Analysis of the Current Strategic Situation facing Marks & Spencer

The main source of data presented in this paper is the official website of Marks and Spencer. The details of links are provided at the end of this paper under the title of References.

(Please note: Task 1, 3 & 4 have been combined together into one report. Task 2 is separate and can be found on page 9)

Marks and Spencer has many external forces that affect the company. These are known as macro environmental factors. There are six of these forces, Political, Economic, Sociological, Technological, Legal and Environmental factors. These external factors affect the types of products/services Marks and Spencer offers, the nature of its market positioning and strategies, there relationship with their customers and their suppliers. These external factors allow Marks and Spencer to develop:

In 1858, R.H. Macy founded R.H. Macy and Co. in New York City. From a dry goods store, he expanded his store occupy a total of 11 buildings which all offered different categories of merchandise. Here, R.H. Macy created what we now know as the department store (The History). Macy’s Inc. has grown and currently operates over 700 department stores under its various names (About Us). JC Penny Co. Inc. was founded in 1902 by James Cash Penny. JC Penny Co. Inc. was alike Macy’s Inc., however, they offered a catalog to better compete against department store like Montgomery Ward and Co. They currently operate around 1,100 stores worldwide (The Editors). The traditional department store format that Macy’s Inc. and JC Penny Co Inc. utilize has become

The penny, also known simply as the one-cent coin, was first made about 230 years ago in 1787. The first penny ever made was 100% copper and it was heavier and larger than the usual penny today. The design itself was suggested by the famous Benjamin Franklin ("A Brief History of the U.S. Cent”). Lately, people have talked about the idea of abolishing the penny, but others disagree. The penny should not be abolished.

Target Corporation has recognized itself as one of the top retailers in the United States market on the basis of excellent service quality, customer experiences, operational excellence, strong financial position, and a wide array of product offerings. Through its high degree of service orientation at physical outlets and adoption of fair business practices, Target Corporation has become the most distinctive retailer in the eyes of its potential customers. Being one of the top-notch retailers in the United States, Target Corporation has to carefully strategize on its business operations and marketing tactics so as to keep itself in the row of competitive brands of the industry.

Whole Foods' utilizes a differentiated strategy, focused on organic and natural foods. This distinguishes them from mainstream grocery competitors, and puts them into competition with other specialized grocery outlets (Urani, 2008). This differentiation, combined with more traditional grocery industry size and operations, gives the company an advantage over most of its competitors.

Table 2: Scenario framework analyse business environment and its uncertainty variables, either for rapid change or complexity.

As I have mentioned before, this research paper is being taken exclusively with the aim to evaluate the Tesco’s performance in both financial and business terms over a three years period. Since the financials will be compared with its three year

Marks and Spencer Company is one of the biggest retailers in UK, which it has known by providing the finest qualities of goods and services including clothing, home product, foods and groceries. In currently, M&S Company operates 852 UK stores, 480 international stores and e-commerce platform includes approximately 83,069 employees, while M&S Company is one of the UK’s leading market positions in Menswear, Women-wear and Lingerie products (Mark and Spencer 2016.

The purpose of this report is to compare and discuss the performance of Sainsbury and Morrison’s, check their performance as a food retailers and evaluate them on CORE framework analysis. The framework comprises four stages: context, overview, ratios and evaluation together with external and internal analysis which will help evaluate and compare two retail companies.

In 1982 they began selling outside UK (sales to Europe & Australia reached 300000 sterling)

The early 1990 's marked the beginning of a sea change in customer 's expectations with regard to good quality, healthy food. M&S image as a respectable retailer with its focus on providing a wide range of premium foods meant that the M&S brand, where food was concerned, became regarded as something of a luxury.

Each organization requires different strategic planning, as there is no single strategic planning model that suits all organizations. Every organization has to develop model of strategic planning according to its own development, its nature of business and as per their own planning process. These models provide an extent of options on the basis of which different organizations might be able to select an approach and initiate to grow their own strategic planning process. Any organization might select to combine the models suitable to their planning process, for example, they can use a Basic model to recognize strategic issues and aims, and then they can select an issues-based model to develop approach to initiate the issues and grasp the

Strategic planning is defined as a process by which an organization outlines its strategy and makes decision based on the fulfilment of this strategy by the allocation of its resources based on achieving its strategic objective. The senior management of a company is usually responsible for formulating this strategy and hence it is important for them to understand the constantly changing environment to formulate and effective strategy (Mintzberg, 1994). The report deals with a retailing company known as Marks and Spencer (M & S) and the key issues that the company faced in developing and implementing its strategic plan.