Marks & Spencer A Century of Innovation - Case Study Example

Executive Summary: Marks & Spencer - A Century of Innovation Michael Marks, a Russian refugee, started selling items costing a penny each in 1884. His motto, "Don't ask the price - it's a Penny" became well known. Ten years later he partnered with Thomas Spencer. He was successful in accelerating the design-to-store lead-time. He also came out with a trendy line for clothing labeled "Autograph" the "real clothes for women." Despite all these efforts and a 20Million advertising campaign, M&S failed.

It could not compete with Inditex and its brand Zara. Zara who does not spend on advertising but relies solely on window displays, proper positioning of stores, giving the people what they want and at the fastest possible time. Zara has its designers combing streets and asking the people what they want. It has a piece of machinery that can produce a copy of a competitor design in a week and make new designs every two weeks. Zara is able to this and still pass the product to the consumer at reasonable costs.

According to Merrill Lynch, M&S failed because it did not change the root causes of poor performance which is, "heavy organization, limited flexibility, and over-centralization."