Debenhams Marketing Strategy & Marketing Mix (4Ps)

Marketing Strategy of Debenhams analyzes the brand with the marketing mix framework which covers the 4Ps (Product, Price, Place, Promotion). These business strategies, based on Debenhams marketing mix, help the brand succeed in the market. Let us start the Debenhams Marketing Strategy & Mix to understand its product, pricing, advertising & distribution strategies:

Debenhams Product Strategy:

The product strategy and mix in Debenhams marketing strategy can be explained as follows:

Debenhams is one of the leading multi brand retail stores based out of UK. Debenhams offers its own brand as well as international brands. The line of product offerings in its marketing mix is categorised as:

• Men’s Clothing and Footwear

• Women’s Clothing and Footwear

• Home products like Kitchen and Cookware, Small Appliances such as Kettle, dinning furniture, glassware, coffee pots, linens and mats, soft furnishing, bedding, bathroom accessories and towels, Home décor and accessories, Lighting, Garden and outdoors accessories and luggage

• Beauty care like haircare, body care and perfumes

• Furniture for home and garden

• Kid’s clothing ranging from school dresses, boy’s, and girl’s casuals to baby clothes

• Gifts & Toys

• Electrical Appliances for households, beauty and health, audio, vision and technology

• Holiday shopping ranging from clothing to luggage

• Wedding wears, shoes, and bags

Debenhams also offers a range of services like restaurant and cafes, hairdressing and beauty treatment, celebration gift services and personal shopping assistance. Debenhams invests on design for Debenhams branded product through its exclusive designers like Laura Oaks, Andrew Fionda and several others.

These designer products are exclusively available on Debenhams. Debenhams’ website provides a range of product and services to its online customers.

Image: geograph

Debenhams Price/Pricing Strategy:

Below is the pricing strategy in Debenhams marketing strategy:

Debenhams prices its product competitively because of volatile market conditions and disruption caused by online shopping sites which eating away sales from brick and mortar retail stores. Debenhams has been giving long duration discounts for clearance sales of its stock, however such discounts have negative impact on company’s bottom-line and due to investors pressure, it has decided to cut down on deep discount offers and duration.

Debenhams direct channel which is online retail also offers deep discount for extended period to increase the volume of sales. On fresh arrivals and fashion clothing it charges slight premium than the market base price due to its exclusive designer’s stock.

Debenhams Place & Distribution Strategy:

Following is the distribution strategy in the Debenhams marketing mix:

Debenhams has over 240 departmental stores spread across 27 countries. The company has grown through the strategy of acquisition and thus increased its number of stores by acquiring smaller retail outlets. Company’s distribution channel has two segment UK and International. Ireland and UK is part of UK segment. Debenhams international channel has 67 stores in 22 countries. Debenhams follows a strategy of local adaptation in its marketing mix so its stores are designed and products are stocked according to the local preferences and cultural requirements. However, a considerable effort is made to ensure that these stores immediately reflect Debenhams brand. Company’s strategy is work with small number of regional franchise partners.

Debenhams is present over mobile app and online retail under its Debenhams direct channel.

Debenhams Promotion & Advertising Strategy:

The promotional and advertising strategy in the Debenhams marketing strategy is as follows:

Debenhams utilizes 360-degree marketing for promotion. It invests on TV commercials, digital media marketing using YouTube and Pinterest. The company is also present on social media platforms like Facebook, Twitter, Google plus and Instagram. Debenhams has restructured its promotion strategy after succumbing lower profits with the previous strategy. Under its new strategy, the company has decided to have a more clearly defined sales period and fewer days of promotion. Debenhams’ promotion is focused on customer mindset and not on what competitors are doing. The company has been focused on providing premium delivery options which include next day click and collect and increasing hours of operation under this program. The company has also increased the space allocated for click and collect. Debenhams has used TV sponsorship to increase the customer recall. It is involved in CSR activities such as charity works to improve the community relationship.

Since this is a service marketing brand, here are the other three Ps to make it the 7Ps marketing mix of Debenhams.

People:

Debenhams has more than 27000 employees globally. The company gives attention to employee engagement and its HR team works behind the projects to understand what engages its employee more and see which are areas where company is doing well and we they need to improve. In the process, they also look at what are key drivers for each of the geography and demography. Debenhams strive to promote marketing culture in the company for the company provides a card to each of its employee with company’s mission statement. Debenhams is customer centric and tries hard to attract, retain, and train high calibre people who have customer orientation.

Physical Evidence:

Debenhams has been a regular feature on Lorraine Kelly’s High Street Fashion Award and has won several of them under various categories. Debenhams is present in about 27 countries covering three continents. The company has more than 20 exclusive designer contracts. Debenhams is the leading retail chain in UK and has a long history of existence which is an evidence of its success.

Process:

Debenhams s only engages with the suppliers who meet the minimum standards, however the suppliers are encouraged to exceed the minimum standards. Debenhams does not allow subcontracting as it means manufacturing of products in an unknown unapproved factory location. The company is investing on online platform as this has been disruptive change in the retail segment and has shifted a huge consumer base from brick and mortar retail chains. The company has vowed to make its mobile app platform more attractive to consumer. This all have forced Debenhams to improve its IT infrastructure. The company is decluttering its stores by reducing the lines of sales. It is also switching its backroom staffs into consumer facing role in an attempt of improving customer engagement with the brand. Hence, this gives an overview of Debenhams marketing mix.

About Debenhams:

Debenhams is a British multinational retail company engaged in multi-channel business. The company historically operated in departmental stores format but has also ventured into online sales. Debenhams was founded in 1778 by William Clarke and it was renamed to Clark & Debenhams in 1813 when William Debenhams joined the company as a partner. The company was incorporated as Debenhams Limited in 1905. Its current headquarters is in London, United Kingdom. The revenue of the company in 2016 was 2.343 billion GBP of which 80% came from United Kingdom’s sales. Debenhams operates in fashion retail industry which is a cyclical industry.

This industry faces volatility in demand pattern due to several macroeconomic factors like Brexit and shift of consumer spending towards holidays, cars, and foods from clothing. Debenhams has responded to this change and is focussing on providing better experience to consumer by investing on its food business.

This article has been researched & authored by the Content & Research Team. It has been reviewed & published by the MBA Skool Team. The content on MBA Skool has been created for educational & academic purpose only.

Browse marketing strategy and 4Ps analysis of more brands similar to Debenhams. The Marketing Strategy & Mix section covers 4Ps and 7Ps of more than 800 brands in 2 categories.

Continue Reading: