Major retailer Marks and Spencer is embarking on a £250 million ecommerce drive in order to turn the brand into a leader in the sector, reports marketingmagazine.co.uk.
The firm is pouring £150 million into its new ecommerce site and £100 million into technological innovations in-store in order to turn the retailer into a European ecommerce powerhouse.
Overall, the retailer’s executive director of multi-channel ecommerce Laura Wade-Gray wants to launch a transaction site where users from 10 countries can make an online payment to receive products from the store.
Wade-Gray, who joined last year after being ecommerce director at Tesco, believes that Marks and Spencer is putting ‘real money’ behind the initiative – more so than Tesco, cites lakestarmedia.com.
According to Wade-Grey, the new site will be available in 2014 and will no longer be based on an Amazon platform.
“We’ve been renting the car rather than owning it. Amazon fundamentally sells everything as if it is a book and Amazon is pure-play only, meaning [the M&S ecommerce site] has tortured the system,” she said.
Meanwhile, the firm is also rolling out wi-fi services in all of its main stores before the end of this year and plans to introduce more ‘browse and collect’ computer terminals.
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