Sustainable Marketing Fundamentals of Marks And Spencer

Present report is based on analysis Marks and Spencer  which is British supermarket chain, having its business operations across 100 countries. It is headquartered in city of Westminster London. It specialises  in the selling of clothing, home products  and luxury food products. It is found Micheal marks  and Thomas Spencer in the 1884.  Scope of operation  is to maximize profitability and providing products to meet the requirement of customers and sustaining its international retail position.  The marketing plan  for company have been formulated and determined in this report. The purpose of the report is to develop the understanding about the elements of marketing in context of Marks and Spencer.

Unit 1 :The Elements of Marketing

Marks and Spencer is recognised as a multinational British corporation operating in the retail industry in United kingdom. Business entity specialises in the selling of clothes, food items and home products. An organisation has nearly 1000 stores across the United Kingdom which support an enterprise in delivering products or services to a wide number of customers.

Marketing concept is defined as the philosophy by which an organisation should analyse the needs of their customers and then make decisions to satisfy those needs. It can also be recognised as the strategy which is executed by an enterprise to satisfy customer’s needs, increase sales, maximize profit and to gain competitive advantage.

Differentiation, competitive advantage

Differentiation, is defined as the act of developing new products or services with the motive of differentiating brand from that of competitor (Jaramillo and Spector, 2015). Differentiation strategy can be applied by Marks and Spencer for the purpose of providing the suitable response to the competition but it involves high risk and investment as compared to  other marketing strategies. This strategy has assisted the business to gain competitive advantage in the market. As production of innovative products has helped an enterprise in attracting more number of customers. It also helps an organisation in increasing uniqueness (Alonso-Dos-Santos and Ko, 2018).

A competitive advantage is defined as the benefit which is gained by Marks and Spencers over competitors. The several opportunities can be generated by an enterprise by delivering the high value proposition to customers at reasonable price. Differentiation strategy is considered to be as the generic strategy will help an organisation in accomplishing market objectives.

Unit 2: The Marketing Mix & Impact of Internet

In industrial marketing, there are buyers as well as sellers of the product of industrial products such as capital, machinery, land etc. Industrial marketing is recognised as a distribution channel which specialises in selling products and services to other companies in an industry. It also involves bulk order. In this context, M&S  has also creates its relationship with small scale retailers and suppliers  in other countries. They usually provide their products to small retailer in similar industry which helps in increasing sales and brand recognition in market. It also helps in providing easy accessibility to customers.

Consumer tends to buy products of those brands which have wide recognition in market. In order to provide easy accessibility to consumers company can improve its channel of distribution across countries to provide conveneince to target customers (Bahadir, Bharadwaj and Srivastava, 2015).

Marks & Spencer have focused their business activities into developing new products in the market of United Kingdom by offerings different goods and services.  Marks and Spencer has developed new products which has helped the firm in attracting more customers. An innovation plan has helped Marks and Spencer in differentiating its products and services from that of competitor.

Marks and Spencer has brought major improvements in production procedures. Industrial marketing provide support in analysing current trends and requirements of customers  towards retail products and services.  It enables M&S  to improve their existing  and develop new products to meet  the requirements of customers (Barrett and Weinstein, 2015).

However, analysis provide  understanding that M&S make efforts to adopt differentiate its products and services  in market through innovation which  helps in being  out of competition.  Company has provided focus on differentiation but it  also create major challenges for  organisation  to sustain its business operations  and gaining competitive advantage on competitors.

