Reference no: EM132161118

M&S is one of the UK’s leading retailers, selling clothing, food and homeware. In what have been troubled times for the UK high street, the retailer took what appeared to many in the media to be two foolhardy decisions. First, it was determined to maintain its price premium when competitors were slashing their prices to the bone to survive. Secondly, it decided to continue to invest in brand-building advertising to justify that premium. Even though newspapers were full of stories of falling sales and declining share prices and consumer confidence plummeted, measures of M&S’s ‘brand momentum’ remained consistently positive — despite premium pricing in a discounting world — and were shown to be directly influenced and maintained by advertising. As 2009 progressed, so M&S’s sales performance and share price began steadily to improve. It was able to resist the margin-pinching ‘race to the bottom’ in which many of its competitors were engaged and which they would find very hard to reverse once the recovery set in. By the last quarter of 2009, M&S had achieved its strongest performance for two years, with shares outperforming the DJ Stoxx European Retail Index by 46%. Then, write a paper that responds to the following questions: Given the recent market share problems and competition facing M&S, what are the two highest risks with embarking on a voluntary program of social responsibility at this time? What are your top two recommendations for cultivating engagement with the program among employees and the local community?