MGT6800: Strategic Management Report on Marks & Spencer Analysis

This report provides a comprehensive analysis of Marks & Spencer's strategic management practices. It begins with background information on the company, followed by an examination of strategic tools, particularly Porter's Five Forces, to assess its market position. The report then analyzes and evaluates the leadership style employed at M&S, identifying its transformational approach and its impact on the company's objectives. It critically examines the change management models, specifically Kotter's model, and how they are used to implement strategies within M&S. Furthermore, the report explores the future sustainability strategy of the company, including its environmental initiatives and ethical trade practices. The analysis includes an assessment of the challenges faced by M&S, such as intense competition and changing consumer behaviors, and suggests improvements to enhance its market performance. The report concludes with a summary of key findings and recommendations for the company's future strategic direction.

Module Title:STRATEGIC MANAGEMENT
Module Code: MGT 6800
MARKS AND SPENCER

Contents
INTRODUCTION
Background Information
Strategic tools to analyze methods of development used by M&S
Analyze and evaluate the leadership style at M&S
Change management models critically examine strategy implementation at M&S
What is the future sustainability strategy for M&S?
CONCLUSION
REFERENCES

INTRODUCTION
Marks and Spencer is a major British multinational retailer with headquarters in London,
England, that specializes in selling clothing, home products and food products, mostly of its own
label. This report highlights information on the issues such as the background of the company
which is relatable with the case study of Saturday boy. Strategic tool help to analyze the market
of Marks & Spencer which was done with porter’s five force analysis model. Analysis and
evaluation of leadership style of Marks & Spencer. Model of change management used by the
company with the implementation of their strategy. With these issues this report also discusses
the strategy of sustainable path and initiatives taken by Marks & Spencer (Fähnrich and et.al.,
2020).
Background Information
Marks & Spencer is a leading company in many fields such as items that are related with
consumables or fashion across the world. The mission of the company is to offer quality products
to their customers. They are known for the service they offer in the market as because of that
reason they have been able to build their heritage. Marks & Spencer is dealing with the problem
of high level of competition from the competitors of their level in the form of strategy used for
pricing, other than that they have tools to promote their products at low price which is helping
them a lot. The CEO of Marks & Spencer has been changed and Steve Rowe is facing difficulty
as the methods of the company is not performing well enough and one of the reasons for that is
the budget for households has been less this year. But on the contrary, many of the competitors
of the company has performed well and that is why investors are demanding a change in the
strategy although the chief executive has not come up with any of it yet but changes in the
company has been observed as employees are guided to work in a smarter way than a drastic
way. It is because of the chief executive of the company that they have been able to change their
approach. They need to present something unique and different so that they can get back the
attention of customers as all the products related to fashion launched by them were not that
impressive because of which they lost around 6 per cent of sales. It is important that just like the
success of Marks & Spencer in food related items the company gains back their position in
fashion and other household related items (Macnamara and Gregory, 2018). This can only be
done if they change their methods and strategies after analyzing the needs and wants of the

market. The CEO is clearly focusing on changing the model for pricing strategy as the
competitors are offering many things in less amount of price which is one of the reasons, they are
facing immense amount of competition. To improve their portfolio Marks & Spencer needs to
analyze the patterns of the market.
Strategic tools to analyze methods of development used by M&S.
Porter’s Five force Analysis-
Threat of new entrants-
In this aspect Marks & Spencer has the advantage as they know that the threat with this
factor is less because no other company can enter the market in their sector on the similar stage
because not everyone has the same level of capital power required for it. Also, there are methods
which have been used by Marks & Spencer to develop their portfolio that is maintaining the level
of quality and offer better products. Due to this company has been able to keep their customers
loyal to them and maintain their share of dealings in the business (Lancaster and Massingham,
2017).
Threat of substitute products-
Marks & Spencer operates in those areas where in order to be successful the business
needs to come up with new and creative measures. This strategy has helped them to serve the
needs of their high end and unique customer base. Although the company face high amount of
threat of this factor as many of the local outlets copy their products, style, and sell it to the
customers which is a fake. In order to overcome this issue company has asked buyers to only
buys goods from their exclusive stores or websites as only that channels sell authentic products.
Bargaining power of buyers-
The sector of clothing and FMCG products involve high power of bargaining of
customers. This is because competition in this sector is high and customers have a wide option
available to them. There are other factors which are affecting the sales of businesses such as
Brexit due to which they have to work more towards customer centric approach. In order to
develop their market, they have been focusing on assessing and analyzing the needs of the
customer (Osovtsev,Przhedetskaya and Sagidullaeva, 2018).

Bargaining power of suppliers-
Earlier the bargaining power of suppliers was high in the market as they used to get
products in British but with time and rapid expansion Marks & Spencer has high level of
suppliers available to them which has reduced their power and Marks & Spencer have developed
their methods, they have maintained good relationship with all of their suppliers so that they get
their delivery on time and at reasonable rates (Keegan and Rowley, 2017).
Intensity of competitive rivalry-
There is high level of competition for Marks & Spencer in every sector they operate as
there are many giants which are performing in the market at same level as them which is
affecting their sales. In order to overcome this measure, they have developed their methods as
now they are taking the help of online channels because it is convenient to people and on the
rise, which is why they are focusing on that so that they can increase the sales. Also, attention is
given to improve the condition of their outlets so that customer can have a better experience
through which they can gain advantage over their competitors.
Analyze and evaluate the leadership style at M&S.
The process of leadership is to help others in the team so that they can finish up with their
objectives. This is done with the help of skills and attributes possessed by them which helps the
company to maintain its goals and objectives. The leadership style used in Marks & Spencer is
transformational which means it focuses on improving the convention of the company.
Therefore, Steve Rowe was chosen as the decisions taken by him match his personality and he
keeps on pushing his employees to work in a way which is out of their comfort zones and that is
why he allots them in different tasks. The leaders of the company have set guidelines to complete
the task and the deadline to finish it so that they can increase the effectiveness of work. Leaders
at Marks & Spencer believes that this will make them more challenging and creative to the forces
of market (Akter and Akter, 2020) through which they will be able to bring more goals to the
business. This form of leadership is appreciated by many of the leaders in the market and other
companies also look for this approach as it helps to achieve growth for the business. There is one
drawback of this leadership and that is they do not look for the vision of their employees they
only work on their own vision which can help them to get better sales and improve their

