements with the local operations
and international initiatives.
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 Economic factors:In the retail sector of UK there is economic recession and also
sensitive for the change in interest rate. There was economic recession in year 2009 in
the UK where the economy is struggling for the survival but that situation have been
recovered now. Due to that environment, UK population have become the Optimistic for
the retail industry, due to that marks and Spenser is at booming stage (Bergh and et.al.,
2014). As the UK is hub for the e-commerce which state that consumers does not limit to
the local retailers but also to the tourist in order to crates the base trends and retail
business. In the recent time, the economic condition of the UK is uncertain, which affect
the sales of the organisation. The population does not have enough money to spend on
the luxury products such as apparels of the Marks and Spenser.
 Social factors: It is seen the taste and preference of the consumer has the drastic change
in the past five years. It is very hard for the organisation to maintain the loyal customers
as there are very large competitors which can attract the customers in several ways. The
people are now variety lovers, they need variety and additional features at every new
purchase. So Marks and Spenser need to do various promotional activities and product
development to retain their old customers and attract new customers (Bull and et.al.,
2016). Customers do not have time go at physical store and buy the products, they just go
the online application and compare the different price and features of the same products
offered by different companies. Markets and Spenser need to adopt strong online trading
to sell the products to the changing customers preferences.
 Technological factors: It is the important aspect in the retail market so that the
companies can maintain the different brands carefully. There are different activities
which is included in the retail market which is interrelated to the technology such as
communication of the different brands with their products. The major brand make huge
investment on creating the brand awareness and advertising the products so that they can
build loyalty (Chen, Kim and Yamaguchi, 2014). They have Celebrity icon Myleen Class
who have been appears on the advertising on the TV as well as also available in the
website modelling for the M&S clothing.
 Legal factors: Every country have their own legislation which is keep on chaining. The
organisation is re-training and update them every year so that they keep up to date with
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the different legislation and laws with the different issues related to the health and safety
laws. The serve continuous training to invite tax changes to the business, business
changes to the business and products changes amongst many other things (Li and et.al.,
2016). They plan methods and objectives that need to be change for the ongoing
development.
 Environment factors: There are several issues related to environment are being
promoted on the TV, magazine, radio and newspaper. So all the organisation need to
change their way to doing the task which is related to the material and their use for
production so that they can manage the waste and not pollute the environment. Marks
and Spencer have made their own Green policy plan which is called as Plan A (Gao and
Low, 2014). They have announced 100 point five year plans to re-engineer so that they
can become carbon natural Zero waste, sustainable sourcing, health promoting activities
and ethical trading.
Resources, capability and competencies
Resources:
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Illustration 1: Marks and Spencer resources
(Source: Resource of Marks and Spencer that add value, 2016)
The organisation has high skilled employees that is around 71,800 which help the
company to make innovative changes and enhance the value proposition. The company is the
creativity driven industry, so creativity is the main key for their success. This technique helps
them to gain loyal customers with the competitive advantage (Kosolapov and Kotov, 2015). The
organisation need big data storage which help them identify the buying behaviour of the
consumers and according they produce and sell variety products and services. They use
innovative technology by which they can promote and advertise their products and services. This
help them to retail their old customers and attracting new target market with the help of
promotional techniques and advertisement strategies.
Capability:
9