Marks & Spencer launches first quarterly Family Matters Index
Marks & Spencer has launched a new report called the Family Matters Index to track how families’ feelings and priorities are changing.
The retailer said the move is part of its wider business transformation and will help it remain close to what matters most to families across the country.
Working in partnership with Yonder Consulting, M&S conducted eight focus groups with UK adults across a wide range of ages and family backgrounds to explore what family means, the feelings and values that people associate with families, and the range of hopes, fears, issues and priorities that relate to family life in the UK today.
The outputs of the qualitative study informed a questionnaire that was then delivered to 10,000 adults across a representative spread of the UK population.
The study found that half the country thinks that the make-up of families is unrecognisable compared with twenty years ago and that most people think of family as defined not by blood relationships but by “who you feel close to”. In addition, it found that three times as many people feel closer to their family now than they did twelve months ago and that two thirds of people have resolved to do more activities as a family as Covid-19 restrictions ease.
To be published each quarter, future Family Matters reports will delve into different aspects of family life and track how the confidence and resilience of families changes over time.
M&S director of communication Victoria McKenzie-Gould said: “We’ve launched the new Family Matters Index to obtain and share a deeper understanding of how the UK’s families are feeling and what they’re doing. Through the quarterly index and partnering with the expert team at Yonder, we want to stay close to families across the UK so we can deliver our promise of trusted value on the things that matter to them most.”
