ASSIGNMENT BRIEF BUS4A1 Marketing Essentials

Introduction
The concept of “marketing essentials” is defined by the key practices and activities required for
conducting successful marketing for the organisations in terms of aligning customers’ needs.
Marketing strategies within an organisation rely on strategic incorporation between business
promotions and customers’ needs, aspirations along with key pain points. Regarding this factor,
this business report aims to identify and introduce the target customer segment for “Primark”,
headquartered in Ireland, by creating a visual persona. Key artefacts like customers’
demographics, geographic and behavioural characteristics are being aligned with the customer
persona for the selected target customer base, Gen Z customers for fashion products. Thus, the
report includes a detailed evaluation of the consumer persona regarding their needs and
aspirations to be addressed by Primark's marketing strategies.

Business overview of Primark UK

The selected organisation, Primark is a global fashion retailing organisation that is based in
Dublin, Ireland. Primark offers a range of fashion, beauty and home products for male, female
along with kids (Primark, 2025). This organisation has a distinct brand profile within the clothing
market of the UK.
 Figure 1: Brand awareness of Primark within the UK
(Source: Statista, 2024)
As seen in the above figure, Primark has a significant degree of brand awareness including
popularity and usage amidst the British customers. Amidst the UK customers, Primark has 94%
of brand awareness, 45% of popularity and 38% of usage (Statista, 2024). This organisation has
an international base of customers through its extensive range of clothing and fashion products.
Across more than 17 countries, Primark has almost 80000 skilled colleagues by delivering
designed clothing products (Corporate.primark, 2024). In terms of financial performance,
Primark has a growing overview in respect to the global fashion market. For instance, Primark
has more than 9.45 billion GBP of global revenue as of FY2024 (Statista, 2024). Thus, Primark
facilitates value-driven products in terms of addressing the needs of the target customers.

Identifying key target customer segment for Primark UK

The target customer segment for Primark can be Gen Z fashion-forward individuals within the
market of the UK. Mainly, the uncertainties and changes in customers’ perspectives have helped
to identify the target market in terms of performing marketing practices. For instance, the sales
of Primark within the post-pandemic situation have decreased by 6%, as the customers have been
facing economic worries including unemployment and less spending (Theguardian, 2025).
Regarding this factor, the demographic segmentation for the target customer can be Gen Z and
behavioural segmentation can be fashion-consciousness. For example, almost 16% share within
the UK’s fashion customers has been possessed by Gen Z consumers (Statista, 2024). Thus, Gen
Z fashion conscious customers can be a suitable target customer segment for Primark UK.
Visual persona

Demographics Profile and story

Age: 23 Educational
Gender: Female qualification: Completed
Income: £10,000 /Month masters in business
Occupation: Intern administration
Location: London, UK Professional experience:
Relationship status: Single Intern at an IT office
Sia Macroni Behaviours: Using luxury Habits: Using trending
fashion and beauty products fashion items and
to live a fashion-forward designed clothes
lifestyle Activities: Changing
fashion garments on a
daily basis

Pain points Goals Motivation

Customer experience To wear fashionable Sustainable fashion line
Limited social media presence of products and trendy beauty Price sensitivity
luxury fashion brands items Product quality
Limited range of fashionable To purchase latest beauty
items products in a seamless
manner

Table 1: Buyer Persona

(Source: Created by author)
Evaluation of the persona
Problems Identified in the persona
Customer-centricity has emerged as one of the most important business strategies incorporated
by an organisation to maintain a competitive footprint. As opined by Elgarhy and Mohamed
(2023), customer-centric business paradigm becomes important in terms of enhancing the
standards of customer loyalty through the channels of services marketing. The Theory of Planned
Behaviour (TPB) has recognised the importance of subjective norm in reshaping the foundation
of customer experience, which leads towards a positive attitude towards a certain product
(Abbasi et al. 2021). TPB addressed the importance of behavioural beliefs, normative beliefs,
and control beliefs in enhancing the existing standards of customer intention in terms of
consuming and purchasing a certain product (Abbasi et al. 2021). Primark UK, on the other
hand, has experienced a sudden shock of 2% in total sales due imbalance marketing activities. In
line with TPB, this unstructured marketing activity becomes crucial for the organisation in
disrupting the normalcy of customer experience related to the existing product line. Therefore,
customer experience can be regarded as one of the most influential risks identified in the
persona.

