MORRISON MARKETING

Morrison Marketing

Morrison Marketing

Morrison Supermarket

Morrison Supermarkets plc (LSE: MRW) is the fourth largest chain of supermarkets in the United Kingdom. The company is usually referred to and is branded as Morrisons, and it is part of the FTSE 100 Index of companies. Morrisons' market share as of December 2008 is at 11.8%, making it the smallest of the "Big Four" supermarkets, behind Tesco (30.9%), Asda (16.8%) and Sainsbury's (16%), but far ahead of the fifth place Co-operative Group, which has a share of 4.4%.

Originally founded by William Morrison in 1899, it started out as an egg and butter stall in Rawson Market, Bradford, England. Until 2004, Morrisons store locations were primarily focused in the north of England, but with the takeover of Safeway in that year, the company now has a total of 417 superstores across the UK. The Morrison family currently owns around 15.5% of the company (Burt and Sparks, 2003, 237-254).

Introduction

The overall emphasis on non-price characteristics and the relative importance of the different characteristics in UK provides opportunities for retail managers to differentiate their firms away from pure price competition. These consumer responses have been important in shaping the marketing strategies of the food retail Morrison Supermarket and have allowed a range of strategies which range from an emphasis on discount prices, to pure quality and service considerations.

These strategic directions are strongly supported by promotional programmes which emphasise the characteristics of the stores rather than the products which are stocked. In Hughes (2002) information is presented which shows that food retailing Morrison Supermarket stores are ranked number one, nine and eleven in terms of their advertising expenditure amongst all stores, which demonstrates the overall importance of promotional activities to this Morrison Supermarket (Wrigley and 2002). These activities allow retailers to develop their own 'brands' or images which are independent of the brands that are sold, and are likely to be the source of control which food retailers are reputed to exert over manufacturers.

Answer 1

Positioning of retail Morrison Supermarket

In recent years food retail Morrison Supermarket had pursued strategies which have provided consumers with increasingly diversified opportunities for purchasing food. The discussion above has shown that these developments have been made possible by the wide range and changing nature of consumer requirements. Morrison Supermarket has identified the possibilities and has developed appropriate strategies to compete in the market place.

The concept of competitive strategies is clearly developed by Porter (1980) and has become an accepted approach for analysing the manner in which Morrison Supermarket within an industry competes to attain market share or enhanced performance. Porter identified a number of generic strategies such as a focus strategy, a differentiation strategy, or a low cost strategy which were argued to be the most likely to be successful for a particular firm. Because this theory is developed as a general approach there is no reason why the generic strategies should not be applied to the food retail industry. One study which attempts to do this is the study by ...