...& Business Academic Year 2014/2015 ( SEMESTER 1 ) Executive Summary Marks & Spencer is a company which had a history of 56 years and operating till now. The co-founder is actually Michael Marks and later joined by Thomas Spencer in 1894 to create Marks & Spencer. The main product which produced by Marks & Spencer is clothing line and then expand to food industries. Marks & Spencer are successful because of they know how to apply the sourcing strategies within their supplier around the world. There are two types of strategies implemented by Marks & Spencer, combination of in-house and third party manufacturing for food s line and third party contracting or sourcing for clothing section. Tesco is the choice from us to compete with Marks &Spencer; Tesco had their own sourcing strategy to compete with their rival within the same industries line such as group food sourcing (GSF) and regional supply base making the right product at affordable pricing. Tesco do developed its own brand which is cheaper in price and better qualities control. The last sourcing Strategies is Sourcing global, which they have contract with the supplier around the world. The sourcing strategy for Marks and Spencer has disadvantages and advantages which affect the company performance. Lastly, we recommended enhancement in their sourcing strategy by comply with China supplier in Clothing line or green field investment in China. Company Background (Mark & Spencer) The years...
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...Introduction of Marketing Marketing is the action or business promoting and selling products or services, which includes market research and advertising. Marketing is the activity, set of institutions and process for creating, communicating, delivering, and exchange offerings that have value for customers, clients, partners and society at large. Marketing is the management process through which goods and services move from concept to the customers. Marketing is based on thinking about the business in terms of customers’ needs and satisfaction. It is the activities of company associated with buying and selling a product or service. It includes advertising, selling and delivering of products to people. Marketing is about communicating the value of a product, service or brand to customers or consumers for the purpose of promoting and selling that product, service or brands. SOURCE OF INFORMATION: http://www.businessdictionary .com/definition/marketing.html www.investopedia.com/terms/m/marketing. Asp Marketing techniques: Marketing techniques is an overall marketing plan designed to meet the needs and requirements of customers. The plan should be based on clear objectives. A number of techniques will then be employed to make sure that the marketing plan is effectively delivered. Marketing techniques are tools used by the marketing department. The marketing department will set out to identify the most appropriate techniques to employ in order to make profit. These marketing...
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...OM Individual Project Mark &Spencer case study Summary INTRODUCTION 3 I. HISTORICAL CONTEXT 3 A. Presentation of Marks & Spencer 3 B. Marks & Spencer’s strategy and its evolution 7 II. DISCUSSION 9 A. The evolutions in the area of operations management 9 B. The new goals of Operations Management 10 CONCLUSION 11 APPENDIX 12 INTRODUCTION Operations management includes the conception of a product; the planning of the material, financial and human resources, and the recording and the control of the production activities. It consists in finding the best approach to organize the supply, the production and the distribution of services and goods. The purpose is to optimize the processes of added value, by minimizing the costs (in the investments and in the operations) improving continually the flows from the supplier to the customer in order to satisfy them. The principle of Operation Management was created in 1776 by Adam Smith. It is used by companies since its creation; they followed its evolutions by adapting the new methods of OM within their business. The aim of this essay is to discover and analyze the different sights of operations management, its evolutions and significant changes during the last decade and define what are the new objectives of OM through one sector: the retail industry and more particularly across Marks & Spencer. Finding out the techniques of management that M&S uses, evaluating them and see the future operations they...
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...hole of manufacturers and suppliers by offering focused clients a chance to communicate and gain knowledge about the items which allows to raise attention of the items, engage, create remembrances, improve commitment, makes item desire, change the mind of dissatisfied consumers, and allows in the improve return on promotion investment, studymode.com (2011). This hopefully results in a positive reaction of the item by the customer. It is about one on one interaction, unique method to link customers directly to the item, and psychological connection to a person. Some labelled events take place at soccer ground, resorts, big shopping centres and celebrations targeted to capture lots of customers in short period of time. A market oriented business provides out analysis to find the needs and wants of customers. It then uses the results to style items and marketing techniques to fulfil these needs. This analyses to...
