Great 4000MKT Marketing Essentials Sample
Introduction

Marketing activities are necessary for organizations to survive in the market while also helping them to maintain a competitive position in the market. The marketing activities of an organization are directly linked to its brand positioning, brand recognition, and other branding strategies that help the organization stand apart in the highly competitive market. In this regard, H&M has taken into consideration that it operates in the High Street fashion industry and the following report aims to evaluate the marketing activities that are adopted by the company.

The report shed light on the role of marketing in the context of H&M and how the various marketing strategies adopted by the organization help H&M maintain a competitive position.
Apart from that, the various business activities that are undertaken by the organization along with the business orientation models and strategies followed by the company would also be evaluated.
The macro and micro environmental factors also have a detrimental impact on the company’s performance and this would be discussed along with the STP strategies that the company adopts. The report would also include a 4P marketing mix strategy that is adopted by the organization as a part of its marketing strategy.

Role of marketing

The purpose of marketing is to promote the products and the services of the organization in front of the audience in a structured and better manner (Rangaswamy et al. 2020).http://4000MKT Marketing Essentials Moreover, the role of marketing is to reach out to the potential customer and investor along with portraying a positive image in order to represent the company.

The marketing department of H&M is advanced as it allows the organization to make sure the fashion materials are satisfied to the consumers along with providing them at great prices as well (H&M, 2021).http://4000MKT Marketing Essentials H&M is one of the largest fashion apparel stores in the world. The major aim of the organization is to offer the best fashion along with the best quality in the marketplace.
Marketing is all about advertisement; H&M has all the required departments such as production management, project management, purchase, buying, and fashion coordination. All departments of the organization work together in order to provide top-notch marketing that helps in increasing the drive and building likeability (H&M, 2021).http://4000MKT Marketing Essentials

However, after structuring better marketing, there are still some issues and challenges through the organization has to go through. In the case of H&M, there have been certain issues regarding the supply chain as it may hinder the expectations of the customers in a negative way (Townsend et al. 2021).http://4000MKT Marketing Essentials, Therefore, regular changes in marketing strategy are essential to cope up with the potential risk as well as to communicate with the loyal customer if the organization is going through some sort of crisis.
H&M was very slow in selling their products online as they are more focused on their in-store outlets (Charlton, 2020).http://4000MKT Marketing Essentials Both online and offline marketing is essential and H&M has not got the actual advantages of e-commerce through that the in-store network will be enough for the organization to flourish in the marketplace.
However, recently, the organization has strengthened its approach to e-commerce marketing and advertising. Furthermore, the marketing of H&M has allowed the organization to have a unique identity depending on the audiences that are being targeted by the company. As mentioned by De Luca et al. (2021), the social presence of the organization is diversified because of which the company has to deal with fewer business risks.
Moreover, the overview of the business activities of H&M will be briefly discussed in the next subsequent section.

Overview of the business activities

H&M is one of the largest and most effective retailers in the world. This retail store has long paved its way from its first store in Vasteras, Sweden, which is based in America as a ready-made clothing industry. In recent times, the company has over 3700 stores in 61 countries with a workforce of 132,000 employees (Chen and Fang, 2019). http://4000MKT Marketing Essentials

The company handles an enormous network of supply, logistics, and warehousing. It also has a business model which focuses on outsourcing non-core operations in order to increase part of the focus on the core models of business. In order to do this, they buy clothes and accessories from a large number of suppliers and do not own any factory of their own. The core business of H&M is to have quality and fashion at its best. In order to bring success to the core activities of the business, the company eliminates all the intermediaries and outsources the production.
This way, H&M can focus intensely on the designing of the clothes as well as on the experiences of retailing. This particular action helps the customers to get fashionable clothes at the best prices along with great quality (Beyer and Arnold, 2021). http://4000MKT Marketing EssentialsThe processes of production are managed closely by the company so that the customers get top-quality trendy jackets and dresses at an amazing price range.
The company literally prides itself on the fact that it understands the emerging trends in the fashion industry. Furthermore, they execute the company targets and goals with a large team.
They have over 700 suppliers, more than 60 makers of patterns, and 20 centers of worldwide production. H&M’s manufacturing operations highly depend on building a strong and stable long-term relationship with the suppliers (Total San Martin and Machin, 2021).http://4000MKT Marketing Essentials Furthermore, H&M has been operating under the strategies of manufacturing in order to reduce the lead-time of production to keep their items of fashion on-trend.

