Employability Skills Assignment Example | Topics and Well Written Essays - 3000 words

Employability Skills - Assignment Example The major target market for Next is the 18-35 year old consumers and the firm’s major successes are due to offering lower- and mid-priced merchandise that make its fashion offerings desirable to the lower-resource consumer. Many of the firm’s sales come from its online website, referred to as NextDirect, which contributes to over 40 percent of the company’s total revenues (Next 2012). Why the business is so successful is that the company has established a low cost pricing strategy and the capability of procuring trendy and chic fashion merchandise that is relevant to the contemporary, younger consumer with a need for fast, mod fashion at an affordable price. Next competes with major retail companies such as Zara, Matalan, Debenhams and even New Look (to suggest only a few competitors). Internally, Next operates under a functional organisational structure where each division associated with the value chain is grouped and maintains reporting structures according to the purpose of the division. The company has a marketing department, a procurement division, a sales department, and customer service division (to name only a few) with each being responsible for their own activities. This is one of the disadvantages of Next’s internal structure as it does not provide many opportunities for cross-collaboration and inter-group consultations. Having had a lower-level management position in the women’s clothing department at Next, I gained valuable insight into what responsibilities and performance targets required development for future employment. At Next, there was little emphasis on teamwork throughout the entire business model and, therefore, I was not given many opportunities for networking, collaboration, or working within a group environment to solve organisational problems. Stover (2004) asserts that in order for a business to generate more valuable solutions to problems and innovate, it is critical to interact with