Marketing management Essay Example | Topics and Well Written Essays - 2500 words - 2

Marketing management - Essay Example They have specialty outlets to cater to niche segments of high spenders as well as sports lovers. One such company is Black’s Leisure Group plc (Blacks) whose principal activity is outdoor and boardwear retailing. The Group operates through two retail chains of stores called Outdoor and ONeill. The core activities of Outdoor comprise of outdoor and boardwear clothing, footwear and equipment, while ONeill functions as a distributor and retailer of ONeill products in UK. In 12 months ending March 2007On sales of  £ 298.276m it suffered a loss of  £ 12.353m. This has improved somewhat for the next 6 month period in current year by September end with sales at  £146.8m with profits at  £0.2m. This cannot be considered final as the annual set offs like depreciation and reserves can only be calculated at the end of the year. Blacks have also closed down 7 loss making stores out of 45 planned for closure. It also continues to face tough competition from top 4 competitors. The overall market of sportswear is certainly increasing but the prices are under pressure due to customer resistance and high degree of competition. The fact is both external environments affect the competitive advantage of companies and therefore the PEST analysis helps the management to deal with situations and formulate strategic policies to overcome, circumvent or even take advantage of these factors. PEST stands for Political, Economical, Socio-Cultural and Technological factors. As they are all external, the company can at best try to strategize to tune itself in accordance with them for survival, sustenance and indeed for growth. Economical factors cover Development of relevant economic indicators, Business cycles, Unemployment and Industry structures. The economic indicators show growth in the UK economy with controlled inflation at around 3%. The economy has experienced an unusually long period