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...Organisational Behaviour Structure and Culture HND in Business Management (Assignment 1) Lecturer- Damir.jovic Eindray Kaung [Type text] Ealing, Hammersmith and West London College Hammersmith Campus Page 1 4/8/2011 Organisational Behaviour Introduction The purpose of this essay is to understand the term of organistion and how it is important in forming a business. Moreover, it also describes the organisational behaviour, which means how people behave in an organisation, and why it involves a major role of within the organisation in general. Furthermore, why organisation is essential for every business and how it can make the company successful in the business area. What is more, it expresses why people need to study organisational behaviour and how it is important to a certain extent for every business. In addition to this factor, it compares and contrasts different organisational structures and cultures which have a great impact on culture as well as performance. This essay concludes by presenting how different types of leadership styles stand in both organisations and their effectivness. Marks & Spencer's background The company of Marks & Spencer is a well-known retail store in the UK with 21million people visiting each week. The profitable UK company, Marks & Spencer, operates over 600 stores in the United Kingdom employing over 75,000 people in the UK and abroad with the support of 2,000 suppliers globally. The largest store is located at Marble Arch...
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...Marks and Spencer IB209 Marketing Analysis Anshul Maini 1036526 Marks and spencer also called as M&S and Marks and Sparks was found in the year 1884 by two people Michael Marks and Tom spencer (Bevan, 2007). Ever since then marks and spencer has delivered goods of the best quality and now to day it stands as one of the best retail chains in the UK. They primarily deal in Clothing and food. The company is headquartered in London, UK and is the one of the biggest companies in the world. It’s ranked #725 in the Forbes 2000 list (Marks and Spencer on Forbes 2000 list, 2011) and is amongst the top 5 retail firms in the country. Currently the chairman of the company is Robert Swanell and the Chief Executive is Marc Bolland. (Annual Report, 2011). Over the years Marks and Spencer has gone through ups and downs. It is the first British Retail firm to make a Profit before tax of over £1 Billion which was in the year 1998.After that the company had hit rock-bottom which was due to heavy competition and the company’s inability to satisfy its customers, it went into heavy losses in its turnover. After amending a few policies and the change of the Chief executive, the company looked more closely at the customer’s needs, wants and demands and modelled their strategies around it, thus rising it from the ashes. However again in 2008, the company went into a credit crunch which was mainly because of the recession. (M&S shares dive on gloomy outlook, 2008) (Bevan, 2007).Although M&S has...
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...For many companies Corporate Social Responsibility policy has become a window-dressing of respectability. Discuss with reference to theory and to at least two expamples of companies Corporate Social Responsibility is known as CSR . It is now become popular from the last 10 years. What is CSR and why does it important for the business. The answer is CSR aims to ensure that companies run their business in a ethical way. This mean they need to look at economic and environmental impact and consideration of human benefits. CSR is important to the companies because the demand from labour, consumers and the Government have been increased to be more open about their activities and they can reach the acceptable standards in their business. For the labour, CSR is an important way to increase competitive advantage, protect and raise brand awareness and build trust with consumers and labour. CSR is one of the important way to improve marketing in make the brand become popular in business. The aim of the essay is going to discuss about the rise of CSR policy and an example of Starbucks coffee and Mark & Spensers with their CSR's performance. First of all, The rise of CSR includes five trends to demonstrate the theory of CSR policy. There are Transparency, Knowledge, Sustainability, Globalization and The Failure of the Public Sector. The first trend is Transparency , it deals when most of the companies have become increasingly transparent because of the modern information technology...
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...The Rationale: Why does HRM Contribute to Increasing Competitiveness? 4 3 Analysis of Current Situation 5 4. Respond to the HRM Weakness 9 5. Evaluation on HRM Approach Implemented by M&S 10 6. Conclusion 11 References 12 1.Introduction In recent business environment, competition has become a core issue due to its crucial impacts on company development in terms of market and profits. This dissertation will introduce proper and effective strategies to overcome the problems so that the company would be turned into higher competitive stance. Additionally, this article aims to analyze the competitive environment from both internal and external of Marks and Spencer plc (M&S), to evaluate the reasons why it has gone wrong ever since 1997 and to identify how the changes of human resources management could help M&S sharpen its competitive edge. This paper is divided into four parts. The first part focuses on the background M&S has been facing ever since 1997 that the company is suffering from a great crisis. The current situation is analyzed in the second part by using the SWOT model to examine the positions and environment of M&S. The third part emphasizes on discussing the human resources management policies that M&S used to respond the weakness discussion during the SWOT analysis. The final part aims to evaluate the HRM responds policy and illustrate the good effects and drawbacks the changes has made. 2.The Situation ...
