Marks And Spencer Case Study

1. Introduction

In UK, the unseasonal weather in 2014 and 2015 has significantly reduced customers’ cloth purchasing. In such increasingly competitive and overcrowded UK clothing market, UK clothing retailers have utilized promotions to grab market share and shift stock, which eventually result in acceleration in deflation rates (Academic.mintel.com, 2015). In such market background, Marks & Spencer, the biggest UK clothing retailer, recorded a 1.5% drop in their clothing sales, and the market share of M&S continued the decreasing trend from 2006. As shown in figure 1, from 2006 to 2014, M&S’s UK clothing market share dropped 2.2%.

Reflected from the lately research and news, in order to gain back market share and further improvement, M&S faces multiple supply chain and logistics problems. Among them, the main three are: 1. Poor performance of agility in M&S’s supply chain. 2. Ethical issues. 3. Poor performance of M&S e-commerce and home delivery. This report will focus on illustrate and approve significance of these three main supply chain and logistics related issues, and carry out practicable solutions to these challenges. Figure 1, Marks & Spencer’s share of spending on clothing and footwear, 2006-14. Adopted from: Academic.mintel.com, 2015.

2. Three main supply chain and

For example, in auto motive industry, Penske Logistics help Fords Motor Co. streamline its operations by managing a centralized logistics network (Blanchard, 2015). For M&S, they also can involve 3PL and M&S’s own employees for managing their own UK clothing warehouses. Though such process, not only quick improvement can be achieved, but also warehouse can be modified more professionally and operational experiences can be gained before moving the warehouse operations back in-house. Furthermore, buying a 3PL can also be an