Repositioning of a Brands Touchpoint - Essay Example

Repositioning of a Brands Touchpoint

Problem Statement

After carrying out statistics, it is vivid that the current brand image of Marks and Spacer has divided. Implying that there are divided loyalty of customers when it comes to purchasing goods from the company. For instance, M&S clothing is not appealing to the current market, which tolerates its other products such as food. Various factors contribute to the negative image of the clothing brand in M&S Company. For example, a confusing fashion line in the clothing sector plays a significant part in discouraging customers from buying clothes from the Company. M & S produces outdated fashion, which embraces the traditional way of design. Therefore, the current image of M&S brand is both disjointed and confusing (Tan, 2016, pp1). Hence, there is a need for the M&S to come up with new strategies, which would ensure that the brand image becomes appealing to the society. In this project, the main to focus is on M&S as a clothing company, and analysis of the factors that have contributed to its decline and how they can be rectified.

According to research I carried out, it is clear that M&S Company is not happy with the current clothing brand image. For instance, the company has recently recruited a digital boss as the head of the UK stores (Armstriong, 2016, pp 1). Putting in charge the digital boss as head of the store instead of the old fashioned signifies that the company has realized that its clothing brand is getting critics because of its outdate designs that its previous leaders embraced. Secondly, the digital boss as head of the store in the UK will ensure that all clothing brands are produced using modern technologies. Moreover, the company has come up with strategies that will ensure that its clothing products appeal to the customers. For example, the brick –and-mortar store has decided to impress new technology in their marketing strategies. Therefore, new technologies at the M&S Company will ensure that all clothing brands produced meet the standards and expectations of customers.

Subsequently on conducting the legacy of the M&S clothing in the UK, the following factors came out vividly. Firstly, according to the statistics I carried out, it is vivid that clothing brand has been declining. Despite the hard worker of the former M&S Company boss, he failed to change the declining market of the clothing. After realizing that his effort is not bearing positive fruits especially in the clothing brand, he decided to resign. As the boss, Marc Bolland tried his best to ensure that the company remains competitive on the market (Haughton, 2014, pp1). However, he only managed to make profits in other products the company produced but the clothing sector continued declining. Besides, after failures of the former boss, the company decided to promote Steve Rowe to become new Marks and Spacer company boss. Steve Rowe was formally the head of the food department in the M&S Company. He was elected to this position because the department of food was doing well on the market. Therefore, Steve Rowe was elected to this position so that he can apply his techniques from the food department to ensure that the clothing sector also attains the market expectations. The photograph one in the appendix is a picture of Marc Bolland

Brand Analysis

Since the clothing brand of M&S Company is constantly declining despite the efforts of the current new management, I decided to carry my statics on three stores. The main aim of conducting research on these three departments is to know how they operate to come up with new techniques that will improve their operations; hence, profit maximization (Tan, 2016, pp1).

Covent Garden

The foremost store that I conducted research on was Covent Garden. Covent Garden is 107-115 acres long, and it is located in London. On exploiting the items this store has, I realized the following weakness. Firstly, most of the clothing that are in this store are all outdated. Similarly, on asking the few customers how they feel about the clothes that are offered in this store, the response was negative. According to most customers, they find it hard to do any shopping of clothes from this store. Their main reason why they dislike buying clothes from this store is that most of the clothes here are the outdated fashion. Secondly, I interviewed the service attendants who are mostly girls under the age of 25. On asking them whether they like buying clothes from this store, the answer was no. on asking them the reason why they don’t like clothing from there yet they sales there, I got a shocking answer. According to these you sales ladies, the fashion that was being sold at this store is old. Hence, it cannot fit them. Therefore, buying or dressing in such clothes it looked so weird. Thus, they avoided buying them.

Kalverstraat Store

The second store that I carried my analysis on was the Kalverstraat store. The store is located on Northlands in the heart of Amsterdam, which acts as the shopping district. In this store, everything is digitalized. For instance, there is free Wi-Fi installed which allows clients to browse as they enjoy shopping in the store. On another hand, all products that are in this store are modernized. Modernized products imply that the management of this store embraces technology, rather than traditional ways of designing clothes (David, 2009, pp 61). On interviewing the customers of this store how they feel about the clothing products and services of this store, the answer was impressive. Firstly, the customers said that they were frequent members in this store because of some reasons that am going to highlight. Foremost, the customers claimed that clothes that this store offers are of the modern world, implying that the model of designing these clothes is of up to date. Therefore, as far as customers are concerned, fashion plays a very critical part in influencing customer attitudes towards clothing brand. Consequently, customers said that free services like Wi-Fi play a very important role in motivating them. They prefer to go where browsing of the internet is efficient and free than to go to the analog type of store where there is no internet. Therefore, from this research it is vivid that technology plays a vital part in promoting fashion, hence influencing the number and attitude of customers.

