Benefits are being offered to consumers primarily, and secondarily also to investors, from this year's splurge in the Marks & Spencer (M&S) share price, which amounted to 60 per cent. Consumers will enjoy quality goods and the aggressive marketing, which has long made M&S famous for dressing a waitress like a duchess.

Investors, if unable to speculate on M&S shares, which seem to be close to peaking, will take their chance on buying them for reasons that surpass economic consideration. M&S has established a deserved reputation of ethical trading for the investor with a conscience.

Higher quality goods

Higher quality goods than usual are being offered for sale at M&S stores in Malta. These are not just the goods sold in a conventional way, but also goods marketed as special offers.

The money that has poured this year into M&S shares makes it possible for the consumer who cannot afford an investment activity to participate in capitalism's bonanza.

It has been able to buy high quality French Chablis wine at special offer prices. Such M&S promotion trading is highly welcome to the common consumer, who will become necessarily motivated to enter into an M&S store looking for the high quality stock that is expected to move on to its shelves before Christmas in the wake of its already UK-tested new marketing strategy.

It is not every year that the share price of a company moves up by 60 per cent. If that company wants to keep up the momentum of its share price increase, it must necessarily translate a significant part of it into higher quality to customers.

M&S seems to be following just such a business strategy to the great benefit of the common consumer, who has always been their most important client.

I had personally forgotten about M&S for a long time, because to my mind, and to that of a large number of consumers prior to this year's M&S tiger leap in quality under the magic direction of Stuart Rose, its stores had come to resemble the great but uninspiring retail activity I experienced 15 months ago in St Petersburg.

Things were good over there but with not much of a touch of quality at an affordable price. I was awakened from my reluctance to enter an M&S shop by accident, and consequently the jolt I suffered made me regret my over-extended scepticism, and has motivated me to write this article.

I had followed Sir Philip Green's battle to take over M&S. As everybody knows, the brands he owns are present in Malta, but his name and ability are not all well known here. Although the battle did not end in an M&S takeover, it was certainly not evidence that M&S had anybody in a leadership position who could at the time equal the undoubted formidable entrepreneurial power of Sir Philip.

The decline of the ability of M&S to give its customers high quality goods at an affordable price seemed to be confirmed forever. Consumers could hardly benefit from an M&S share price that had for five unconscionable years between 1999 and 2004 averaged a miserable 300p.

A splurge in the M&S share price was hardly to be expected before the Rose management regime in M&S began to be effective; that is, not before November 2005. So there was no reason to believe that dramatic change could be observed on the M&S shelves.

At the time Sue Badevelde left and Mr Rose joined M&S, that is about mid-2004, the quality British press poured adulation on Sir Philip, as the saviour of the elegance of the common consumer in UK.

The inexorable decline of M&S's share price in the first years of this century lasted too long not to have a soporific effect on most analysts and not least on me. The resurgence of M&S owes most to the genius of Mr Rose.

It was the most important among all the factors that turned the fortunes of that one time beleaguered company. The whole M&S and Sir Philip saga has been overloaded with powerful egos, making share price predictions by analysts harder than usual.

The common consumer has had more influence on the share price fortunes of M&S than any city analysts, who tend as pointed out by Sir Richard Greenbury, an ex-M&S top man, to have wrong expectations, over-reacting like any stock exchange both on the heights and the downturns.

It is the common consumer who has always come to bring back to M&S the momentum of improvement. In the coming Christmas days, we shall see him profit from his loyalty.

Improved goods will probably come on the UK and Malta's M&S shelves as a reflection of the greater financial buoyancy of the company. It is these improved goods that are turning the tide for M&S, and which during these two and a half years have pushed it up the global leader board from 46th to 16th.

Ethical goods

Consumers are drawing benefit not only from improved goods at M&S, but also from goods that can be described as improved because they are highly ethical.

The investor with a conscience might decide to put his money into M&S shares even though a thoroughly reputable broker like Panmure would conclude that its share price is now close to peaking after it has had such a tremendous splurge this year.

The M&S reputation for promoting ethical goods was not acquired by accident. It is first of all the result of a highly ethical company strategy, which ensured that the benefits of the last blockbusting interim results were retained by M&S investors, who are very often the company's customers.

Nothing succeeds like success, for it feeds on itself. M&S is a high street retailer that uses its ethical credentials as a selling point. There is no posturing at M&S but there definitely is socially responsible marketing.

F&C Asset Management said: "The core issue is the quality of their supply chain audit processes. Even when things go wrong, the company is well equipped to deal with it. They have a really tight focus on sourcing food products to the highest standards.

"They have been innovative in fair trade coffee, organic cotton products and looking at reducing food miles. They also have an innovative way of supporting charities that engage the customer. It's philanthropy but making it work for you as a business."

Malta has hosted an M&S presence for almost two generations. The time has arrived for the consumer to take advantage of this connection and enjoy all the benefits that can come from it and not just the purely economic ones.

It goes without saying, however, that the biggest contribution one can make to economic progress is progress in an ethical way of doing things, especially those things that have to do with investment promotion.

This article is not intended as investment advice, but aims to help produce an investment culture. John Azzopardi Vella has promoted the Malta Development fund and advised S&P. He is currently re-search economist of DBR Investments Ltd, which is licensed by the MFSA. E-mail: johnazzopardivella@hotmail.com.

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