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... Business strategy INTRODUCTION Marks and Special background M&S otherwise known as Marks and spencer was founded in 1884 by Michael Marks was born in 1859 in Slonim, Belarus. In 1882 ,he moved to England to escape anti-Semitic discriminate , but had few friends and little money. He came to Leeds, a growing industrial town with a population of over 160,000. He was attracted by its large Jewish community and job opportunities in the thriving clothing trade. At the time Marks couldn't speak English and had no money or particular skill but had a very sharp mind for business and understood what customers wanted and needed . Initially he travelled the towns and villages of West Yorkshire, selling wares from his bag. He later set up a permanent market stall in Leeds, the latter which developed into a successful retail business. Unusually, he always displayed all his goods with clearly priced labels. He started hiring sales assistants to run the stalls. , Selling simple stock such as haberdashery and hardware goods, he adopted the slogan 'Don't ask the price, it's a penny'. This fixed price system and the open display of goods made him very popular. In Leeds as Customers liked being able to inspect the goods and knowing exactly the cost, with no need for haggling. In 1890 Dewhirst a cloth manufacturer offered Marks a £5 loan with this Michael Marks was able to buy his first stock for peddling . This was...
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...Objective The objective of this report is to focus on the concept Training and Development in HRM” and examines in more detail some of the theoretical advantages and disadvantages of Training and Development strategies in HRM followed by a critical review on the evidence based around what impact it has had in practice in terms of promoting and enhancing business performance. While we cannot ignore the importance of HRM theories in today’s management context, this paper explores whether these theories work well in practice. Introduction The key purpose of HRM is to enable management to enhance the individual and collective contributions of people to the short and long term success of the enterprise. (Personnel Management Lead Body, 1993) The workplace is in a constant state of change resulting from ongoing developments in technology and innovation and increasing economic, social and political pressures. This poses new and complex challenges for the human resources function within organisations. (Hathorn, 2012: 3). In today’s competitive global business climate, companies looking to improve their gross margins and increase productivity are increasingly looking for ways to boost employee performance and effectiveness. People in an organization are considered to be one of the most valuable resources of today’s firms. Other resources such as brands, products, processes, technological advancement, economies of scale can still provide a competitive advantage but an organisation’s...
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...the American group Wal-Mart and the French group Carrefour. With a main activity of food global retailer, it has diversified his activity into clothing, home, financial services, car insurance, health, telecoms and internet services and software. However in this report we are focusing on its clothing unit which operates online. So to better know this Tesco clothes retailing, this report will bring an overview of the company and will analyse its current strategic position, the same as its fitness with the other business units. This report will also analyse the Tesco clothes retailing’s macro environment, the competitive environment, the strategic capability and also the future strategic options. Tesco clothes retailing’s brief overview: The Tesco clothes retailing company is among the biggest clothing retailer by volume in the United Kingdom as it was ranked at the third place in 2008 and had to juggle this place with Asda Direct online retailer behind Mark & Spencer and Primark (Hall, J.). Tesco clothes retailing is committed to bringing a wide range of clothes to men, women and kids. Its website has grown very fast and sales have risen by nearly 47% in 2009 compared to sales at the same period in 2008 and Asos.com retailer which offers clothing online has suffered from Tesco clothes retailer’s entrance in the clothes retailing (Moulds, J.). The corporate parenting seems to work well as Tesco plc, the corporate...
