Describe how a selected organisation uses marketing research used to

contribute to the development of its marketing plans.in this assignment I will be

describing how M&S uses marketing research to contribute to the development of its
marketing plan.
MARK and SPENCER group plc (commonly abbreviated as M&S or colloquially
MARKs and SPARKS) is a major British multinational retailer with headquarters in
Westminster, London that specialises in selling high quality clothing, home
products and food products. It is listed on the London Stock Exchange and is a
constituent of the FTSE 250 index. M&S was founded in 1884 by Michael Marks
and Thomas Spencer in Leeds. M&S currently has 959 stores across the UK
including 615 that sell food products.

Marketing planning
Is a comprehensive document that outlines a company’s overall marketing effort, it is
a blueprint (detailed description of company’s business) that outlines how a company
will implement its marketing strategy, and use a combination of resources to achieve
business objectives including sales targets or customer acquisition. A marketing plan
helps promote products and services in your target market. It requires research, time
and commitment, but is a very valuable process that can greatly contribute to your
success.

Market research
Is the process of gathering, analysing and interpreting information about a market,
about a product or service to be offered for sale in that market and about the past,
present and potential customers for the product or service; research into the
characteristics, spending habits, location and needs of your business’s target
market, the industry as a whole, and the particular competitors you face. Market
research allows a company to discover the target market and get opinions and other
feedback from consumers about their interest in the product or service.

Market research is used by M&S to help improve their goods and services. M&S
have made many improvements within their website. They have also increased
customer’s choice by including a variety of products with promotions which are
attracting more customers, therefore increasing their profit.

Primary research methods used

Primary research: is defined as a methodology used by researchers to collect data directly, rather
than depending on data collected from previously done research. Technically, they “own” the data.
Primary research is solely carried out to address a certain problem, which requires in-depth analysis.

M&S uses primary research through surveys, questionnaires and face to face customer feedback. By
using the primary research M&S has managed to improve on their product and services by good
promotional offers that are attracting more customers.

Qualitative methods

 Focus group
 Customer interviews
 Observations

Qualitative methods: is a scientific method of observation to gather non-numerical data. This type
of research “refers to the meanings, concepts, definitions, characteristics, metaphors, symbols, and
description of things” and not to their “counts and measures”.

M&S uses qualitative research to help improve their branding, they did this by looking over previous
interviews and observations.

 Focus groups are group of people assembled to participate in a discussion about a product
before it launched. Example of a group M&S used are parents, teenagers, students, full-time
working people, part-time working people and so on. M&S use this technique to understand
what the public want – not just their customers. Furthermore, it gives them a lot of groups
of people which they could target or not target.
 Customer interviews are when customer of the store participate in an interview or a pair
interview asking questions about an organisation. This is to help understand what the
current customers think and understand their opinions are. Their opinions are very valued as
they are already current customers and M&S wouldn’t want to lose their business.
This will provide M&S with a much clearer understanding of what their customers want and
how they can improve their shopping experience.
 Observations are when people are observed in their natural environment. M&S used
observation to see the selection process of focus groups when they purchase food products.
To help create a successful food line, M&S would need to understand the section process of
their target groups select what to buy and incorporating the information with other
qualitative and quantitative factors, it would give the organisation a better understanding of
what products they should deliver.

Quantitative methods

 Postal survey
 Automated telephone survey
 Online questionnaires
Quantitative methods: is when M&S create surveys and customers questionnaires. This can help
companies like M&S to improve their brand, products and services by enabling the public to take
their decisions. It is important to survey people in large numbers to get a better statistics and
probability that people really want the service or the product, or if the company needs improvement
in some areas.

 postal survey is a survey method in which a printed questionnaire is produced and is sent by
mail to respondents for them to fill in and send back.
Although, postal surveys traditionally have a low response rate; the responses they do get
back are very high quality. Knowing many people don’t respond, M&S make questions very
simple and straight forward to answer (quantitative questions”. These would be questions
like “how old are you?” these are Gage (a valued object deposited as a guarantee of good
faith.) what type of audience they have.

