Whsmith Marketing Strategy

More recently, the recession impelled many bricks-and-mortar retailers towards a damaging focus on discounting that eroded not only many stores’ price positioning but also any point of differentiation or exclusivity.

Marketing is the action or business of promoting and selling goods or services. A person who works in advocating for the good or service is called a marketer (Meerman, 2011). The main and most valuable purpose of marketing is to create awareness of a good or service to increase its sale. A customer is the most valuable business asset so marketing is mainly aimed at attraction of customers. It is therefore important for any organization to have a marketing plan. There are very many advantages of marketing in a growing an established business organization. Marketing helps the organization management to identify the different needs of the consumers. This is because a marketing plan should involve direct consultation with customers to know their

WHSmith is one of the largest book retailer chain stores in the United Kingdom, operating with just about nine hundred High Street stores and five hundred other sales points in the country with the strong focus on the intuitional sales to the their customer by exposing the products through the windows. Merchandising plays tremendous role in the developed sales proposition of WHSmith and the company seem to reach impressive results.

H and M is one of the premier retailer franchises within the United States. To begin, H and M Inc. is one of the nation's largest and well known department store chains. Started over 150 years ago, H and M has continually generated excellent returns for its shareholders and employees. Currently, in the midst of a global recession, H and M has generated huge profits with same store sales increasing 3.3% year to date. In 2012 same store sales increased 11% in the month of April alone. In fact, throughout the duration of 2012, H and M is projecting even larger profits for its underlying business operations. With 2500 stores in 44 different markets, H and M continues to prosper. Even though H and M has experienced success with both its assortments and brand, its competitors haven't faired so well. Sears, due in part to part to a lackluster holiday season, has been forced to close nearly 120 locations to generate excess liquidity in an effort to shore up its balance sheet (Isadora, 2011).Other competitors who cater specifically to the middle class consumer have also lost significant amounts of market share as consumers trade down due to the economy. H and M, with its ride array of assortments and products continues to grow as it attempts to capture market share from failing competitors. The mission statement of H and M has helped it stay focused in the midst

Marketing is used to create the customer, to keep the customer and to satisfy the customer. With the customer as the focus of its activities, it can be concluded that Marketing is one of the premier components of Business Management - the other being Innovation. Other services and management activities such as Operations, Human Resources, Accounting, Law and Legal aspects can be "bought in" or "contracted

Competitors were concentrating on CRM whereas M&S where totally neglecting this fact and were not reacting in terms of programmes such as loyalty programmes.

Tesco online now operates in over 270 stores around the country, covering 96% of the UK. With over a million households nationwide having used the company’s online services, the company has a strong platform to further develop this revenue stream.

Preparing a marketing strategy can be difficult if a business does not understand what customers to target and what they are wanting in the products or services. Listening to customer’s reviews of the company and products or services will help determine what direction of marketing the business should focus on. According to, Winer and Dhar (2011) marketing is a set of activities designed by an organization when changes have to be made that help to influence choices of customers that will initially benefit the organization. Marketing is used to do research and determine what society and customers want out of products or services and then find a way

Nowadays, the marketing concept has been broadened to have a strategic role in overall firm’s strategy rather than being just a part of functional management, this overlapping between marketing and strategic management has resulted in the increase of managers awareness about the importance of initiating marketing strategies in order to be able to compete effectively in the market. Hamper & Baugh (1990) offered a very interesting definition of strategic marketing, which says: “Although definitions for the term vary, we define marketing strategy as a consistent, appropriate and feasible set of principles through which a particular company hopes to achieve its long-run customer and profit objectives in a particular competitive environment”, thus a good marketing strategy is one that is dynamic, seeks profit opportunities and creates competitive advantage.

Marketing is perhaps the most important activity in a business because it forms the communication bond between the customers and the company, and it’s a key aspect of communicating the value of the product.

Entrepreneurs do not normally realize the importance of marketing until they are not bringing in the revenue they projected that they would. It is crucial for a business owner to be educated about their customers. This is done through marketing, so it is important to understand what marketing really is. Marketing is how a business create and retain their customers. Marketing allows one to learn, generate, stimulate, and fulfill the customer’s wants and needs. With marketing the first step is to find a market pain, a problem that is causing customers to be inconveniently affected. Once this market pain is identified the business can develop a business model that will alleviate that pain.

Marketing is essentially a matching process between the needs and expectations of customers, and the organization’s ability and capacity to satisfy them.

Over the five year period until 2015-6, there was an annual decline in revenue of 10.6% (ibisworld, 2016). Numerous challenges have beset the industry, such as, lower book prices, strong competition from online retailers and a change in popularity from printed books to e-books (ibisworld, 2016). Other issues that have a significant effect on bookstores are parallel import restrictions (IBISWorld, 2016), and online retailers being advantaged by low freight charges and often no requirement to pay (GST) Goods and Services Tax (ABC, 2016).

Students will work in small groups within their seminar and make a number of presentations on their chosen organisation. Further information on the seminar activities is detailed separately.

According to Philip Kotler, “Marketing management is the analysis, planning, implementation and control of programs designed to bring about desired exchanges with target markets for the purpose of achieving organizational objectives. It relies heavily on designing the organizations offering in terms of the target markets needs and desires and using effective pricing, communication and distribution to inform, motivate and service the market.”