H&M had witnessed a steady growth in the sales generated from the online shopping of customers. However, during the shutdown period of covid-19 in September 2020, the company has seen a drop of 5 percent in its sales (TUN, 2021).http://4000MKT Marketing Essentials, Later on, the company also said that it will shut down 350 stores permanently by the end of 2021 (TUN, 2021).http://4000MKT Marketing Essentials However, it does not mean they are giving up on brick-and-mortar.
The executives have also concluded that the real world works best in tandem with the online world. It has been further seen that the customers started to shop online during the period of the pandemic. Furthermore, the customers are making it clear that they will be valuing an inspiring and convenient experience where the online and stores strengthen and interact with each other (Seo and Suh, 2019).http://4000MKT Marketing Essentials
The company has been increasing its digital investments, accelerating the consolidation of stores, and further integrating the channels. Moreover, according to the reports of TUN (2021) H&M unlike Zara does not manufactures its products in-house rather it outsources to more than 900 independent suppliers across the world mainly in Asia and Europe. Even, to match the economic conditions of a particular country, the company prices its products accordingly.
These bulk orders by the company help to scale the economy, which keeps the lines of production saturated and gives competitive pricing. More than 80% of the merchandise held by H&M is stocked year-round whereas, 20% of the products are designed in small batches according to the prevailing trends (TUN, 2021).http://4000MKT Marketing Essentials Each year with each season, H&M offers spring and fall collections along with some sub-collections, which assists in keeping the inventory, refreshed.
The trendier items of the spring and fall collection have a short lead-time as compared to the main collection of traditional long-lead items.

Additionally, H&M has adopted IT infrastructure, which has helped to bring down the lead-time by 15-20 percent (TUN, 2021).http://4000MKT Marketing Essentials The systems of IT connect all stores with procurement systems, corporate logistics, and the central warehouse of H&M.

The company has also adopted several marketing strategies such as promotions of its products on social media sites and endorsing the company through advertisements hosted by film stars and others.
Furthermore, the company also donates clothes to NGOs, which indirectly promotes the company by uplifting its brand image in society (Arangarajan, 2021).http://4000MKT Marketing Essentials They also market their diversified products, which induces the customers into purchasing that attire in order to look much more vibrant at an affordable price.

Micro and macro environmental factors

Economical factors

The covid-19 pandemic has had a detrimental impact on the economic position of the market as well as the economic position of the consumers present in the market. During the covid-19 period, the purchasing power of consumers serial declined and this had a detrimental impact on the company’s overall sales (Xue et al. 2020).http://4000MKT Marketing Essentials However, in the postcode period the economic position of the UK, as well as the other markets that are present in the country, are recovering the purchasing power of consumers is also recovering to normal.
Moreover, customers are now freely shopping from the various retail stores the company has and this has helped the organization to recover from some of the losses incurred during the early days of covid-19 (Ozdamar Ertekin et al. 2020).http://4000MKT Marketing Essentials
However, with the recovering economic position of other markets it has also been seen that other competitors in the market have also adopted various marketing strategies to avail this opportunity and this has created an oligopoly market environment, especially in the UK. Apart from that, it has also been seen that companies like H&M are expecting 45% of the marketing growth to be dependent upon their own distribution strategies (Ritch, 2020).http://4000MKT Marketing Essentials,
Therefore, to match the economic conditions of the market it is essential to improve the distribution strategies of the company.
Additionally, due to the negative impacts of the dropping GDP of the country, it has been seen that the supply chain has also suffered severely during the past year (Donnelly et al. 2020). http://4000MKT Marketing EssentialsBased on marketing reports it has also been seen that 50% of consumers have declined who used to shop from retail stores and the majority of them have shifted to e-commerce. Thankfully, for H&M the organization also has an e-commerce division that has helped the organization survive during the period of covid-19.

Socio-environmental factors

The socio-economic factors are also a matter of concern for companies like H&M considering the fact that consumer behavior has drastically changed in the past couple of years.
Due to the economic crisis in the market that was brought about by the covid-19 pandemic, the preferences of consumers have shifted from highly premium clothing to High Street Fashion (Tariq, 2021). http://4000MKT Marketing EssentialsThis has not only created an opportunity for companies like H&M but has also increased the competition in this segment and it has been seen that companies are utilizing several channels of marketing to attract as many customers as possible.

