In five pages this paper examines how despite its declining market share, in 1996 the Marks and Spencer retail chain was able to strategically restore its market share. Ten sources are listed in the bibliography.
Name of Research Paper File: TS14_TEmandsc.rtf
Unformatted Sample Text from the Research Paper:
there has been en erosion of this advantage this has occurred for many reasons. These are both environmental in terms of changes within the fashion industry, changes which Marks and
Spencer did not adapt to, as well as changes within the customer base. The clothing industry in Europe has seen a few
changes over the last few years. The increase in consumer spending over the last few years, since 1998, has not been as high as may be desired by the clothing
retailers, with increases of 2% in Germany, France, Italy, the Netherlands and Belgium whilst the United Kingdom and Spain saw increases of 3% since 1998 (Consumer Goods Europe, 1998). There
have also been some interesting trends, some countries appear to have been looking with increased favour towards brand names (Wanger and Wanger, 2000).
The old high street names appearing to offer reliability, but not attracting the new and younger generation where there can be a relatively high spend and as such the older
chain store names appear to be loosing out. If we look at more recent sales trends we can see that there are
also some problems in the industry. The current economic environment has influenced the sales as although the recession is over the buying public appear to be more careful in the
way that money is spent. The clothing sector is also a sector which is particularly responsive to economic changes as the market for most clothing stores is elastic because in
bad economic conditions many normal clothes purchases can be delayed as well as there being many alternatives in the same competitive sector.