John Lewis is obviously a well-established company that has
deep-rooted morals. The partnership consists of over 84,700 Partners (including
both John Lewis and Waitrose). The vision of John Lewis’s business is driven by
its people and its principles. This way of business has obviously seemed to be
a success so far in catering to the needs of multiple customers. It was
reported today in Marketing Magazine that John Lewis is reportedly considering a
move into the lucrative mobile phone market as part of its ‘strategy of using
trust in the brand to diversify its product range,’(Chapman, 2013).
John Lewis is said to be experiencing
booming sales of consumer electronics at present and has stated that a change
into the mobile phone sector is "definitely on the radar". Chapman
(2013) states how Last year, the marketing director Craig Inglis told Marketing
that John Lewis was careful not to "go
into some random other diversifying product area and try and over-leverage the
brand", and that "there are
so many areas we could potentially go into…
..and in electricals, people would
want more than just the electrical products."
This news of John Lewis pondering on the thought of entering
this market has come just as they have now extended its Broadband offer by
offering a deal that would mean that customers would not have to pay for the
first 6 months if they were to purchase any ‘web-enabled product.’ An astounding
fact is that John Lewis claims that it currently sells five tablets every
minute – this meaning that a large number of customers would be exposed to its
broadband offer.
In an analysis of this potential move from John Lewis,
personally, it would seem that it would be of a high risk due to the fact that
the mobile phone market is hugely competitive with a huge amount of
competitors, (some being extremely strong). Furthermore, the initial research
stage that is undertaken by consumers in deciding whether to purchase a phone
is usually done by assessing the prices of the different phone retailers. This
is due to the fact that most mobile phone contracts are either 18 or 24 months
long, so every pound counts; this brings me to the case that John Lewis’ electrical
products (granted because of its high level of customer service and product
excellence) are regarded as being fairly high in price, so if these prices were
to remain, then it would be very hard to justify why another ‘cheap’ retailer
will sell it for half the price.
However, if John Lewis will continue to offer the excellent
and helpful customer service with mobile phones then it could well be
justified. Furthermore Chapman (2013) quotes Adam Brown, buyer of tablets and
telecoms at John Lewis, in saying: "Consumer
demand for internet enabled technology has never been as high – 80% of the
technology products we sell are internet-ready. We know that many consumers are left disappointed by the level of
customer service they get from their broadband provider and frustrated at
misleading and complicated offers, so we're determined to bring John Lewis
levels of excellence, simplicity and value to the broadband market.” In
conclusion, the mobile phone market is as noted, very lucrative, but John Lewis
is a company that has a very positive reputation that would most probably
generate a lot of interest before even starting to enter the market.
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