Bargaining power of customers

Considering the kind of industry in which the organization operates, the bargaining power of consumers is quite high. Due to this, the organization has to adopt flexible pricing strategies so that the demands and requirements of consumers from different segments of society can be fulfilled (Konina et al. 2020).http://4000MKT Marketing Essentials
A flexible pricing strategy has also been adopted by the organization in order to ensure that we can cater to the maximum number of consumers considering the fact that they need to recover the losses incurred in 2020. However, the flexibility of the pricing strategies is limited to some extent as the prices of production have also increased as the cost of labor and production have increased on the other hand.
Therefore, the profitability of the company is marginally declining and would continue to decline if the company does not adopt innovative ways of producing its products. H&M outsources from various suppliers located at different strategic locations, which has helped the company to ensure that their retail stores, as well as e-commerce platforms, are stocked with products that have higher demand (Iannilli and Spagnoli, 2021).http://4000MKT Marketing Essentials Another reason why the bargaining power of consumers has increased drastically is the presence of various competitors in the market, which has led to an oligopolistic condition in the High Street fashion retail industry of the UK (Alves et al. 2020).http://4000MKT Marketing Essentials

Competitive rivalry

Competitive rivalry is one of the most significant micro environmental factors that affect the position and marketing strategies of HRM. Some of the most significant competitors of the organization are Zara John, Lewis, and Next. Alongside these organizations, there are other companies as well that have achieved a highly competitive position in High Street fashion retail (Adhikari and Bisi, 2020).4000MKT Marketing Essentials
Not every organization operating in this industry has its own e-commerce channel due to which HRM has been able to sustain its position in this industry. In terms of e-commerce growth, it has been seen that H&M has grown by 68% followed by Matalan at 49%, Marks and Spencer by 34%, Next at 31%, and John Lewis 28% (Salience, 2021).http://4000MKT Marketing Essentials These figures reflect that even after falling short of sales that can be generated from retail stores data and have been able to sustain the increasing competition with the help of their e-commerce platform.
As a result, the company’s online, offline distribution, and marketing strategies have worked in its favor of the company in a highly positive manner (Dewalska-Opitek and Bilińska-Reformat, 2021).http://4000MKT Marketing Essentials

STP strategy

The STP strategy has been described below on behalf of H&M.

Segmentation

H&M has paid attention to empowering its market presence as a renowned clothing service provider. In this context, H&M paid attention to subdividing its segmentation attributes in accordance with the market demand and requirements. However, H&M segmented the market by class and age with regard to the demographic, psychographic, and behavioral attributes of their potential consumers. With the provision of high-end fashion clothing, the organization targeted the lower middle class as an integral part of their segmentation by class (H&M, 2021).http://4000MKT Marketing Essentials It highlighted the consideration of cost optimization strategy from the organizational perspective by targeting the lower middle class of the society.
The segmentation strategy of H&M has also focused on matching its offerings with different agent customers. This segment ultimately consists of women aged around 25 to 30. In this context, the organization focuses on providing premium products by determining the high purchasing ability of its consumers. For example, the context of branded sportswear and women’s clothing can be considered from the organizational perspective that has been targeting consumers having high purchasing ability (H&M, 2021).http://4000MKT Marketing Essentials

Targeting

This section pays attention to evaluating the potential and commercial attractiveness of the organizational product segments by clarifying the target market (Camilleri, 2018).http://4000MKT Marketing Essentials Considering the services and offerings of H&M, the organizational target market reflects the fashion and clothing sector. The organization had realized the significance of mitigating their potential consumers’ requirements and demands, which led them towards the strategy of product development. H&M developed its existing products in order to positively influence customer-purchasing intention.

Figure 1: H&M net sales in the UK from 2017 to 2020

(Source: Statista, 2021)

The massive marketing campaign is also undertaken by the organization as an integral part of targeting their preferred market segment. It can be supported by the evidence of H&M across the UK market. The company has been noticed to maintain a stable growth across the UK market where its net sales experienced gradual upliftment from 2017 to 2019.
Despite experiencing the toxic consequences of the Covid-19 pandemic, H&M maintained decent net sales of around 11.5 billion Swedish Krona during the previous year (Statista, 2021). http://4000MKT Marketing EssentialsThis evidence highlights the consideration of efficient targeting attributes from the organizational perspective based on which the organizational net sales grew efficiently.

Positioning

This section focuses on ensuring the consideration of appropriate spots for a brand in the target customer’s mind. Efficient positioning has been providing distinct benefits to H&M by differentiating its products and services from other respective organizations. In this regard, the company initiated attractive strategic interventions as an integral part of empowering its product positioning in the current market.
For evidence, the consequences of online sales can be considered from the organizational perspective that has contributed adequately to the upliftment of the organizational financial feasibility.
The company witnessed 40% growth across its online sales during this present year up to the six months to mid-2021 (Skeldon, 2021).http://4000MKT Marketing Essentials Moreover, efficient strategic determination had also been beneficial for the company based on which 75% sales growth was recorded during the second quarter of 2021.
Seasonal offers are also provided by the company that has positioned its services by differentiating them from existing rivals.
It can be supported by notifying that the H&M group has achieved USD 24.3 billion in total sales across the global market (Tighe, 2020).http://4000MKT Marketing Essentials Moreover, a competitive position has been ensured by H&M through efficient positioning based on which the company was recognized with the third largest share of the apparel market in 2017 (Statista, 2021).http://4000MKT Marketing Essentials