 Automated telephone survey is used to collect information and gain feedback via the
telephone. This form of quantitative research is known to have very low responses and the
auto mated program is very time consuming and most people don’t have time to complete
the entire survey. However, M&S used this as it’s another way to communicate with their
customers if they can’t contribute in another way. It is widening their response capability.
 Online questionnaire – online survey is a computer-assisted web interviewing is an internet
surveying technique in which the interviewee follows a script provided in a website.
Although they may contain similar questions, online questionnaires received a high response
rate, purely based on the volume of people on the internet. M&S could use this fact to their
advantage and aim certain site to certain site to certain focus groups.

HOW PRIMARY RESEARCH CONTRIBUTED TO THE MARKETING PLAN TO LAUNCH THE FOOD
DIVISION IN M&S

Primary research is a research that is tailored to a company’s needs; as primary research involves
collecting information that hasn’t been collected before or renewing it, it provides the organisation
with realistic up-to-date information on what their customers want. Furthermore, as the
organisation asked such a great number of people, it provides them with accurate information. This
supplies M&S with enough information to convince them that it is a good idea. Because of primary
research, M&S was able to make a lot of decisions on their food division; such as: where to locate
the stores, the quantity of food, what type of packaging appeals most of the audience and where the
stores would be most convenient for certain focus groups so on. Primary research develops M&S
understanding of what their audience wants and what they need to do to make their food stores
unique and different to other suppliers. This would have given them a much more vivid idea of what
their customers want – setting off ideas of what type of atmosphere, characteristics and look they
want the store to have. Primary research supplies M&S with much more understanding and
expectations.
 SECONDARY RESEARCH METHODS USED

Internal sources

 Internal reports and analysis

 Retail data


 Retail data is an aggregate measure of the sales of retail goods over a stated time period,
typically based on a data sampling that is extrapolated to model an entire country. Knowing
the volume of sales would help the managerial decision of seeing if the new division would
help up the number of sales.
 Internal reports and analysis are financial data or other information accumulated by one
individual to be communicated to another within the business entity. The information assists
others in the managerial decision-making process. This information will help determine if
this is fee sable or worth it.

External sources

 Household expenditure data

 Government statistics

 Household data is defined as the sum of household consumption expenditure and non-
consumption expenditures of the household. This inform M&S how much money a
household are prepared to spend. This would give them an indication on how much they
price their products.
 Government statistics are statistics which have been collected by the government. For
example, the census – the census is a survey which is carried out every 10 years and every
household in the UK is required to complete it.
Statistics such as these are very useful for M&S in the situation as this; it provides them
valuable information on the entire UK. For example, they could use the census to find out
what the average number of people living in one home around an area they were thinking to
open a food store. This would be a useful information as it would indicate if people would be
going to supermarkets or local stores to buy their weekly food.

HOW SECONDARY REASEARCH CONTRIBUTED TO THE MARKETING PLAN OF M&S

Secondary research is based on information sourced from studies previously performed. This
form of data is beneficial to M&S as it will contribute with the competition prices, the
competition marketing techniques, knowing how much the target group spend in a week
and so on. It will also give the organisation a rough idea in understanding of the proposal f a
new division was a good idea; based on the current/proposed climate of food retail.
Furthermore, it provides M&S with background information; by researching what other
companies who made similar move – analysing what they did well, what they did not do
well, reason of success or reason of failure. This would help give M&S clarification on where
it was the right time to make the move or not.
It gives M&S information on what type of product sell most, what the peak times are, what
group of people purchase the most, age ranges, location of most successful stores and so on.
 P4 USE MARKETING RESEARCH FOR MARKETING PLANNING, I this assignment I will be
describing SWOT, PEST, SMART.
Firstly, what is audit in marketing research for marketing planning? Marketing audit refers
to the comprehensive, systematic, analysis, evaluation and the interpretation of the
business marketing environment, both internal and external, its goals, objectives, strategies,
principles to ascertain the areas of problem and opportunities and to recommend a plan of
action to enhance the firm’s marketing performance.