performance as per the needs of the market. Apart from this they are not able to guide them with
responsibilities that are new as it takes time to understand and practice it which is difficult to
complete in less amount of time. It is important that leaders of Marks & Spencer assess these
conditions and try to make changes in their methods so that they can make this form of
leadership from sometimes effective to fully effective.
Change management models critically examine strategy implementation at M&S.
Kotter’s Change Management Model-
This theory is considered as relatable because many of the businesses are implementing
this in their culture so that they can cope up with the needs of the market. Marks & Spencer
analyzes the market and with the help of this model they are able to:
Increase urgency-
With the help of this model, they can work as per urgency and rapid movement of market
as they believe that this way, they will be able to easily boost the confidence and morale of their
team and they will participate in it.
Build the team-
Leaders of Marks & Spencer has to choose the right number of members who possess
right skills and qualities as then only they will be able to implement the drivers for change and
implement their strategy (Keshavarz and Jamshidi, 2018).

Vision-
It is important for the higher level of management to assess the needs of employees their
emotions etc. instead of just focusing on the goals and the vision of the employees. This way
even the employees will put all their efforts to achieve the goals of the company.
Communicate-
It is important to improve the level of communication and make it more transparent so
that there are no discrepancies for the changes that are to be brought in the business. This way
employees in Marks & Spencer will have insight about what is expected from them so that they
can be prepared for it and perform better than the expectations of their leaders.
Moving of things-
This aspect is concerned with maintaining the flow of order without any disruptions and
in order to maintain that it is important that the management of Marks & Spencer gives support
to their employees help them to reduce the complexity in nature and focus on the aspects of
business in a way that is constructive.
Short term goals-
Management of Marks & Spencer needs to form goals that are also short term because
many times employees get stuck in the flow of long-term goals which affect the strategy of
change. Also, this way they will be able to keep the employees of the company motivated to
keep on maintaining the consistency and bring new things and ideas to bring into the market.
Incorporate Change-
This model allows the company to work on change and make it as a regular process in the
culture of the company. Only thing that the management of Marks & Spencer must look for is to
adjust the employees and assign them rewards as per their performance (Babkin Alexander and
BaikovEvgeny, 2017).
Don’t give up-

This model states that in order to bring change it takes times and effort which the
management of Marks & Spencer needs to assess so that they can remove the hurdles in between
as per that and work with a better and open perspective so that the process of change
management can be done successfully.
With the help of this model company can implement change easily because it is focusing
on preparing the employees for change rather than focus on implementing the change or only on
its strategy.
What is the future sustainability strategy for M&S?
Protection and preservation of environment-
In order to make their operations sustainable in the ongoing future the managements of the
company have decided to bring back plan Awhich was introduced in 2007. The management of
Marks & Spencer introduced this plan so that they can tackle the changes of climate or
environment by using materials that helps to sustain the environment. Other than it this plan also
involves practicing trade only with ethical measures and to enable procedures in work that helps
them to reduce the amount of waste so that their shoppers and loyal customers can have a healthy
and disease-free lifestyle ahead. The introduction of this plan made them the first company in the
market to become the first one to work with the facilities of carbon neutral in their stores. Other
than their stores they have implemented this approach in their offices, warehouses, and their
channel of delivery. The management of Marks & Spencer is trying to reduce any amount of
emission that can be reduced or controlled to a minimum so that they can focus on the aspect of
reducing their profits. They made several changes in this plan several times such as in 2010,
2014 and 2017 to make it better as per the demands and condition of the environment. The
current change and implementation with this plan that Marks & Spencer is going to bring is that
they will package their own products which will be from recycled materials by the year 2022.
Also, they are focusing on increasing the sale of healthy food products by 50 per cent in a very
short span of time. They believe that with this move and strategy they will be able to reduce the
amount of waste by 50 per cent by 2025. Other area of focus in this plan involves reducing the
emission of greenhouse gases wherever the company maintains their operations and they
believed that they will be able to observe 80 per cent of difference which is in the period of
2006-2007 to 2023 (Goyal, Sergi and Kapoor, 2017).

Uniform economic growth-
Other than this Marks & Spencer is facing issue to become net zero in all the areas where they
maintain their operations. The plan was to reach this position in 15 years, but they are still
striving to attain this position. They have initiated a new roadmap with 60 other retailers to reach
net zero emissions in order to cope up with the goal of sustainable future for the business.
CONCLUSION
From the above studies it has been assessed that the chief executive of Marks & Spencer
Steve Rowe must plan and announce changes in their plans which helps them to improve their
results so that they can present themselves in front of the investors and see a bright foreseeable
future. In order to improve they also need to take help of strategic tools such as external analysis
with different models such as porter’s five force analysis through which management of the
company will be able to assess the threats in the market and reduce it so that they can have
advantage over their competitors. The leadership style implemented in the leaders of the
company is transformational style because it tends to be adaptive in nature and easily able to
cope up with change. Kotter’s model of change management has been used in order to assess the
changes that the company needs to go through and other steps which management needs to keep
in mind. They have also taken measures and initiatives so that they can work with new approach
through which they can sustain the forces of business and help to preserve the environment.

REFERENCES
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