Marks and Spencer 2016 Annual Report Download - page 19

17
ANNUAL REPORT AND FINANCIAL STATEMENTS 2016
GOVERNANCEFINANCIAL STATEMENTS OUR BUSINESSOUR PERFORMANCE
We launched an organic whole drinking coconut
complete with a unique patented ring-pull.
Made from recycled coconut husk fi bre and natural
resin, the ring-pull is applied directly to the fruit,
resulting in the only coconut water on the market
that you can drink straight from the coconut.
We improved our Shop Your Way service to
make it even more convenient for our customers.
We increased the number of stores where customers
can collect orders to include our stores in transport
hubs, speeded up how long it takes to collect a
parcel, and extended ordering times so customers
can now place their order up to 8pm for free, next
day store collection.
inspirational – we saw a 33% increase in
visits to our Style & Living editorial section
as we doubled the number of editorial
features, providing fashion, beauty, home
and food inspiration for our customers.
This benefi ts sales – the average order
value from customers who read Style &
Living is higher. Our teams behind the
scenes – from online trading to digital
marketing – are constantly looking at how
we can make the site better and easier to
shop. We have increased the site’s speed
and improved navigation resulting in
improved customer satisfaction scores.
M&S is a connected retailer; people shop
with us through a variety of channels, from
tablets to phones to desktop computers to
our stores. Often, their journey will start in
one channel and end in another. Mobile is
our fastest growing channel – sales through
mobile phones grew by 85% this year – and
we update our mobile site daily to ensure
we are constantly improving the customer
journey. Despite this growth, 60% of all
online sales are still picked up in store
through our Shop Your Way service. This
tells us that our customers love the
convenience of multi-channel shopping.
R As our online business grows, the
smooth running of M&S.com is essential
to our success. Our software engineers
can update our site daily, and our command
centres in the UK and Chennai run 24/7
to ensure M&S.com always meets our
customers’ expectations. We treat the
security of our customers and their
personal information very seriously.
We constantly monitor the ongoing
developments in cyber security and our
website is overseen by a dedicated security
team who ensure we have the controls in
place to protect our customers.
In our stores, we have focused on providing
inspirational shopping environments.
We have a total of 914 UK stores: 302
full line, 222 owned Simply Food, 349
franchise Simply Food, and 41 Outlet stores.
Over the year, we opened seven new full
line stores. We also continue to manage
our estate to ensure that we are best-
positioned in a local market and in
the places that are convenient for our
customers. As a result, we closed 20 stores,
which included relocating four stores to
better sites and consolidating our two
separate Peterborough stores into one.
Service remains key. Last year, we
introduced an employee bonus linked
to service, and we are pleased that our
till-based customer satisfaction survey
scores were the highest ever. Our
employees have continued to focus on
PACK – Presentation, Availability, Cross-
selling and service and Knowledge – to
ensure that our stores and our service
are the best they can be.
ENGAGING OUR CUSTOMERS
Our marketing activity continued to inspire
our customers across our Food and
Clothing & Home products by bringing
them together under the ‘Only M&S’
master brand. Inspired by the success of our
‘Adventures In’ campaign, which was praised
by our customers for the way it celebrated
our quality, creativity and expertise in Food,
we launched ‘The Art of’ to celebrate the
craftsmanship in our Clothing & Home
ranges. Both campaigns continued to have
a strong social element. We now reach over
5 million consumers through our various
social media platforms, up from 2.6 million
last year. The weekly readership for Style &
Living has reached 200,000. Our expanding
reach enables us to build positive sentiment
and create an ongoing buzz around the M&S
brand and our most popular products.
Our Sparks members’ club is one of the most
important customer engagement initiatives
we’ve launched in years. Since its launch in
October, Sparks has attracted 4 million
members, ranging in age from 16 to 103.
Through tailored o ers and personalised
content, we can reward our loyal customers.
In the months prior to launch, we road tested
and refi ned Sparks with the help of over
100,000 customers. We continue to look at
how we can enhance the proposition by
further improving the personalisation and
tailoring it even more to our individual
customers. Sparks has a compelling
business rationale too. It helps us to
increase members’ frequency of purchase,
encourages shopping between channels
and incentivises cross-buying. Visits to the
M&S website have increased from an average
of 6.5 million per week when it launched to
11.5 million per week now.
A Sparks ties in with Plan A too: members
earn 50 Sparks points each time they
Shwop unwanted clothing items and we
donate 1p to a charity of their choice every
time they shop with M&S. Since it launched,
we have donated £649,000 to our charity
partners, including UNICEF and Macmillan
Cancer Support.
We continued to improve our store environments
with the roll-out of our Kids and Baby concepts to
an extra 16 stores. We also launched a new Lingerie
scheme with a more modern intimate look, which
we have put in 17 stores, including Marble Arch and
the Pantheon.