Marks & Spencer Essay Example | Topics and Well Written Essays - 2750 words

Marks & Spencer - Essay Example Internal analysis is concerned with providing management with a detailed understanding of the business, how effective its current strategies are and how effectively it has deployed its resources in support of its strategies (Johnson, Scholes, 1998). Marketing strategy provides firms with the framework for planning their business activities to develop and sustain competitive advantage. A large number of tools and systems have been developed by marketing managers and theorists to assist this process, these falling into three main generic categories: defining market opportunities, fitting the capabilities of the firm to the identified opportunities and the 'marketing mix' - the strategies adopted and implemented by the firm including product, price, promotion and distribution issues. Form the environmental perspective, the end of 1990s was marked by the changes on the European market which altered many of the parameters of competition and thus enforced a period of reassessment and adaptation. The opening up of the market and the resultant increased competition has widened the perspective of the planning framework with profound implications. The threat was that the removal of physical barriers to trade and the new-found freedom of movement around the European market have served to catalyse European expansion and in so doing raise the degree of European trade. According to the market servey 2000, M&S faced decline in its operations during this period, and had to close some retail store in Europe and aroud the country. To explore the results of decline McKinsey 7-S Model can be used. This model was proposed by Robert Waterman and explained: "it is not enough to think about strategy implementation as a matter only of strategy and structure" (McKinsey 7-S Model, n.d.) Taking into account the McKinsey 7-S Model which is based on the interrelationship of strategy formulation and implementation, it is possible to say that a strategy developed by agers of M&S was a effective for world's integration failed at the stage of implementation. The 7-S views culture as correlation of: strategy, structure, systems, style, staff, skills and shared values. According to Waterman "If a 7-S analysis suggests that strategy implementation will be difficult, managers either can search for other strategic options, or go ahead but concentrate special attention on the problems of execution suggested by the framework" (McKinsey 7-S Model, n.d.). In general, corporate culture is the pattern of values, norms, beliefs, attitudes and assumptions that may not have been articulated but shape the ways in which people behave and things get done. Values refer to what is believed to be important about how people and the organizations behave. Norms are the unwritten rules of behaviour (Cole, 1990). Communication, employed by M&S, is affected by internal and external environment, by the nature of the task and technology. For example, difficulties in communication arose with production systems where workers were stationed continuously at a particular point with limited freedom of movement. Even when opportunities exist for interaction with colleagues, physical conditions may limit effective communication. The term organizational climate