Question

Company: Markes and Spencer

Question: Evaluate the impact of competition policy and other regulatory mechanisms on the activities of a selected organisation.

Guidlines

Choose any UK based national and discuss a competition policy (Competition Act 1998) and how it is constrained by competition policies e.g. regarding monopolies, by regulations and by authorities (Competition Commission, Office of Fair Trading; Directorate General for Competition); European Commission); sector regulators e.g. Ofgem, Ofwat, Civil Aviation Authority; Companies Acts; regional policy; industrial policy; training and skills policy

Answer 1

Marks and spencer’s is the known brand serving wide range of customers at international level. M & S has huge competitors now a day. Trend of online shopping has emerged as a competition for almost all outlets. People prefer to shop by sitting at their place and placing an order for delivery. Therefore, they have to compete the home shopping along with other customers’ expectations in terms of quality of product, quality of service, and reasonability of the price.

To compete in the market, they have launched variety of products like new sub brands in clothing, food, &more credit card and opening of Marks & spencer Lifestore.

Therefore, Marks and spencer key policy always can meet the customer demands under the change circumstances. They are quite adaptable to the change in trends and markets. They have always mark their standards high in terms of value, quality, innovation, service. They have also started in store coffee house which has become one of the third largest coffee bar.

They also contributed towards Corporate social responsibility by recently contributing for jobs placement to homeless people.

UK Government Competition policy has the major impact on the dominant Companies like M & C. They seek to eliminate the agreements which may restrict the competition like monopoly, cartels or price fixing. There are new set of rules to control the mergers which will reduce the chances of expansion via mergers.