Marketing Mix of Marks and Spencer

Store layout, visual merchandising and how offers are communicated, are crucial components influenced by M&S product lines. ''As the ultimate goal for any retailer is to enhance the shopping experience of the consumer in order to stimulate repeat purchasing'' (Jacobs et al, 2010). M&S perform this through visual merchandising. Visual merchandising ''includes not only formal displays but also the placement of merchandise'' (Diamond and Pintel, 2008).

For example, M&S use a Cold Chain of fridges to promote their Foods to go category. Along with this they have signage's, signs such as 'Prepared Salads', 'Foods to go' etc. They also use displays, fixtures and fittings such as racking and baskets to promote their goods (refer to Appendix 1 - question 2, Appendix 3). Though, the weakness of the category is that they don't have many promotions excluding the meal deal offer, and that some of the items aren't very popular. This means that consumers may not take much notice of this section (refer to Appendix 1, 2). Therefore, this could be an area that M&S may utilise.

Description on Customer Needs

From Appendix 1 - question 3, it can be witnessed that demographic and psychographic variables are significant when trying to understand consumer behaviour. ''Demographics are simply characteristics about a population of people'' e.g. age, gender etc (Want to Know It, 2011). Whilst, psychographics comprises of "quantitative research intended to place consumers on psychological - as distinguished from demographic - dimensions" e.g. personality, behaviour etc (Barry and Weinstein, 2009).

In regards to age and gender, the majority of M&S consumers were aged between 20-40 years old and there were slightly more females than males. In looking at people's personalities/behaviours, the majority of the consumers were browsing through the category quickly to purchase something of value or convenience. According to Tsai and Lee (2009), both demographics and psychographics interlink in relation to customer needs, having a huge impact on price-searching behaviour.

Customers can also use their five senses when interacting with the store environment and category which consist of sight, touch, sound, smell and taste. From Appendix 1 - question 4, it can be seen that M&S customers only use three of their five senses when shopping. These are sight, touch and smell. M&S fail to integrate sound and taste as they don't employ any music and don't offer product tastings (Dooley, 2011). Consequently, this could be an area of opportunity for M&S to develop.