Strategic Management (Marks & Spancer Case) Essay

Strategic Management (Marks & Spancer Case) - Essay Example It is able to source quality products from centralized buying office and later transfers the same to its stores. In each and every store, analogues procedures are being followed and hence, the independence of managers was constrained. In the past, various CEOs concentrated on quality of merchandise, supplier control and layout of stores. During the 11-year tenure of Sir Richard Greenbury as Chairman cum CEO, M&S enjoyed twice the market share as compared to any other retailers in the industry and witnessed the growth successively as they were no major changes to its style of operations or functioning. However, in 1998, M&S strategy met a great disaster as it performance was far below than normal for many successive years. Its lost its major chunk of customer’s base due to its competitors ability to source very competitive merchandises from low-cost nations and there had been cut-throat competition from retailers like Gap, Oasis, Next, Matalam and Asda. Due to poor performance, Sir Richard Greenbury was shown exit doors in 1999. In 2000, Luc Van de Velde appointed himself as Chairman cum CEO, and he earnestly attempted to turnaround the M&S Plc in his short span tenure that prolonged up to 2004. With aim of focusing on UK market, Velde appointed a head for UK retail and segmented the customers of the company employing the store within a store perception. He successfully entered into a joint venture with designer George Davies. In 2003, he introduced the Simply food notion and started to open stand alone food stores in 2003 in UK. Velde era made a turnaround of M&S Plc between 2000 and 2004 but also M&S encountered successive takeover attempts by the Arcadia Group. Another innovation that Luc Van de Velde brought was the introduction loyalty cards which gave the customers reward points that can be used during their future purchases at M&S stores. However, in the year 2004, M&S witnessed a deep decline in their sales, lost major of its market share to its c ompetitors, mainly due to over-emphasis on Per Una. Rose Stuart succeeded Luc Van de Velde in 2004, and he followed a strategy of under promising but excess delivering in terms of targets set. In 2008, Rose was re-designated as Chairman cum CEO when UK was facing utter economic crisis. Since then, the scenery did not improve in 2009 also, Rose and his marketing director were to forego ? 1 million package bonus of M&S shares and in 2010, Rose relinquished his position as chairman and functioned as CEO of the company. Introduce the theory or concept to be used in analysing the assignment This paper tries to explore about competitive strategy on which M&S might accomplish competitive advantage in the market. As per Michael Porter, an organisation could achieve the competitive advantage by adhering to three various generic strategies like focus, overall cost leadership and differentiation. As per Cliff Bowman and Richard D’ Aveni, market-facing generic strategies are having compe titive advantages, which is accomplished by offering customers with what they exactly need or want more efficiently and effectively than its competitors. (Cousins & Coskett 2007:275) In UK, M&S was the number-one retailer, but it failed to comprehend or to recognise the transforming social fashions and tastes in the