egments and that is that you get stuck in the middle, not being able to sell either particularly cheap nor expensive goods and not being able to define a particular market in which to sell them to. As a result this may lead to a severe loss of sales hence there is no particular market segment on which to take control of.

5. Strategic Fit

John Lewis as a partnership has a good level of strategic fit simply because of the vast amounts of business opportunities it employs. For example taking the Waitrose arm of the company, strategically thinking the business could make a sideways move (there is a proper name for this, where the sideways move is taking over the supplier etc) and start taking over their suppliers or even there producers. By doing so this may reduce costs to the company which in turn may lead to higher profit margins. On the other hand however John Lewis may try to launch themselves into a new potential market such as that of personal finance. The company attracts those with a higher income so it makes sense to try and offer them more value added products with what they buy, such as product insurance for example. This is more prevalent now John Lewis has started selling laptops and desktop computers as they can then offer a whole range of extras from carry cases to software right through to insurance. Again though after offering this the company may choose to take a sideways move and take over the suppliers of these goods or even start to produce versions of there own. Depending on what the partnership decides to do however can have serious effects upon, for example if the decision is made to move both sideways and forwards ( Find the correct term for this as it sounds crap) then it may cost an awful lot of money, yet the partnership hasn’t actually strategically fit anywhere as it is trying to do everything at once. Further more, depending on where the movement happens and into what sector could have serious lasting damaging upon the one key intangible asset of the business…its brand name.

6. Recommendations

As a direct result of this report, it can be seen that there is definite room for expansion from John Lewis. Our recommendation is to look into the personal finance market. With the current economic climate, a new face on the market may be exactly what the customer is after. It could be argued that there is some level of saturation but consumers are always looking for the best deal and a company that installs pride and trust. John Lewis can do this by using its brand name as a sign of quality. As a business it has all ready introduced the Joh