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...environmental reporting? Throughout this essay the social accounting issue ‘environmental accounting’ will be discussed. Environmental accounting is ‘the practice of including the indirect costs and benefits of a product or activity, for example, its environmental effects on health and the economy, along with its direct costs when making business decisions.’ Also ‘the term environmental accounting is frequently used within the accounting and environmental management literatures. Environmental accounting is a broader term that relates to the provision of environmental-performance-related information to stakeholders both within, and outside, an organisation.’(epa.vic). There are many definitions for environmental accounting, however, there is no accepted single definition. Environmental accounting is also connected to Green accounting. Green accounting is seen as one of the most important aspects of environmental accounting. ‘The term, green accounting, has been around since the 1980s, and is known as a management tool used for a variety of purposes, such as improving environmental performance, controlling costs, investing in “cleaner” technologies, developing “greener” processes and products, and forming decisions related to their business activities.’(articalbase). Being a ‘green’ company it has a positive impact and makes the company or business look good. It also measures ‘carbon footprint’, how sustainable a business is and if the business participates in recycling. Therefore...
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...Using Relevant Theories and Examples outline the arguments for and against an organization adopting an ethical approach to management. The purpose of this essay is to compare and contrast the case for and against an organization adopting an ethical approach. This essay will look into the two sides of the argument in depth using relevant theories, examples and case studies. The first part of this essay will look into why an organization adopting an ethical approach to management could ultimately benefit the firm. The essay will look at various strengths that could be achieved by an organization, these theories and ideas will be backed up with possible case studies and real life examples. The second part of this essay will look at the case against a firm adopting an ethical approach to management. Again various reasons will be analyzed and will be backed up using relevant theories, case studies and real life examples. After looking at both sides of the argument this essay hopes to come to a conclusion perhaps suggesting that it would be important for organizations to act ethically to a certain extent. Before going into the first side of the argument it will be important to define what is meant by an ‘ethical approach to management’, so this section of the essay will compare and contrast various definitions. One definition suggests that ‘ethics are the moral principles that should underpin decision-making. A decision made on ethics might reject the most profitable solution...
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...Behaving entrepreneurially in today’s turbulent competitive business world is becoming increasingly importance for larger businesses. Drawing on relevant theories and at least one case study presented in the lectures in this module, discuss the strengths and weaknesses of this argument. The Importance of Behaving Entrepreneurially The strengths in number far outweigh the weaknesses for this argument; however this essay will explore the impact these factors have on companies. Smaller, more entrepreneurial businesses are rising through the ranks, and if the larger firms are to keep up and retain their market position, they need to follow suit, by behaving entrepreneurially. My key arguments here is organisations do need to behave more entrepreneurially due to globalisation, hyper competition, economic turbulence, technological change, industries merging, ever-changing customer needs and markets becoming saturated. This essay will mainly focus on the analysis of three large companies; IBM (International Business Machines), Marks & Spencer and Continental Tyres. I will analyse where the companies were going right or wrong, and where they could have become more entrepreneurial. I will touch upon relevant theories that firms have used and will mention other companies that aid my analysis on behaving entrepreneurially in larger businesses. Entrpreneurial Culture- What is it? There are two main cultures that concern this argument; the Traditional Culture and the Entrepreneurial...
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...Assess the advantages and problems facing an employer seeking to manage employee relations in a non-union environment. Rose (2008) identifies that the extent of union derecognition and the general decline in collectivized employment relations in recent years. That is to say, both of them have drawn attention to the growing phenomenon of non-unionism. ‘Non-unionism’ is a common term which is often discussed in the academic literature on human resource management and industrial relations. And it is concerned with a situation where management does not deal with a trade union that collectively represents the interests of workers (Dundon&Rollinson 2004). It is widely known that managing employee relations in a non-union environment is increasingly popular in most of the countries; the non-unionized firm in the UK can be seen as a typical exemplar in the employment relations. To be more specific, the employment relations characteristics of firms without a formal union presence barely featured in studies of employment relations for many years except for some foreign-owned companies operating in the UK (Williams&Smith 2010). Before the 1980s, large companies without union recognition were treated as idiosyncratic and given some brief consideration, and those small companies without union recognition were largely ignored (Williams&Smith 2010). However, the issue of the ‘non-union’ firm has become a dominant role gradually in the UK, it is embodied in a sharp decline...
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