Marks & Spencer: The Hague

The third M&S company store that I researched on his project is the Marks & Spencer: The Hague. The M&S The Hague is one of the latest stores of M&S Company that is located in Netherlands. In this store, all products are up to date. The fashion that is offered in this store is of standard and meets customers’ expectations. To determine how this store works, I decided to conduct interviews with customers and those whole sales there. On carrying out an interview, I got an impressive answer from both the customers and people who work in this digital store. Firstly, I asked the customers if they are fully satisfied by the kind of services that are offered in this store. The answer was yes, and they stated that, goods that are sold in this mall are of standard quality (Nancy, n.d, pp3). For instance, the clothes that this store offers are of high quality, and the fashion is up to date. Since people like quality things, they prefer coming in this stores than going to other competitors of M&S Company because of quality. On interviewing those who work in this store if they find their clothing product are of right quality and whether they are up to date. The answer was yes, which followed by a comprehensive explanation. According to those people working there, the company produces fashion clothes, which are up to date. The most interesting part of the story is that all glittering clothes they were wearing were bought from the same store. From these two interviews of both clients and workers of Marks & Spencer The Hague, it is through to conclude that modernity plays a vital role influencing the market.

Strategy for Redesigning the M&S Company Fashion Department on the Touch Points

There are various strategies that can be deployed to ensure above mentioned touchpoint are rectified so that the fashion department of M&S Company is renewed. The main objective of redesigning production and marketing strategies for M&S Company fashion department is to ensure that clothing as a brand penetrates the market. For instance, the foremost strategy the Covent Garden can deploy is to start using modern technology in the production of their clothes. The Covent Garden’s fashion has constantly been declining as a result of using traditional ways inn designing new fashion. As a consequence, the fashions they design are not appealing to the customer. Hence, poor fashion design results to the market decline of sales in the clothing department in the M&S Company. On another hand, changing strategies and start producing fashion that fits the market by this department will eventually result to market development and expansions for the clothing.

Another key strategy that can maximally be utilized by the fashion department of M&S Company to ensure positive results in the sales is to take the Brick and mortar stores online. Although, statistically, only ten percentages of the sales globally comes from online and around 90 percentages of the sales is through Brick and mortar stores (Thompson, 2016, pp1)

. Still there are various benefits, which are associated with taking Brick and mortar stores online. Firstly, according to statistics, the online purchasing is expanding at a faster rate when compared to Brick and mortar store purchases. Thus implying that implementation of online purchases in the brick and mortar stores will increase the volume of sales significantly hence profits. Secondly, online marketing in the fashioned department will expand the market for the clothing. Since the internet is widely used and accessed globally, implies that many people are going to access this site. As the number of people accessing the fashion department of M&S Company, the market expands, hence more sales. The diagram one shows the relation between brick and mortar purchasing in comparison to online purchasing.

Although, there are some challenges of taking brick and mortar online. Hard time in tracking inventory levels in cases of multiple channels, difficult to understand the profit of products sold on multiple channels. Finally, it is tedious to implement online channels process. However, there are key steps that when keenly followed, they make it easy to take a brick and mortar store online. The foremost step is building a catalog database for each type of fashion you design (Thompson, 2016, pp1). The catalog contains all inventories with the necessary information for listing the clothing. Secondly, taking of professional photographs is vital as it attracts customers online. The third step is taking the fashion products on Amazon, since it is the first selling site for the new products online. The fourth and the crucial step necessary is listing all the fashion products on the multiple online market places to avoid confusion. The last step ensures that all records of profit and purchases are kept accordingly to avoid confusion.

Conclusion

Customers have a constant changing tendency as the world develops with regard to their purchasing behavior. Hence, there is a need for retailers to adapt new technology to keep the customers. Since, the M&S Company uses traditional ways in designing fashion in clothing, the company has constantly been losing customers in this department. From this project, it is vivid that the clothing brand is constantly declining from the market because of various reasons associated with modernity. For instance, continuous use of old techniques in designing new clothing fashion by M&S Company has really affected its market negatively. For example, only a few people are willing to buy this old fashioned type of clothing in the current world. As a consequence, the market for this department has constantly been declining to extend that the company has started experiencing loss. Subsequently, technology plays a critical part in the development of the market (David, 2009, pp 61). On another hand, the taking of brick and mortar store online expands sales volume. From the research is also clear that leaders play a significant part in the growth of the business. For example, changing of analog leader to the digital boss in the M&S Company brought a positive change in the clothing brand (Bartram, 2002, p1). Therefore, for a person or any business to succeed, the leader must be flexible and quick to incorporate new changes in the business.