Target customers

In terms of target customers and target market, the organization has distributed its operation in a very broad manner. However, in terms of the most common target customers of the company are women belonging to the age group of 20-34.
This particular age group and demographic has been the company considering the fact that women and customers within this age group have the highest tendency to shop for trendy fashion at a comparatively low price. High Street fashion brands like H&M, Zara, and John Lewis offer trendy clothing and accessories that are mostly close imitations of premium brands like Burberry, Gucci, Louis Vuitton, and others.
The presence of such companies offers a wide variety of products that consumers from the lower income group can afford (Tupikovskaja-Omovie and Tyler, 2020). http://4000MKT Marketing EssentialsTherefore, the presence of such companies has filled the gap that has been created by major fashion retail brands mentioned above.

Hence, it can be summarized that the major target customers of the organization are individuals who are highly sensitive to emerging fashion trends and are price conscious at the same time. The company targets both men and women; however, the products and offerings of the company are more inclined toward women belonging to the young age group (Fiano et al. 2020).http://4000MKT Marketing Essentials

Marketing mix 4P

The marketing strategy of the organization, H&M will be analyzed through the framework of the marketing mix with the help of Product, Place, Price, and Promotion respectively.

Product

H&M is the most loved brand among all age groups as it is the most trusted apparel organization that focuses on satisfying the fashion needs of the customers. The product range of the organization includes everything from basic everyday wear to yoga materials as well (Fashionabc, 2020).http://4000MKT Marketing Essentials Furthermore, the brand had several sections, which had different targeted audiences.
Cheap Monday has types of denim and many other fashion collections for both men and women, which are connected with the pop and music culture (Fashionabc, 2020).http://4000MKT Marketing Essentials COS is a brand that is inspired by several different arts across the world and has a classic collection for everyone. Whereas, Monki serves the trendiest collection for women only and Weekday makes the product for young adults (Fashionabc, 2020).http://4000MKT Marketing Essentials
However, the organization mostly targets young adults who find the products to be reasonable in price as well as trendy and fashionable. 20% of the collection is for fast fashion, and hence, the results of higher sales are from the young segment (Marketing91, 2019). http://4000MKT Marketing EssentialsFurthermore, the brand’s most successful product strategy is they design the collection by some famous designers such as Mathew Williamson, Isabel Marant, and Jimmy Choo to attract the audience to the product of the brand.

Place

The consumers of H&M are from all over the world and the retail outlet of the brand is identified as the most convenient for the consumers as they can shop for several different products at a single store brand (Roggeveen et al. 2021).http://4000MKT Marketing Essentials Across the globe, the company has expanded its business relatively quickly and made it accessible for the audiences with reasonable costs.
The brand has over 4135 stores to satisfy the demands of the audience (Mbaskool, 2021).http://4000MKT Marketing Essentials Apart from this, the brand also has its own online store as well, where the customers can choose their respective products and purchase them from the website through the help of online payment methods.
Moreover, the brand manufactures its product in countries where there is a cheap labor cost that can help in reducing the all-over cost of the products (Roggeveen et al. 2021). http://4000MKT Marketing EssentialsThe brand has followed the policy of purchasing the raw material directly from the suppliers and then selling the finished product to their retail outlets. Along with this, the supply chain of the brand is evolving over the years as it is delivering the product in a lesser time lowering the transportation cost as well (Lechner et al. 2020).http://4000MKT Marketing Essentials

Price

A broader pricing range has been adopted by H&M to suit the demands of the consumers successfully. Along with this, they have also made a collection in their discounted section in order to follow the Medium pricing range (Marketing91, 2019).http://4000MKT Marketing Essentials This will relatively help the brand to ensure their sales along with attaining more and more consumers. In comparison to Zara, the products being sold by that brand are at $45 whereas; H&M is selling those at the price of $25 (Mbaskool, 2021). The amount of quality in the products along with affordable pricing is attracting consumers, which lead to the success of the brand in the fashion industry. Moreover, the pricing strategy of H&M is providing a competitive advantage in the marketplace as well (Lechner et al. 2020).http://4000MKT Marketing Essentials One of the most important strategies in the organization that helps in reducing the cost of the products in comparison to the other apparel fashion brands is H&M reduces all the transactions in between all the intermediaries. Hence, it has helped in the reduction of the final cost that is being sold by the brand (Marketing91, 2019).http://4000MKT Marketing Essentials