PESTEL
PESTAL Analysis is a frame work or tool used by marketers to analyse and monitor the
macro-environment (external marketing environment) factors that have impact on an
organisation. The result of which is used to identify threats and weaknesses which is used in
a SWOT analysis.
PESTEL stands for:
 P – Political
 E – Economic
 S – Social
 T – Technological
 E – Environment
 L – Legal

 POLITICAL factors
The government sets regulations for companies to abide by such as health and safety British
standard such as planning for hazard identification, risk assessment AND RISK control. If
companies do not abide by these regulations they will be fined or even in some cases be
forced to close down. M&S did not abide by the British standards as they are neglecting
health and safety regulations after a door fell in their store at Braehead, near Glasgow was
left hanging on loose fixtures. M&S are alleged to have ignored repair requests, allowing the
door to fall in disrepair. M&S pled not guilty to this; there is still no outcome of this trial.

Also, according to “BBC News 30th January 2006” M&S would be the first major retailer to go
down the fair – trade route on both clothing and food. The fair – trade policy, which they
have launched will include, cut salt and fat in M&S foods, recycled packaging and animal
welfare protection. M&S chief Stuart Rose stated, “customers want good value, but they
care more than ever how food and clothing product are made.

ECONOMIC factors
Currently the economic outlook is very uncertain and this is more than likely to affect retail
sales, as people do not have the spare cash to spend on luxury items such as clothing and
food luxuries. M&S have been hit by this and have recently closed a number of stores and
have had to make job cut of 2% of their 70,000 staff. And also, to show what affect the
recession has had, they took the decision to have two days of 20$ discounts in the run-up to
Christmas. They have also recently introduced a 20% of all wine and champagne to keep up
with their competitors. M&S have had to change the way they market themselves so that
they can try and stay ahead of recession.

SOCIALOGICAL factors
competitive markets in in the last few year’s society has changed. In 2006 as stated by the
guardian, chief executive of M&S Stuart Rose wanted to stretch the company brand, for
example he considered selling food online as part of a plan to become a multi-channel
retailer, this was obviously to keep up with the competitive market such as Asda. Asda and
M&S appeal to different markets in terms of social class and other demographics; this has a
major influence on the way they respond to current issues.
In respond to the current cheap industry supermarkets have increasingly over the last few
years caught up with fashion trends, helping them to rival the high street clothing stores
with their less expensive versions. M&S is no exception to this and they bought their
clothing ranges up to date to keep up with the latest trends and keep their customers
interested. “Consumers purchases are influenced by cultural, social, personal and
psychological characteristics. For the most part, marketers cannot control such factors, but
they must take them into account”. Armstrong, G and Kotler, P (2007) marketing
introduction, 8th Ed. Prentice hall.

TECHNOLOGICAL factors
Technology is vital in the retail market. “companies must manage their brands carefully. First
the brand position must be continuously communicated to consumers. Major brands
marketers often spend huge amounts on advertising to create brand awareness and to build
preference and loyalty”. For M&S to continuously communicate to consumers they need to
be heavily advertising, which are. They have celebrity icon Myleene class as the face of
marks and spencer who appears on the adverts on the TV and she is also on their website
modelling the M&S clothing, also other M&S girls includes Twiggy, Erin O’Connor and Noemi
Lenoir too, so their adverts appeal to women not only in their 20’s but also to more mature
lady so they are covering all areas with their advertising campaign. Also, their website is very
appealing with bright colours and very easy to use, it is also constant updated with the new
M&S brands.

LEGAL factors
Legislations are always changing. M&S carry out re-training & update every year, they keep
up to date with new laws or legislations, and with issues regarding health & safety they also
ensure that their legal protection is updated. For re-training M&S invite business changes to
the business, tax changes to the business and products changes amongst many other things.
M&S invite objectives/ methods that need to be changed and a new training, also ongoing
development.
An example of legislation is the “fair packaging and labelling act (1996) provided for the
regulation of packaging and labelling of consumer goods. Requires that manufacturer state
what the package contains, who made it, and how much it contains”.
Here is an example from M&S website to show that they are adhere to this regulation,
“packaging helps to protect between being produced and used by the customer. It prevents
 product wastage, carries important instructions and information on ingredients and helps
the product look best in the store”.

