External Forces That Effect Marks and Spencer

Marks and Spencer face many ethical issues in their daily activities and these affect the public and their business in different ways.

7. External Environmental Factors! There are two main external environmental factors effecting Braaap’s company; they are the social and economic aspects of marketing. The social factor includes product promotion (are they promoting in the correct place, e.g. television, social media), are they reaching their customer base?, and merchandise (is it attractive and appealing

The author of this essay is a consumer of high street fashion apparel and expresses a personal interest into the findings of the research. The author hopes to obtain an advanced understanding of consumer buying behaviour in the current economical climate and compare it with their own spending habits. The strategic issues that are relevant to this topic are as follows; are there specific groups of consumers being targeted when undertaking the research, what are the consumer behaviours that are notably different as a result of the recession and how have these behaviours affected the retailers. The aim of this research project is to understand the extent the high street has been affected by changes in consumer behaviour, caused by the

(Walmart, 2012). Tesco not only had to fight the recession but had to compete with Wal-Mart as well. Tesco had a tough journey ahead of itself since Wal-Mart was a typical American retail company and it had a strong brand image in the American market. The market was already familiar with Wal-Mart and its products. It had already won the brand loyalty of the customers. This is another reason why Fresh & Easy had a tough time influencing American customers. United States is a Mixed economy, bit of market and a bit command economy, where supply and demand determines the quantity of goods and services to be produced and under government regulation as well. Therefore private enterprise and government regulation have come to be integral and important to the economy. (Mixed economy, 2013). In reference to the Tesco scenario there was a free market mechanism, customers demand determined the sales of Fresh & Easy which was not in their favour. This resulted in Fresh & Easy making no profit in 5 years. Looking at the command side of the market, government tends to takeover firms during recessions that are vital to the economy. United States government didn’t bail out Tesco in the recession because it was a British owned company.

MARKS AND SPENCER GROUP PLC FULL YEAR RESULTS 2011/12 - 52 WEEKS ENDED 31 MARCH 2012 Marks & Spencer performed well in a challenging economic environment and made good progress in delivering our strategy

Marks and Spencer has strong trading relationships across the world. The company is a secular organization embracing all cultures, nationalities, races and religions. They don’t support or themselves to any country, nations, states, Governments,

The supermarket industry in the UK has faced significant challenges and undergone notable changes between 2007 and 2011. Two of the major supermarkets are Tesco and Morrison, the challenges, including the recession, as well as changes that the firms have implemented are reflected in the financial performance of these two firms.

In response to the current cheap clothing industry supermarkets have increasingly over the last few years caught up with fashion trends, helping them to rival the high street clothing stores with their less expensive versions. Marks & Spencer is no exception to this and they have bought their clothing ranges up to date to keep up with the latest trends and to keep their customers interested. “Consumer purchases are influenced by cultural, social, personal and psychological characteristics. For the most part, marketers cannot control such factors, but they must take them into account”. Armstrong, G and Kotler, P (2007) Marketing: An Introduction, 8th Ed. Prentice Hall.

Describe and evaluate the main strategic changes of Marks and Spencer since the beginning of Stuart Rose’s Chairmanship.

Marks & Spencer (M&S) is one of the leading retailers of the United Kingdom; with 24 million customers its high quality clothing, food, home products, and financial services are proven to be very popular. The company was first set up by Michael Marks; where he was later joined by Tom Spencer in 1894 where they opened a small head office in Manchester and now in 2016 it has 914 stores throughout the UK and 468 across Europe, Asia and the Middle East employing 82,948 people.

M&S keeps with the latest style and colour, although it has high quality goods. M&S does not consider with customer needs, especially in clothing market, it may cause M&S to lose its sale to competitors (Jobber, 1999). Another social factor is that credit card acceptance has increased more than 10% of all trade (BBC News, 2000). M&S has allowed its customers to pay by credit cards from 18 April 2000 to contend with its compatitors who have accepted credit cards for a long time (BBC News, 2000).

Following the appointment of a new CEO in 2004, Marks and Spencer (M&S) had a significant change in company vision and strategy. This included modernizing stores and tightening cost control which resulted in significant improvements to operating margins. However, the company has recently struggled to increase their customer base and has become far too reliant on previous customers. Furthermore, the company has come under scrutiny for various accounting choices resulting in negative analyst attention.

Marks and Spence targets customers with all age groups as well as all genders who have a passion for fashion. Nowadays, customers have grown a great interest on having healthy diets and ethically produced goods (Baker, 2015). As a result, M&S should focus on ways to attract their customers by producing goods and clothes ethically. This will allow the brand image to expand since customers would be seeing it as a better choice as it will be seen harmless to the environment. In addition, M&S should consider focusing on the younger generations as once Nelson Mandela had said they are the ‘children of the future’. Therefore, younger generations are the ones who spread brands the fastest by wearing them and advertising them among their peers.

Over the years M&S has expanded its product portfolio and entered into the food industry. Currently M&S has a diverse product line with varying levels of success in the various elements of the portfolio. In recent years, as the food business for Marks and Spencer has grown steady, making it a star product in the portfolio, the clothing line has experience a downturn in sales and profits. Clothing and general merchandise is considered a rocky boat with falling sales and profit margins. The fall in demand for clothing line has been largely attributed to the marketing side weaknesses of M&S.

In 1884 Michael Marks and Thomas founded the Mark & Spencer which is now one of the UK’s largest retailers in terms of foods, clothes and finance and house ware. It operates around 40 countries creating the value of 140 billion pound. It has certain missions and values. The main purpose of this assignment is to analyse the strategic marketing management of the Mark & Spencer using different strategy and marketing tools. This will be done with analyzing and evaluating the recent marketing actions of M&S and the improvement has been done since 2005. This assignment will also point out the reason that why M & S nearly collapse and what was the recovery program done to sort out for