Catshanghai

This Guardian article shows that Marks and Spencer’s have bounced back to profits of £1 billion last enjoyed in 1997. Success was attributed to new innovative marketing campaigns, a successful restrcutring under Stuart Rose and new look shops.

They had big problems as they failed to compete with cheaper more modern high street competitors leading to falling sales, a plummeting share price and years of instability.
See http://www.guardian.co.uk/marks/story/0,,1752140,00.html

When I went back to the UK in the summer, I noticed the shops were playing Latin music, had more colour than I remember and mixed up reasonably everyday commodity items (t-shirts, underwear) with more expensive garments.

I have just had a look at the M&S website (www.marksandspencer.com) to see if it deserves the useability award that webcredible (www.webcredible.co.uk) gave it. My first glance is that it is almost as good as Amazon’s e-commerce website. It’s simple, elegant and very easy to find what you want, although the button to add an item to a basket could be simplified slightly. You have to deliberately choose a quantity. I suppose that makes the transaction more deliberate. When I have digested the webcredible report and looked at the high street opposition, I will write a follow up.