The Body Shop: Company Analysis - Essay Example

The shop was selling a variety of lotions and naturally scented soaps. The business mainly employed natural ingredients and provided immigrant women with employment and training opportunities. Inspired from the environment friendly operations of this cosmetics shop, Anita Roddick commenced her own cosmetics shop in 1976 in the United Kingdom. The business venture was progressively grown, and listed on London Stock Exchange on the strength of the firm’s high stock prices. Roddick acquired naming rights from the Californian cosmetics shop and named her business The Body Shop in 1987.

As Chesters 92011) reports, the company has been experiencing dramatic growth rate since its launch in the UK in 1976. The organisation accepted the ?652.3 million takeover proposal put forward by the L‘Or’eal in 2006. Currently, The Body Shop is a subsidiary of the L‘Or’eal corporate group (ibid). Marketing While evaluating the marketing aspects of The Body Shop, it seems that the firm has created good brand image without using conventional advertising tools. Some unique brand values assisted the company to create brand image.

It seems that the brand focus more on ethical practices and environmentally sustainable operations. To illustrate, the company uses only natural ingredients and it never tests its products on animals. . It does not depend on expensive advertising techniques; instead, the company tries to provide its customers with superior shopping experience and thereby promote mouth advertising. Strategy Undoubtedly, The Body Shop’s business strategy is based on corporate social responsibility (CSR), because the management believes that this policy would assist the company to cut costs in addition to creating sales.

The firm gives specific emphasis to public relations. According to a report by Bethell, in order to confront with stiff market competition and distinguish The Body Shop products from competitor products, the firm has slightly deviated from its conventional public relations strategy. As part of this, the company appointed a public relations company in 1994 to fuel its promotional efforts (ibid). Many people hold the view that The Body Shop does not have clear business goals, objectives, and business level strategies.

In fact, the company focuses on a product differentiation generic strategy so as to gain potential advantages over its competitors. Another major business level strategy of the organisation is that it maintains its own stores whereas other cosmetics marketers sell their products through shopping malls. The Body Shop’s social activitism approach assists the company to attract new customer groups and retain existing customers. In short, it can be stated that the firm’s business strategy aims at securing customer loyalty rather than achieving more number of customers.

Competition Unlike other cosmetic marketers, The Body Shop does not try to dominate the market by heavily advertising expensive ingredients and artificially created beauty. In