Marketing Research On Five Year Strategic For Sports Direct (Research Paper Sample)

FIVE YEAR STRATEGIC FOR SPORTS DIRECT
by (Name)
Course
Tutor
University
City and State
Date
Five Year Strategic For Sports Direct
Introduction
Sports Direct International plc is, with 17,207 employees one of the largest sports retailer group in the United Kingdom, operating more than 660 stores worldwide. The company is publicly listed on the London Stock Exchange denoted with the ticker symbol SPD and was founded in 1982 by entrepreneur Mike Ashley; the current majority shareholder who as of today holds 61.7 percent of the outstanding shares.
Mike Ashley has been running Sports Direct business since 1982 just like a Victorian house. The business was started as a small enterprise and has gradually grown into a big chain company with 670 stores (Datamonitor (firm), 2000). However, the company is in the news for its lousy HR practices and policies. The company is neglecting its employee's, mainly temporary staff. It is highly being criticized for its working practices because of the minimum wages paid to the temporary workers. The six strikes policy of the company is brutal in the much ways-instant dismissal of temporary employees, poor grievance, and disciplinary procedure. There is a big dispute regarding zero- hour's contract and permanent contract employees because of the difference is shown by the management. There is no signed contract between the employment agencies and Sports Direct. Although the company is known as a high street retailer company, it is closer to a Victorian house because of the working practices followed by it. The company looked its employees as commodities in its stores rather than humans with rights, aspirations, and responsibilities (Farrell, 2018). With six-strikes-and-you’re-out policy, the company is sacking its employees with six black marks. For all these practices, the company is being highly criticized forcing the government to pass some serious legislation. Despite all these challenges, the company has continued to grow and still retain the number one spot when it comes to retail of sportswear. However, there are still some improvements that can be made to ensure that more success is realized. This paper will give out a five-year strategic plan for sports direct international plc highlighting the company’s aims or Objectives, explaining the cooperate and operational strategies and finally use the Gantt chart to show when things will happen over the next five years and key milestones.
Key findings from situational analysis
Sports direct international plc is the number one sports retailer in the entire United Kingdom, and it also has an online selling platform for the international market. The company has continued to enjoy continuous since 1982 making it a trustable brand. It has also tied up with legendary brands such as Reebok, Adidas, and Nike among others. The company also has a strong online presence making a significant portion of their sales using this platform. However, the sports industry market is quite competitive resulting in slow growth. There are however many opportunities that can be utilized to maximize profit. The rising cost of the raw materials a challenge that the company face and also the Tax changing policy that all affects functioning.
Company’s Aims and Objectives
Mission: the group's mission is to be a leading lifestyle and sports retailer in the world as well as offer them sustainable growth to our shareholders from a medium to long-term through offering our customers an incomparable range of high-quality products that lead in the market.
Sports Direct Objectives
* To make identification through acquisitions of our brand and property enhancement. Through this, they aim at gaining the attention of our customers and selling the best of the products to them. Boosting property will enable improvement of the brand's name and the group's name despite criticism that may be there. Sports direct is a major company in the world that deals with sportswear in retail needs to work on its terms and conditions that it uses on selling its products and maintaining the name high and their customers.
* Protecting the existing products and facilities. They seek to protect sports, recreational buildings and the brand of sportswear used in the fields. They expect to see our sportsmen and women in the best wear possible to maintain even their confidence as they play. Having several fields to maintain too and protect together with some recreational buildings they expect to retain them or enhance them as part of a redevelopment unless there is a demonstration of an assessment indicating an excess provision and excess to requirements or clear evidence that supports relocation. Also, they aim at giving the customers what they are used to and not lowering the brand quality and by maintaining the level of marketing that they offer. Reducing it would lead to reduced number of customers who trust the company since they will have a fear of coming and miss the product they required (Hoye, Smith, Nicholson, and Stewart, 2015).
* Enhancing accessibility and quality of our products. They have always wished to see the best use made of the existing sports products that they produce via improving the quality of the products their accessibility to our customers and the marketing part. We have developed a way to improve on the marketing and accessibility of this product that they are now aiming at offering free deliveries for those who buy large quantities of the products and opening some sub-branches in a different location. Aiming at school sites to advertise on our products is one way that they can maneuver through to reach our customers and enable them to get the products easily (Shank, and Lyberger, 2014).
* Provision of new brands of sportswear to meet the customer's demand. The customers have been suggesting that they sell even the unknown brands from different companies that are also pocket-friendly. Sports direct aims at coming meeting the demands of our customers and maintaining their trust in our company that they can provide all things that favor them. They also look forward to expanding or increasing the numbers of the existing brands to continue meeting the older demands. That will increase the number of customers coming in, and the name of the company will continue trending (Shank, and Lyberger, 2014).
STRATEGIES
To achieve the above strategies, it is important to have proper strategies that will enable the company to progress even further. Strategies can be either cooperative strategies or operational strategies. Cooperative strategies are concerned with how big firms such as Sports direct international plc create value for various businesses. On the other hand, operational strategies are the methods that Sports direct international plc will use to attain the objectives it has for the next five years. The following are some of the strategies that the company will use to achieve the desired objectives and aims.
Creating a good reputation
Sports Direct has been under increasing pressure from the British press after it was unveiled that employees were subject to very poor working conditions in the company owned warehouses (Alberts, R.W., 2015, p. 180). Additionally, they have been caught underpaying staff against the national minimum wage rate of £6.70, by 20 pence per hour and forcing them to go through searches at the end of each shift, including underwear checks. Furthermore, a BBC investigation revealed that ambulances were called more than 70 times over a two year period to the headquarters, as staff became concerned that if they rang in sick, they risked losing their jobs. Therefore, it is the responsibility of the company to react and change this forever.
In the next five years, the company should aim at treating people with utmost respect and dignity. Also, the company opts to ensure that all the workers regardless of their impact have the opportunity to be empowered, motivated, stimulated and inspired. It is important for the company to realize that it takes the effort of every single member to drive performance or make a difference. Therefore, there should a well laid out procedure to make sure that all employees are rewarded appropriately to motivate them to join the company's future goals.
Furthermore, a group approach should be made to ensure there is continuous development of employees. When employees have a continuous development, they are able to realize their full potential and in the process drive an institution towards its main objectives (n.d.). Additionally communication between the management and its employees should be enhanced. Proper communications should happen through briefing the managers directly, training programs, groups staff portal, emails, letters, the intranet and through staff app. Also, the HR department should be given more duties of ensuring that all the claims and welfare of employees are met. In five years, the company’s employees should have the best health care and compensation benefits in the country. This will be done by improving the welfare budget to cater for the employees just like a 21st-century business should do.
Market Enlargement
The strategy of sports direct is mostly to invest in the people and the key third-party partners so that they may elevate their retail proposition to get new levels of merit across the multi-sport, multi-brand offering to our customers. However, the main strategies that sport directly have for the better of their company are:
* Local Sports Retail
Sports direct aims at offering a full multi-channel retail method across multiple fascias. They also have an aim of supplying their local customers with the broadest collection of leisure and sports equipment and attire from the leading brands in the world. The company also aims at operating on fitness gyms that will combine with ...