Introduction to Business and Management
Task 1: Introduction
Introduction to the business
This report will be performed in the context of Marks & Spencer. Marks & Spencer is one of the most famous companies that is specialised in producing clothing, food, and home products for customers around the world. Michael Marks and Thomas Spencer founded the company in the year 1884. The company was founded in Leeds, United Kingdom however its headquarters in situated in London United Kingdom. Steve Rowe is the Chief Executive Officer of the company as was appointed on 2nd April 2016. M&S generated as estimated revenue of 1,018.19 crores GBP in the financial year 2020. The company is listed in the London Stock Exchange and it is currently trading at 135.95 GBX (corporate.marksandspencer.com, 2021).
Justification of the choice of the specific function within the business
This report will focus on the marketing department of the multinational company. The marketing team of Marks & Spencer is responsible for research, promotion of the products and services of the company. The final goal of the company’s marketing team is to increase the company’s sales by application of various models, theories, and strategies. The marketing research conducted by the marketing team helps the company to identify various market opportunities and make profit through it.
Task 2: Main Body
Explain what the function is and does.
Marketing is an important business function that is responsible for controlling the supply and demand of the products and services of the market. The marketing function has to deal with maintaining or fulfilling the demands of the customers. The marketing management of Marks & Spencer has several jobs such as, organising, planning, researching, control, and implementation of marketing programmes, and creating policies, strategies, and formulas to help the company fulfil the demands of the market and make substantial amount of profit. Marketing Management shall execute all administrative roles in the marketing field. Marketing management recognises opportunities in the market and establishes effective strategies for the successful pursuit of the opportunities (Dangelico and Vocalelli, 2017). It must execute the marketing campaign and continually assess the efficacy of the marketing strategies. The marketing management must resolve the shortcomings found in the practical implementation of the strategies, formulas, and procedures. Marketing management is the function of a company that promotes trade and employment by forming strategies and helping companies to increase their profitability. This is because when a company’s profitability increases it can afford to spend more on its assets and hire more employees for smooth and fast operations. The marketing management coordinates with other departments of the company also such as the finance and the production or operations department.
The functions of the marketing management are diverse. Some of the various functions of the marketing management of Marks & Spencer are discussed below:
Accessing marketing opportunities
The marketing team of Marks & Spencer is responsible for figuring out the opportunities that can help the company to expand its operations and sales. Opportunities can be found with the help of effective market research. Due to the changing market conditions the opportunities keep coming up especially for the clothing industry. The trends in the clothing industry changes frequently and this gives rise to opportunity for the company to create new and attractive products for their customers. Marks & Spencer can also enter different markets by creating similar products compared to their rivals and steal some of their market share.
Planning the marketing activities
Planning is a very important managerial function. Before Marks & Spencer decides to promote or advertise their products and services, a marketing plan is developed that shows the company how to market effectively (Fuentes-Blasco et al., 2017). Planning can also include formation of price, product, promotional measure, channel of distribution, and so on. Planning provides a base for the company, which it can follow without having any second thoughts. He planning process can be bit time consuming as many factors are taken into consideration during the planning process.
Organising the marketing activities
After the planning process the marketing team needs to organise the materials, strategies, equipment, and so on to complete the tasks as per the planning process. The activities need to be properly assigned to the right person who is capable of completing the task.
Co-ordinating different activities of enterprise
The work of the marketing team is interrelated and interconnected with other departments of the company, which is why it is necessary for the marketing team to coordinate with different activities of Marks & Spencer. Some of the work such as pricing decisions, product decisions and research requires coordination between various departments of the company.
Demonstrate your knowledge of the function through using at least one relevant model discussed in the classroom.
There are various marketing models that the marketing team of Marks & Spence can make use of. One of the most common and effective marketing model is 7P marketing mix. This marketing models accesses the most important Ps of the organisation, which are product, price, promotion, place, people, physical evidence, and process. These 7P case accessed by the marketing in order to find opportunities for Marks & Spence. An effective research on the following Ps can help the company to make various decisions that can help the company to progress (Yuliantine et al., 2018). The research on product helps the marketing team to understand demand of the customers, competitiveness on the product, room for improvement on the product line, and so on. The research on price helps the marketing team to understand the pricing strategies of their employees, employees reviews on the prices, and so on. These research data is also useful for the other functions and the marketing team needs to coordinate with them for effective functioning. The research carried out on place comes in use helps the company to create effective trade channels that can help the company to transport its products to different locations across the world. Distribution is one of the main aspects and with effective research on the same Marks & Spencer can build warehouses at effective locations. The research on promotion is most helpful for the marketing team as it is responsible for increase sale and awareness of the company and its products.
