Post by excoriator on Nov 4, 2020 11:56:31 GMT
M&S making its first loss in a hundred years strikes me as not at all surprising. They seem incapable of understanding that they have, by cranking up their prices over the years, moved from their original market sector of supplying clothes at low cost to one where they are approaching luxury brand prices. Their original chunk of the market has been taken over by Primark which is doing a bomb by comparison.
I am sure there must be people in M&S who are aware of this but companies become moribund and incapable of adaptation. There are so used to being the market leader that even when they have lost the lead cannot bring themselves to admit it. Instead they devote their efforts to persuading their dwindling customers that their way is right rather than cutting their prices to compete.
M&S had reached this unhappy state some years back when they built an enormous 'green' store in an out of town retail park not far from here. The car park had a 'Green Wall' with a notice telling you it was a green wall. It has a charging point for electric cars - judging by the moss on teh bricks with which it is paved it isn't much used - and its green credentials were advertised to all and sundry at every possible opportunity. I visited the gents and was confronted by a notice above the urinal telling me that it was a 'waterless' urinal than they saved god knows how many litres of water a year. Moreover, ALL their water for the toilets came from rainwater collected from their roof. At the bottom of the notice was a sort of sub-notice informing interested peeing customers that the notice was engraved in leftover scraps of cladding from the construction of the building.
The message had been taken to heart by one customer, who had neatly written below this in ball point the words "This pen was borrowed from Ladbrokes betting shop, Chester, and will be returned there."
I am sure there must be people in M&S who are aware of this but companies become moribund and incapable of adaptation. There are so used to being the market leader that even when they have lost the lead cannot bring themselves to admit it. Instead they devote their efforts to persuading their dwindling customers that their way is right rather than cutting their prices to compete.
M&S had reached this unhappy state some years back when they built an enormous 'green' store in an out of town retail park not far from here. The car park had a 'Green Wall' with a notice telling you it was a green wall. It has a charging point for electric cars - judging by the moss on teh bricks with which it is paved it isn't much used - and its green credentials were advertised to all and sundry at every possible opportunity. I visited the gents and was confronted by a notice above the urinal telling me that it was a 'waterless' urinal than they saved god knows how many litres of water a year. Moreover, ALL their water for the toilets came from rainwater collected from their roof. At the bottom of the notice was a sort of sub-notice informing interested peeing customers that the notice was engraved in leftover scraps of cladding from the construction of the building.
The message had been taken to heart by one customer, who had neatly written below this in ball point the words "This pen was borrowed from Ladbrokes betting shop, Chester, and will be returned there."
