Research Paper on:
A Retail Case Study; Marks and Spencer

Unformatted Sample Text from the Research Paper:
to. Increasing competition has driven down process in many sectors, along with increasing maturity for markets. Many companies have changed and developed, other have found the dynamic environment a challenge.  There are many leaders in the retail market, but some of the most valuable lessons can be gained from studying a former giant that has fallen on bad times. In  this paper we will study Marks and Spencer and international operation whos operations are focused in the UK. If we look at the position of the company this is  still one of the leading companies with the core products being clothing. But sales also including home wares and food. The sales for 2002 were ?8.1 billion to  place this in context, the nearest competitors, the arcadia group, had ?1.6 billion in sales and then Debenhams had sales of ?1.68 billion (Euromonitor, 2004). Next had sales of ?8  million (Euromonitor, 2004). The company is therefore in a leading position, but the benefits of this position have been hard to realise as profit levels have dropped over time.  IF we look at the company today, it still remains profitable, but in comparison to the former glory years the downward trend may have been reversed, but the levels of  profit are still a long way from being restored. To understand how this company competes we can use the theories of Michael Porter. In a competitive environment the consumer  needs a reason to buy a specific product. If the decision was based on price only, then there would be no real competition, the cheapest goods would be those that  sell. However, to survive a company need to look deeper both as the consumer market and the competitive environment so that they sell goods and other products do not push