Present the main activities of the function in the selected business using examples.
Marks & Spencer follows responsible marketing strategy. The company specialised in developing 3 different kinds of products, which are clothing, food and home products. The marketing department of food products makes sure to create long term relationship with their customers. In order to maintain long term relationship with their customers the marketing team shows their food making process to their customers and mentions all the ingredients that were used in making the product to quality packaging, which also gains customers attention. The promotion strategy of marketing team involves writing and displaying strategy (corporate.marksandspencer.com, 2020). People become more inclined to buying products, when they are able to see the food making process.
The marketing team of the food products and clothing products of Marks & Spencer are different. The marketing team of Marks & Spencer comes up with various strategies to increase the sales of the apparels. Marketing team of Masr & Spencer advertises the company’s products whenever the company offers discounts on products to attract more customers. The marketing team selects the best models to display the apparels offered by the company. The marketing team of Marks & Spencer follows competitive marketing strategy, this marketing strategy allows the company to set process of their by comparing the process of products offered by other brands.
Make an assessment of the effectiveness of the function in the business and recommendations.
The marketing function of Marks & Spencer is one of the most important one. An organisation can only grow if it is able to sell more products and services and increase it every year. This marketing management is therefore responsible for the growth of the Marks & Spencer. Research is one of the most important tasks that can be useful for developing various strategies (Kotler et al., 2019). Since, the marketing management is the one that performs the research it is able to understand various aspects of the market and is able to form product, pricing, placement and promotion strategies.
The marketing team of Marks & Spencer gets all the credit for the number of sales of the company. The company was able to generate 1,0181.9 million GBP in the financial year 2020 which is lesser than the previous year sales. However, the company was able to maintain it profitability even after facing the pandemic.
Figure 1: Revenue of M&S from 2010 to 2020
(Source statista.com, 2020)
Task 3: Questions
1. Select one specific model relating to the business function selected, explain the value this model provides to that function and provide a real-world example of this from your selected organisation.
The 7P marketing mix is a model used my marketing team of Marks & Spencer. This model is mainly used for researching the market and make strategies according to it. The model is also useful for other organisational functions. The marketing management of Marks & Spencer was responsible for the substantial growth of sales from 2010-2018.
2. What was the most challenging about researching the organisation you selected? Give a specific example.
Marks & Spencer is a very famous brand around the world. It was not therefore difficult to research on the organisation. The company has features in many newspaper articles, news channels, advertisements, and so on. Therefore, there are many sources where genuine information was available such as from BBC.COM, The guardian, independent, and so on.
Reference list
corporate.marksandspencer.com, 2021 About Us. [online] Available at: <https://corporate.marksandspencer.com/aboutus> [Accessed 2 January 2021].
Dangelico, R.M. and Vocalelli, D., 2017. “Green Marketing”: an analysis of definitions, strategy steps, and tools through a systematic review of the literature. Journal of Cleaner Production, 165, pp.1263-1279.
Fuentes-Blasco, M., Moliner-Velázquez, B., Servera-Francés, D. and Gil-Saura, I., 2017. Role of marketing and technological innovation on store equity, satisfaction and word-of-mouth in retailing. Journal of product & brand management.
Kotler, P., Keller, K.L., Brady, M., Goodman, M. and Hansen, T., 2019. Marketing management. Pearson UK.
corporate.marksandspencer.com. 2020. Responsible Marketing. [online] Available at: <https://corporate.marksandspencer.com/sustainability/business-wide/responsible-marketing#:~:text=M%26S%20is%20Clothing%20%26%20Home%20is,%2C%20informative%2C%20inclusive%20and%20transparent.> [Accessed 2 January 2021].
Rowley, J., 2016. Information marketing. Routledge.
Statista. 2020. Revenue Of Marks & Spencer Worldwide From 2010 To 2020*. [online] Available at: <https://www.statista.com/statistics/413349/group-revenue-marks-and-spencer-mands/> [Accessed 2 January 2021].
Yuliantine, T., Indasah, I. and Siyoto, S., 2018. Analysis of marketing mix characteristics of marketing factor 7P (Product, Price, Place, Promotion, People, Process, Physical Building) to patient satisfaction of inpatient patient hospital Muhammadiyah Ahmad Dahlan Kediri City. Journal for Quality in Public Health, 1(2), pp.50-57.
