Marks and Spencer's new store on Champs-Elysées
As you
might have heard, Marks and Spencer came back in France last week. They opened
a 1.400 m2 store on no less
than the Champs-Elysées on November 24. This store’s opening was awaited by
many people, mainly those who had witnessed the closure of all Marks and
Spencer’s shops in France ten years ago. On the Champs-Élysées you could see
dozens of impatient M&S lovers waiting to get their crackers back.
The
clientele is different from that in England; while in the UK, Marks and
Spencers addresses the classic housewife, the clientele is much larger in
France: tourists, fashionistas, English ex-pats, English food lovers…
Rich tea biscuits
Products:
they are exactly the same than in the UK (name and descriptions in English…),
but little signs in French tell the customer what’s so special about each
product.
Is it just
another Marks and Spencer store? Apparently, no. Marks and Spencer’s
re-implantation in France also plays a role in their “bricks and clicks”
strategy, which consists in combining the store and e-commerce offer. Last October, the
French website http://marksandspencer.fr
was launched, and enabled French customers, a month before the opening of the
new M&S store, to order M&S products on a specific platform. The
website, quite similar in contents and presentation to the international
website (http://www.marksandspencer.com/)
is in French, which is less confusing for French customers than the English
website. Delivery prices are quite classic: 4,95€ under 5 days, 9,95€ under 2
days, free delivery over 35€.
International website French website
The
store’s experience aims at combining both “live” sale and online sale. You can
find 2 touch screen ordering points and 2 fixed iPads to buy products and be
delivered home. At first, you might think “Why would I want to buy stuff online
if I can get it right now?” Two main reasons: delivery facilities (do you
really imagine yourself carrying 5 bags of Cadbury around Paris if you are on a
5-days trip?) and shopping facility (you don’t have to win a ruthless the girl
next to you to get the last size 10 cardigan). A nice initiative, but a little
bit too cautious technologically speaking: M&S will anyways attract
customers to their brand new store so why not invest more massively in the use
of new technologies?
Smartphone
applications? None found… Which is again deceiving. Many concrete uses of
smartphone applications could be imagined, for delivery tracking for instance.
Indeed, an increasing number of customers require firms to produce a very
precise delivery tracking system, on all kinds of support (website, mail,
smartphone applications). Especially with the Christmas period coming up !
Once
again, their website is quite classic, and doesn’t jump at your eyes as THE
website where you will spend hours and hours, how much you may like M&S.
Where
Marks and Spencer scores in terms of new technologies is their use of social
media : they are present on Facebook (408 504 likes) and on Twitter (nearly 47
000 followers). M&S uses Facebook to present the current reductions and new
products, through open questions such as “if I could have
anything from Christmas from M&S it would be —". Even if their community
doesn’t assemble a tremendous number of fans (compared to Cadbury for
instance), M&S fans are attached to their brand and lively interact to the
content produced by M&S. The Christmas question above for example received
a total of 1077 commentaries (i.e "their bank account). Likewise,
the twitter feed is very interactive, and M&S answers very quickly to the
questions of their users. Let's note that M&S doesn't censor what users say: the comments are left as they are. A clever marketing, letting people know that M&S accepts some kinds of critics.
My
conclusion: a great new store, but a timid use of new technologies for now,
especially on smartphone applications. M&S’s community one of their strong
marketing assets, why not using it to become a trendsetter in new technologies?
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