marks and spencer - satisfying customers

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Satisfying Customers

Marks & Spencer's is fondly known as Britain's "most trusted retailer". Yet in recent years the company has discovered that you cannot simply live on your reputation. Marks & Spencer has had to become more "customer facing" to create a platform for improved profitability. The signs are that it is succeeding: in its November 2001 trading statement the company reported half-year profits up by 20.1 percent to £220.3 million (US$315.4 million). The Customer Insight Unit (CIU) has played an important part in this change of fortunes by helping Marks & Spencer to achieve its mission "to focus on our customers and be driven by their needs".

In pursuing this mission Marks & Spencer has two key advantages.

First, it has the expertise. Headed by Steven Bond, the CIU was formed at the end of 1999 and has seen its remit steadily broaden ever since. With 50 members, it draws together previously fragmented analytical experience in areas such as marketing, sales promotion, customer relationship management, footage assessment and location analysis. Use of SAS software has grown with the CIU. "Such a concentration of expertise has enabled fantastic cross-pollination of ideas and analytical techniques. These are now clearly focused on telling us who our customers are, what they want and perhaps equally importantly, when and why they are tempted to go to the competition.

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"As a result, the CIU contributes more and more to the company's decision-making process, at business unit and indeed at corporate level." The CIU now reports directly to the Group Marketing Director, Alan McWalter.

Second, Marks & Spencer has one of the richest and most extensive customer databases available to any retailer in the world. There are more than three million active M&S charge card accounts, and on average ten million transactions are made per week. Steven Bond comments, "For years we were sitting on a goldmine that went unexploited because we were already successful. Now we appreciate the ...

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