Market Audit Report For Harvey Nichols

Undertake a market Audit for Harvey Nichols.Based on your Audit findings write a report that includes:
1) Brief Introduction to your organisation and the industry sector it operates in.
2) Explanation of 4 key marketing audit findings
3) SWOT Analysis
4) Other external factors influencing the business (PESTLE)
5) Three recommendations for improved performance.

Introduction to Harvey Nichols and industry sector

Harvey Nichols is one of the most popular British Department Store chains, which was founded in the year of 1831. The company mainly operates its business with fashion garments, accessories, beauty products as well as food and wine. From the beginning of its start up, the organization has been focused on sourcing of the most cutting-edge as well as attractive fashion retaining. It has been highly popular for its expert edition of fashion products, award winning restaurants as well as food and wine offerings. The organization has established seven lucrative stores in Ireland as well as UK. Every restaurant includes immensely attractive and luxurious cafes, restaurants as well as food markets. In addition to that, the organization also owns OXO Tower Restaurant, Bar and Brasserie.

Harvey Nichols immensely focuses on the energy as well as passion of the employees. The organization effectively initiated a program named by ‘Vision and Values’ that nominate the people who perform the organizational values. These values emphasize4 on three crucial aspects, which are fashion leadership provision, being accessible, albeit exclusive as well as provision of feel good experience (Harvey Nichols 2017). The major activities under these three levels are mentioned below:

• Searching for modern food and fashion information
• Being aware and advance of competitors
• Being well presented and groomed
• Provision of inspiration to internal and external customers

• Being proud of Harvey Nichols experience
• Personalizing the customer journey aspects
• Managing expectations of customers efficiently
• Sharing product knowledge

• Having a pleasant attitude
• Being supportive
• Being delightful to the customers

3.1 Target Market:

Being the dominating entity in fashion retail industry, Harvey Nichols has constantly targeted the luxury fashion retail customers. The individual of high income has been the target audience of the organization. The organization also seeks the customer who requires various knowledgeable staffs (Choi 2016). Harvey Nichols also tries to attract the frequent traveler, who needs quality garments. The organization also attempts to target the customer group, who often give expensive gifts. In addition to that, the people also emphasize upon the quality food and drink loving people. In other words, the organization has been focusing on the individuals those value luxury items as well as quality (Kim 2013). The people with greater interest in culture and art also include within the list of Harvey Nichols’ target market.

However, in recent years it has been observed that the target market of Harvey Nichols has been decreasing. Joseph Wan, the chief executive of Harvey Nichols has supported the argument by stating that 40 per cent of the sales have been dropped (Cortez et al. 2014). It has been observed that after the sales drop the organization has been immensely focused on several changes. Currently, the organization is highly focused on engaging younger customers. The organization is trying to attract the people those have a greater interest in high fashion brands. The organization also adopts a brand driven inventory strategy so that they can attract modern people.

Key marketing audit findings

Table 1: SWOT Analysis of Harvey Nichols

(Source: Harvey Nichols 2017)

The study of the British fashion retail industry successfully disclosed that Harvey Nichols extensively suffers from the competition. The direct competitors of Harvey Nichols have been the leading retail houses of London. The organization has not been able to increase their product prices due to the presence of Harrods Holdings Limited as well as Selfridges Retail Limited. AT the same time, the organization also suffers from the excessive indirect competition from Marks & Spencer as well as John Lewis (Fleisher and Bensoussan 2015). Although, these retail houses do not offer luxurious products, the trends and styles are quite attractive to the entire world. In addition to that, Arcadia and Next are considered as the eco-fashion competitors of Harvey Nichols. However, they offer fashionable garments the quality and cloth is not superior to Harvey Nichols.  

The analysis of the marketing position of Harvey Nichols effectively identified that the organization maintains a high cost as well as high sustainability. However, it has been identified that the direct competitors are also maintain high cost and high sustainability.

Product:

Harvey Nichols offer a great range of fashion garments based on the contemporary trends and styles. In addition to that, the company also operated with fashionable accessories (Grönroos 2016). Furthermore, the company also operates in the food and beverage industry with greater quality of wine and food.

Place: 

The organization mainly operates its business from London. Among seven supermarkets, five of them are situated in core of the city. In addition to that, the organization also operates its business in Riyadh as well as Saudi Arabia (Baker 2014). Furthermore, the organization has been focused on founding the stores in most popular and convenient place of the society.

Promotion:

The organization has focused on extensive promotion in various digital as well as print media. Harvey Nichols regularly publishes ads in various newspapers and fashion shows for attracting fashion loving people (Chan et al. 2017). Moreover, the organization has also focused on online marketing in the recent days.

Price:

Harvey Nichols uses premium pricing strategies for their products. It maintains a high price for every product (Chan et al. 2017). The company wants to provide message that the product would bring higher quality along with the higher price. The premium pricing provides a sense of privilege to the customers.

Table 2: PESTLE Analysis of Harvey Nichols

the contemporary world the organizations need most critical strategies for attaining the competitive advantage. The above analysis has been quite successful to recommend major strategies for the improvement of Harvey Nichols’ business. These strategies are discussed below:

• Harvey Nichols should focus on aggressive online marketing. The regular web presence in the social media site effectively improves the brand image within the general populace. In this context, the direct marketing through emails will increase the overall sales of the company.
• Harvey Nichols must focus on differentiated product range based on the diverse pricing structure. This particular strategy would be most effective to enhance the number of company’s existing customer base.
• Harvey Nichols also need to provide specialized training program to its production house. The efficient work skills and abilities would be able to reduce the material waste eventually. It will effectively reduce the production cost and time in a significant fashion.

Reference List:

Baker, M.J., 2014. Marketing strategy and management. Palgrave Macmillan.

Chan, A.T., Ngai, E.W. and Moon, K.K., 2017. The effects of strategic and manufacturing flexibilities and supply chain agility on firm performance in the fashion industry. European Journal of Operational Research, 259(2), pp.486-499.

Choi, T.M., 2016. Multi-period risk minimization purchasing models for fashion products with interest rate, budget, and profit target considerations. Annals of Operations Research, 237(1-2), pp.77-98.

Cortez, M.A., Tu, N.T., Van Anh, D., Ng, B.Z. and Vegafria, E., 2014. Fast fashion quadrangle: An analysis. Academy of Marketing Studies Journal, 18(1), p.1.

Fleisher, C.S. and Bensoussan, B.E., 2015. Business and competitive analysis: effective application of new and classic methods. FT Press.

Grönroos, C., 2016. Modern Marketing–and. Marketing in Evolution: Essays in Honour of Michael J. Baker, p.14.

Harvey Nichols. 2017. Harvey Nichols. [online] Harveynichols.com. Available at: https://www.harveynichols.com/ [Accessed 6 Apr. 2017].

Kim, B., 2013. Competitive priorities and supply chain strategy in the fashion industry. Qualitative Market Research: An International Journal, 16(2), pp.214-242.

Rothaermel, F.T., 2015. Strategic management. New York, NY: McGraw-Hill.

Slack, N., 2015. Operations strategy. John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.