Thursday, 18 April 2013

Can John Lewis Sell Mobile Phones?


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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