ENVIRONMENTAL factors
With the current environment climate as it stands, issues are being promoted daily on the
television, in magazines and newspapers and on the radio. All companies, industries and
organisations are being pressured to change their ways when it comes to the materials they
use and how they manufacture. M&S have established their own green policy which they
call “plan A” the chief executive of M&S states that it is called this because there is no “plan
B”. M&S has today announced a 100-point five-year plan to re-engineer itself to become a
carbon neutral, zero-waste-to-landfill, ethical-trading, sustainable-sourcing, health-
promoting business. “BBC News January 2007”.
Conclusion
In my opinion M&s have been highly successful and competitive with the drive to provide a
high-quality service for many years. The economic change has forced M&S to compete
against cheaper products, younger, more fashion-conscious clothing chains and more
recently recession, which has hit shoppers hard. Without previous pressure to improve M&S
has never before had to rethink its policies in such a way as it does now. Political, Economic,
sociological, technological, legal and environmental policies all have to be considered in a
competitive world, M&S now have a rival their competitors and fight to survive. The
business needs a complete overhaul, management needs to be streamlined, the marketing
mix needs to be changed and the business structure needs to be re-organised to make it
more efficient in its business strategy and to make it more appealing to the shoppers.

SWOT

SWOT (strengths, weaknesses, opportunities, and threats) analysis is a framework used to evaluate a
company's competitive position and to develop strategic planning. SWOT analysis assesses internal
and external factors, as well as current and future potential.

SWOT stands for

 S – strengths
 W – weaknesses
 O – opportunities
 T – Threat

STRENGTH
 M2 EXPLIAN THE LIMITATIONS OF MARKETING RESEARCH USED TO CONTRIBUTE TO THE
DEVELOPMENT OF A SELECTED ORGANISATION’S MARKETING PLAN. in this case is will be
giving the limitations of primary, secondary, qualitative, quantitative research and the
limitation of cost effectiveness.

LIMITATIONS OF PRIMARY RESEARCH

• Focus groups: There are few limitations of focus groups; that its quires a lot of organizing to
gather willing volunteers, it can be an expensive process paying for facilities etc and not all results
could be true as once in a group, people tend to go on a majority vote not individual opinion.

• Customer interviews: it will be a complicated and time-consuming process to organize

personal interviews. Furthermore, they would be expensive to set up. Additionally, customers might
not provide 100% honest opinions as it would be on a more personal level, so they would feel
pressured in complimenting the company. Not their actual thoughts.

• Observations: it’s hard to observe people’s natural actions as they would be acting
differently knowing they are being watched. So, it is very difficult to say that the information
collected from observational research is credible.

• Automated telephone survey: The people MARKS and SPENCER want to aim this telephone
survey to are usually very busy with their own lives as they wouldn’t have enough time to complete
it as it’s very time consuming. So, they would avoid it.

• Online questionnaire: online advertising is very effective currently, because it’s so popular,
advertising online has become very congested as millions of companies are advertising online. This
means that to advertise online it cost a big sum of money.

• Postal survey: This postal survey limitations are, that M&S can only send their survey to
registered customers which selected the option - which is not a big number. Furthermore, postal
surveys traditionally receive very little responses. So, they would have to provide an incentive to
receive responses.

LIMITATIONS OF SECONDARY RESAERCH

• Government statistics: such as the census are very reliable however, they become outdated
very quickly. First, the questionnaire is carried out every 10 years and usually not released 2-4 years
later due to all the information required to be processed.

• Internal report and analysis: due to this being a new project M&S are very limited to what
internal information is relevant to help with the marketing plan.

• Retail data: whenever a business is opening a new division, they want to understand what
their competition is doing however they want to have their own USP (unique selling point) also. By
looking at retail data it makes it more difficult to find a USP for the organisation.

• Household expenditure data: information such as household expenditure data, fluctuates a

lot during a year depending on the current financial climate, and it becomes very difficult to predict
the future financial climates as it fluctuates so much.