Unit 3 :Branding and Promotion

There are 4 ps in marketing mix these are:

• Product: Marks and Spencer company offers wide range as well as variety of products or services to customers  of  M&S including offers like  Food hall, Home stores, Outlet stores, M&S Simply Food. Meanwhile, M&S's clothing division had an 11% market share in the UK. Business entity offers goods as well as services to all customer segment. In addition to accessories as well as clothing the firm also offers food products as M&S Food hall. An organisation mainly sells its in domestic brand rather than other global brands.
• Price:  It implies to strategies adopted by organisation to influence customers to buy products and service. Usually customers  seeks to buy quality products at low prices princes.  In order to regain the market share and influencing customers,  M&S can penetration pricing policy   in which they provide their products at low price in comparison with competitors for specific duration to influence customers. It helps them to gain competitive advantage  and increase in sales revenues. 
• Place: Marks and Spencer company is recognised as global brand, which has many stores located in different places. The organisation also has it websites which has enables the enterprise to reach numerous customers. Use of the internet has allowed the enterprise to communicate directly with client.  For improvement, company can enhance its distribution channels across countries  so that it products can easily accessible to customers.
• Promotion: Marks and Spencer have decided to align its advertisement campaign with digital marketing. They are delivering a common message on all medium of communications. Utilisation of internet has provided firms a chance to provide additional facilities to clients,  such as: customers can find blogs and fashion tips on Marks and Spencer website (De Mooij, 2013).

Unit 4 :Budgeting + Metrics

Brand

Brand is considered to be as a symbol, unique design imposed by manufacturing enterprise on products. It helps business entities in differentiating their product from that of competitor’s. It helps consumers to differentiate products of companies  in market. It is  unique identity for organisation which  creates competitive advantage  and provide major recognition to organisation among customers across  the countries.  M&S have created their unique brand  to gain recognition and attraction consumers.

Identifying the way brand is promoted

Marks and Spencer can promote its brand at domestic as well as global level by using the social media sites, as this strategy will assist it in reaching to a wide number of customers. In addition to these a firm can also promote brand by organising marketing campaign and taking the supports of other advertising media.

Analysing the techniques through which brands be globalised

There are several strategies which can be used by the marketing manager of Marks and Spencer in order to build the brand which are:

Positioning of the brand - It is very much important for the marketing manager to develop the understanding of the market as well as competition in an enterprise before positioning a brand. Appropriate brand positioning in retail sector has provided support to M&S in sustaining its business operations.   High sales and growth has been attained by M&S due to positioning of business at international levels.

Think broadly - It is very much important for an organization to expand into offering new products based on regional market demand. The marketing manager should ensure that brand name is broad enough to accommodate those changes.  Appropriate strategies should be created by brand to sustain its position in market. For example: M&S has created partnerships with organisation in overseas nations to increase their market and dependency.  How globalization has expanded business operations to meet requirement of customers. 

Budgeting + Metrics

Pricing

Pricing is defined as the procedure where the manager in an enterprise determines asset as well the prices for their products or services. It is usually based on the organization average costs, and on the customer's perceived value of the trade good.

Marginal and full costing Contribution analysis

Marginal accounting is a process of identification, measurement , analysis, interpretation and communicating information  to manager for the pursuit of an organisation's objectives (Kubacki and et.al., 2015). Contribution analysis is step by step  approach  which is designed by manager  to assess  about the contribution a program  has made to some particular goal.  It also analyses the effect of internal and external factors in the contribution.  It also estimates the direct variable costs  and selling price  of a range of products.

Price

setters with price takes.Price setter is recognised as a company or a person who has the power to set the prices for the goods or services. On the other hand, price takers. is a company that must accept prevailing market prices for its products. These people or companies has no control over price of product or services.

Unit 5: Service and its management

M&S is widely recognised brand and it selling high quality products  which  are only affordable by people of high income group.  In past several years, company has adopted skimming price strategy in which they have set a relatively high initial price  for a product opr service  at first and then lowers the price over time.  However, to improve the condition of sales in market company can adopt penetration policy where they can set low of price of product to rapidly reach a wide fraction of market  and wide publicity. It helps in attaining high sales and can increase their profitability.

Unit 6: Service and its management

Experimental marketing strategy is adopted by an organisation in order to analyse the reaction of customer towards the launch of new product in the market. Such type of marketing strategy adopted by an enterprise intends to involve consumers and invites as well as influence them to participate in the evolution of a brand.

Service and its management

The objective of service management is to deliver high level of satisfaction to customers and maximise service supply chain. Service and its management helps an organisation in gaining the client loyalty and influencing people to buy more products or services. 

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