Saïd Business School Resources Blogs » MBA retailing

J C Penney

Alan Giles — Fri, 18 May 2012 18:35:23 +0000

Jonathan mentioned new CEO Ron Johnson’s new pricing policy in our Week 3 lecture. Yesterday’s Lex column suggests it is proving to be a difficult journey. In my experience it’s very hard, once your customers have been hooked on regular price promotions to wean them off promotions on to an Everyday Low Pricing Policy (even though, as described in class) Penney’s policy is really EDLP-Lite. Logically EDLP is compelling, but in practice it’s boring for consumers and lacks flexibility for the retailer.

Walmart and Wumart

Jonathan Reynolds — Thu, 17 May 2012 17:20:56 +0000

We discussed the remarkable success of domestic Chinese retailer Wumart in class this week. For those of you wanting to read more, there is a good summary of the firm’s development in an Economist blog entry from May 2011 here.

For those of you interested in the cultural dimensions of retail marketing and strategy, I also mentioned a book by Jean-Claude Usunier. Reference here. There are several copies in the Sainsbury library.

Primark

Alan Giles — Fri, 11 May 2012 17:40:25 +0000

In Week 1 we talked about the media focus on the ethical credentials of Primark, the value fashion retailer, and contrasted that with the embedded corporate responsibility programmes of M&S and H&M. Against that background, the hiring of the M&S Head of Sourcing by Primark seems significant. However, he will still have to find the T-shirts that can be sold for £2….

Target and Amazon

Alan Giles — Fri, 04 May 2012 08:34:52 +0000

We mentioned in Wednesday’s class Target’s reaction to “showrooming” by Amazon’s customers, and here’s the latest escalation in this. No evidence of Target “working backwards from the customer” here! To be fair, Amazon don’t hesitate to take action to protect their commercial interests, such as removing the “buy” button from products when they are in terms dispute with that supplier. When i quizzed Doug on this, he said “when we do that, we are taking a long term view of the customer’s interests”.

Tesco

Alan Giles — Fri, 27 Apr 2012 12:11:32 +0000

Following this week’s case study Retail Week has an interesting article summarising Phil Clarke’s initiatives to revitalise the UK business. Like the analysts, I am not convinced 1.1% like-for-like sales increase can possibly produce a payback on the investment in the refitted stores!

M&S Plan A

Alan Giles — Fri, 27 Apr 2012 12:04:29 +0000

Here is an interesting interview with Steve Sharp, Marketing Director of M&S. It’s prompted by the relaunch of the Oxfam clothes recycling project we talked about in this week’s class, under the ghastly new name of “shwopping”. But where his comments are really interesting is on the trade-offs between social and economic objectives.

Multichannel x 4

Alan Giles — Sat, 18 Jun 2011 11:11:16 +0000

Our guest in Week 8 is Sara Weller, Managing Director of Argos. This is an interesting development in the relatively humdrum world of TV retailing, which leverages their other channels to good effect.

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Valuing brands

Jonathan Reynolds — Wed, 15 Jun 2011 11:34:59 +0000

We’ll be discussing retail brands this afternoon. Included in the deck is a presentation of the Millward Brown BRANDZ ranking. There are many and various ways of calculating brand equity. Millward Brown argue that theirs is amongst the most detailed and reliable. You can read about the methodology employed here.

What we can all learn from Asos

Alan Giles — Sun, 12 Jun 2011 12:06:40 +0000

Here’s a great article from Retail Week. Those of you who did the practical work assignment comparing Next with Asos will already be familiar with the latter, but this is a very good summary of the drivers of continuing success at Asos (which has helped founder Nick Robertson pick up an OBE in the Royal honours announced yesterday).

Tesco’s view of the future

Jonathan Reynolds — Thu, 09 Jun 2011 08:35:54 +0000

In his first major speech as CEO of Tesco, Philip Clarke spoke at the British Retail Consortium’s annual conference yesterday. You can read what he had to say in detail here. Note, however, his comments on the role of multichannel:

“The digital revolution that has turbo-charged globalisation is transforming how consumers and companies behave. This revolution is boosting competition, lowering prices, creating new virtual companies, allowing people to sell goods to each other without a middle man. In the era of new retailing, it’s more important than ever that we show that we are on the customers’ side, that we are here to make their lives that bit easier, that bit better. That’s the bedrock of the trust I want to build as we become the model for new retail.” (Phil Clarke, Tesco)