MArks and Spencer market

Marks & Spencer is a British retailer, which sells both clothing and food in their stores. In this article, we will focus on comparing their clothing section with H&M. Their target customer is middle-aged, middle class, with a focus on practical needs.

The critical needs of their target customer are: high quality and trendy clothing with acceptable price, good return policy, easy to maintain, wide range of sizes to fit different body measurement, ready to wear, and good for professional and executive wear.

Marks & Spencer Brand Value:

Quality, value, service, innovation and trust

Quality - Products are produced in good quality
Value - Focus on the value of the goods, e.g. full range of size and colors
Service - Comfortable store, good sales service
Innovation - Every store has a pleasant wines / chocolate / biscuit corner
Trust - Trust on service, quality, and refund policy

In this case, the target customers of Marks & Spencer (M&S) belong to the group of practical consumers who place more functional considerations on their clothes. They perceive clothes as necessity to cover the need of being dressed. Therefore, their critical needs are good quality cloths which suit their functional purposes and also personal tastes.

M&S claim that their brand values are quality, value, service, innovation and trust. Customers are interested in purchasing products with high quality and good value of their brand. As a matter of fact, M&S has expanded and strengthened one of their brands - Autograph strongly in 2007/08. The brand focuses on offering elegant and luxury range of clothing. Besides, M&S consider the quality and the value of products are their important brand value. These two issues which represented as product customization and product quality located at the pleasure peak of the emotional curve are also important to their target customers. As a result, we can see that M&S is delivering an effective experience in terms of product quality and value to their target customers, though the price may be a bit too high as compared to other competitors. However, M&S fails to perform well in terms of innovation as the image of brand (clothing style) is generally perceived as conservative. For the brand value of trust, The Post Sales Service part can deeply reflect this. M&S provide global goods return service, which injects good confidence to customers about the product quality and the stores' responsibility. Trust also includes the earth protection and green life concepts advocated by the store. However, it is not easy to be experienced by shopper. Only if customers study about the product materials and manufacturing process, they will come to realize the beliefs they have.