Promotion

Since H&M has a diverse range of products, they use several multi-channel promotional ways through which they do their marketing. TV advertisement is one of the channels through which the brand comes up with several different creative ads, which focus on the latest trends, and designs (Fashionabc, 2020).http://4000MKT Marketing Essentials The level of awareness being spread by the brand allows for increasing the drive in their sales. Apart from that, the brand has its own YouTube channel where they show its latest campaigns and unique ads to engage the audience towards them. Digital marketing is also used by the brand to attract potential internet users over several social media platforms (Mbaskool, 2021).http://4000MKT Marketing Essentials Discount and Promo codes are being offered by the brand both online and in-stores. Furthermore, H&M also collaborated with high-profile celebrities such as Gigi Hadid, Jimmy Choo, Kendal Jenner, and many more to attract the consumer through them as they are much loved on social media and have millions of followers there. Moreover, the brand has also taken a step towards sustainability to promote a greener and better environment (Marketing91, 2019).http://4000MKT Marketing Essentials

Conclusion

The overall report has presented a descriptive overview of relaboth national marketing attributes of H&M. The organization has focused on providing the best quality marketing operations for influencing customer attraction with traditional and online platforms. The organizational business activities highlighted their empowered presence over the fashion retail industry. The organizational intention of segmenting the market according to the customer demographics highlights distinct benefits for them with increasing sales growth and empowered financial standings in the market.
Moreover, efficient positioning strategies have benefited H&M with extended market presence as compared with their existing market competitors. Online sales options, product development, and others have significantly contributed to conceptualizing a strong market position from the organizational perspective. The study has reflected the major target customers of the company along with the macro and micro environmental factors that affect the company’s position in the market.
The marketing mix analysis has also highlighted the attributes of both broader and medium pricing range from the organizational perspective for efficiently mitigating consumer demands. Both offline and online promotional attributes have been undertaken by the organization for promoting its diverse range of products across the global consumer market. With regards to this concern, H&M can be assumed to obtain extended focus upon their marketing concerns that might open up distant future opportunities with a greater competitive advantage for them.

Reflection

Based on the overall report, a profound vision has been outlined to me concerning the significance of appropriate marketing activities to be undertaken in an organization for achieving extended profitability. The context of H&M has highlighted the deliberate role of marketing in their organizational operations considering the aspects of increasing the sales growth. I have also been able to learn the importance of relational internal and external environmental factors that are explicitly associated with organizational business activities. However, the competitive analysis of H&M eventually signified increasing competition in the clothing fashion industry due to which the conceptualization of proper segmentation and targeting strategy was endorsed by the company (Kotler et al. 2019).http://4000MKT Marketing Essentials Along with the consideration of seasonal offers and product development attributes, I have noticed H&M to properly focus on different market segments as an integral part of reaching the target customers. A sense of understanding has also been generated among me regarding the greater importance of accurately positioning and organizational products in the competitive market.

However, I recognized marketing as the most sequential parameter to justify organizational progress and proceedings over the current competitive market. The context of H&M highlighted different opportunities created by the organization concerning the maintenance of their financial visibility over the current market with appropriate marketing instincts.
For example, extended market growth along with online sales enhancement can be noticed from the organizational perspective that has been adding a greater value to enlarge their financial stability (Skeldon, 2021).http://4000MKT Marketing Essentials, On the other hand,
I also became familiar with the consideration of an appropriate marketing mix that can be supportive of the empowerment of brand image from an organizational perspective. Eventually, I recognized several sections conceptualized by the organization in the form of cheap Monday and others that have innovated the offerings of H&M.

I have also understood the extended importance of appropriate pricing strategy by referring to the prospects of H&M. Along with this; I focused on intercepting the role of efficient promotion on behalf of an organization that can be supportive to make their products available to the potential target audience in different markets and regions.

I have also been able to understand the benefits of providing adequate discounts and promo codes from an organizational perspective that might offer significant brand promotion over the wider consumer market.
The case context of H&M also highlighted the utilization of several social media platforms for organizational digital marketing operations (Liu and Zhang, 2019).http://4000MKT Marketing Essentials In this regard, I have been able to intercept the positive attributes of digital promotional consequences that might offer extended benefits for an organizational brand and services across the market.
Considering the overall report, a descriptive overview can be noticed regarding the impact of maintaining efficient marketing strategies from the perspective of a global organization. However, I was eventually able to differentiate organizational services and offerings by evaluating their target customers’ purchasing intention with the completion of this report.

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