Customer experience can be recognised as the mediator in accelerating financial performance of

an organisation. Bhattacharya et al. (2021) have supported the previous argument by indicating
the implications of customer experience in boosting “utility profit” of an organisation in relation
to the relationship between brands and customers. The persona has described limited social
media presence of Primark UK as an influential parameter in harming customer experience. The
proliferation of new technologies including artificial intelligence, cloud computing and Internet
of Things has changed the traditional lines of relationship marketing in the global landscape.
Dynamic Capability Theory (DCT) has indicated the importance of “information exchange” in
terms of creating structured business values for an organisation (Lim and Rasul, 2022). In line
with the theorisation of DCT, social media becomes one of the most important platforms of
relationship marketing in relation to information exchange. Recent trends figured out a drastic
downfall of the website traffic of Primark UK in between November 2024 and January 2025
(SimilarWeb, 2025). In line with DCT, this downfall can be interpreted as the outcome of limited
social media presence of Primark UK in the UK. Thus, limited social media presence can be
recognised as a potential threat for Primark UK observed in the persona.

Benefits sought by the identified customers

Figure 4: Spike in Consumer Price Index (CPI) in the UK

(Source: Devine et al. 2024)
Sustainable fashion has been identified as one of the benefits of customer experience for Primark
UK in the persona along with price sensitivity and product quality. The above figure has
illustrated a drastic change in the CPI in the UK to reach 20.8% in May, 2024 (Devine et al.
2024). Considering this impulse of CPI, sustainable fashion becomes one of the most important
dynamics of the British fashion market. A 2024 Mintel report has indicated that 57% of the
British customers have recognised sustainability as an important factor for fashion (Mintel,
2024). Primark UK, has incorporated a “durable framework” for enhancing the sustainability
footprint by optimising “washing intervals” related to foundational, progressive and aspirational
durability of the products (Primark, 2024). In the context of the previous Mintel report,
sustainability becomes the most important benefit sought by the target customers of Primark UK.
Moreover, the adjusted operating profit of Primark UK has encountered a spike of 51% from
£735m in 2023 to £1.1bn in 2024 (Yahoo Finance, 2024). The previous insights indicate a strong
competitive footprint of Primark UK, developed through sustainability in the UK. Thus,
sustainability can be outlined as an important benefit of Primark UK in relation to price
sensitivity and product quality

Feasible solutions provided by Primark UK

Solution 1: Customer engagement and profitability
Primark UK has focused to expand the eCommerce footprint in terms of improving customer
engagement. Customers are crucial for companies as a lower customer number also reduces the
profit scope. Afolabi et al. (2023) argued, customer engagement is essential for the organizations
as it shows an intention among the customers for repeat purchase. In this particular senior, a
company with high engagement level among consumers has a high scope for profit as it shows
high intention towards purchase behaviour. As mentioned by Fan et al. (2022) eCommerce
penetration plays an important role in enhancing customer engagement in relation to structured
customer preferences of products. Consequently, the high engagement level can increase the
scope for repurchase for Primark UK which fosters increased profitability. Hence, it can be
argued, the increase in customer engagement is essential for Primark UK as it increases
profitability in the UK market.
Solution 2: Omnichannel and customer engagement
Primark UK has incorporated omni-channel marketing in terms of improving the standards of
customer experience. Lee et al. (2021) have described omnichannel strategies as useful for
companies as it enables company leaders to use both offline and online channels. In other words,
omnichannel strategies are useful for firms and customers at the same time as it provides scope
to use online channels such as official websites or offline stores to purchase products. Primark
UK has collaborated with “EPAM Continuum” in 2022 to build a structured omnichannel
marketing to improve customer experience (EPAM, 2025). Customers have the option to view
products in online channels and make purchases from offline stores. Similarly, Primark UK can
use online channels to provide descriptions about products or services and also provide scope for
product comparison for consumers. In other words, consumers can select products as per
demands in the incline stores and pick up the product from nearby offline stores of customer
engagement for Primark UK, which accelerates financial growth in terms of profitability.
Conclusion
The main idea of this report is to evaluate key factors related to the operational paradigm of
Primark UK in relation to customer experience in the UK. More precisely, the customer persona
has evaluated sustainable fashion, price sensitivity and product quality as three benefits sought
by the customers in the UK. However, the negative implications of limited ecommerce presence
of Primark UK have been interpreted as a threat for Primark UK in encountering downfall in the
business performance. Based on these aforementioned insights, omnichannel marketing and
eCommerce have been interpreted as feasible solutions provided by Primark UK in terms of
enhancing customer engagement and profitability in the UK market.
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