The Body Shop: Business Strategy Analysis Case Study

Introduction - Exploring The Body Shop's Key Business Functions

Within a company’s business, major activities are related to its internal finance functions, human resources management as well as marketing area. This study is also based on the cosmetic company the body shop is all of these attributes, which are directly related to their business. This study is divided into three major parts, which are respectively there marketing strategies, human resource strategies as well as their financial management. For understanding their marketing strategy, their 4p models are can be elaborated. Respectively for understanding the human resource strategy their recruitment strategies, their internal training strategy, as well as their development rewards, are can be discussed. As well as understanding their financial lambent strategy, their profit loss and balance sheets should be analyzed.

Information on the Marketing Strategies for the Body Shop

Figure 1: Body shop company products

The body shop is a British skincare company who are also producing cosmetics, which are distributed in several countries in the world. This company also produce more than 1000 products as well as they have over 3000 franchised and owned stores in 66 countries (Moeliono et al. 2020). They also own a famous Brazilian cosmetic company, which is called Nature, which is also owned by the famous company Loral. For a better understanding of their marketing strategy, the 4Ps model can be elaborated.

4P marketing mix

Information on the Human Resources (HR) strategies of the Body Shop

This human resource also provides employee safety as well as care about the employee's health and satisfaction issues. This position also creates satisfaction in the developing role of the company Body shop. This position also plays a major role in the company's work culture. The main director for human resources is Melanie Hidalgo who is working in the retail sector of the company (Vrontis et al. 2022). Sandy Troesh is the US corporate manager who is directly related to the engagement of the company.

This company used major five recruitment processes in their working area these create a major customer persona for the selective job role. They created data on the previous working experience of the employee as well as they create major assumptions on it. This company recruits these employees on a major volume basis as per the company's need. In addition, they recruit employees on a frequent basis. According to Abraham Maslow’s behaviors and human resources theory, all of the company hierarchy also belong to a pyramid structure (Stone et al. 2020). The bottom of the company also suffers from job security issues, which also put affect employee working engagement. The company Body shop also cares about this work engagement problem by examining the candidate persona during the recruitment process.

Not just the recruitment process this company also care about the beginning of the selected employee within the workplace. Mostly technical and environmental knowledge increasing is the primary goal of the training process in the company. With help of this training period, they put focus on job satisfaction and increase the moral value of all employees (Nisar et al. 2021). They also put focus on employee motivation within the workplace. This company also supports collaborative working practices within their work culture. As per the employee feedback, this company also cultivates openness within their work culture as well as they provide transparency in their workspace (Mousa, and Othman, 2020). Corporate hierarchy also cares about other employees' ideas in the workplace.

This company uses a major role in understanding the talent of the employee, which also produce major benefit on the increasing rate of the product. This also provides flexibility in the working options, and this whole system is committed to maintaining a healthy and well-working procedure in the company (Stahl et al. 2020). Apart from this, human resources of the company body shop also focus on the reward for the suitable employee on an annual basis.

Information on the financial management strategies of the Body Shop

This company also put major concentration on the new product launch as well as their market engagement. This also put a major concentration on the financial work, which also helps the company to engage with global customers. This company also tries to implement a mixture of two methods, which are T-account as well as the percentage-of-sales. This hybrid version also provides major profit in their business area. These hybrid versions also provide a major idea of their potential success and they provide ideas on particular investment ideas in their external business strategy. In this current time, major competition has arrived in the UK and the global market where lack of innovation gives major disability to business maximization.

use my discount

In this current time annual report of 2021, this company provides labor costs near about 78,900 dollars in the whole year which is more than 48.03% of all their sale. This company produces a gross profit of more than $65, 260, and 48 in comparison to their entire product (Mosteanu and Faccia, 2020). This company also produces more than 36% to 44%, which also generates gross profit margins of around 50% to 65%

Apart from the labor cost, they use cross promotion for selling their product to gain major engagement of their product. With compare to all over the world, the UK has major shoppers of body shops. Apart from UK Canada has 123 shops, the united state has 109 shops, and Germany has 85 shops.

Figure 2: Number of shops in selected two countries

In comparison to the annual growth of the company, it can be said that in the year 2020 thus company faced -8% growths all over the world (Panos, and Wilson, 2020). However, in 2021 thus company reduces the negative impact of their business. They produce +8% market engagements in the global market. This company measure more than 487 million British pounds in 2021 (Khan et al. 2022). This company achieve 164, 265, 00 which also achievement the final estimation of the company. Their total material cost is near about $10, 568, and 12 (thebodyshop, 2023). This company put $1589.00 in their advertisement section and $1134.41

Conclusion

This study is based on the major three business activity roles, HR, Marketing and finance functions that are based on the company body shop. This study also focuses on collaborative working practices in the work culture of their business area. This 4ps model also gives an idea of the product benefit with the price strategy and the distribution of their product. This study also elaborates that most of their customer belongs to the higher and middle class. This study also gives benefit for gaining knowledge of the financial management of the company body shop.

Reference

Chairunnisa, S.S., Fahmi, I. and Jahroh, S., 2019. How important is green marketing mix for consumer? lesson from The Body Shop. Jurnal Manajemen, 23(2), pp.321-337.

Fernandes, A.A.R., Astuti, A.B., Amaliana, L., Yanti, I., Arisoesilaningsih, E. and Isaskar, R., 2019, February. Smoothing Spline Nonparametric Path: Application for Green Product and Green Marketing Strategy towards Green Product Purchasing Intention. In IOP Conference Series: Earth and Environmental Science (Vol. 239, No. 1, p. 012018). IOP Publishing.

Imaningsih, E.S., 2019. the Effect of Green Perceived Quality, Green Perceived Risk on Green Satisfaction and Green Trust on the Body Shop Product. Journal of Marketing and Consumer Research, 55, pp.71-78.

Khan, S.A.R., Razzaq, A., Yu, Z., Shah, A., Sharif, A. and Janjua, L., 2022. Disruption in food supply chain and undernourishment challenges: An empirical study in the context of Asian countries. Socio-Economic Planning Sciences, 82, p.101033.

Moeliono, N., Fakhri, M., Sari, D., Kurnia, B. and Anindita, D.A., 2020. Green brand awareness factors on the body shop product. In Proceedings of the International Conference on Industrial Engineering and Operations Management (pp. 932-938).

Mosteanu, N.R. and Faccia, A., 2020. Digital systems and new challenges of financial management–FinTech, XBRL, blockchain and cryptocurrencies. Quality-Access to Success Journal, 21(174), pp.159-166.

Mousa, S.K. and Othman, M., 2020. The impact of green human resource management practices on sustainable performance in healthcare organisations: A conceptual framework. Journal of Cleaner Production, 243, p.118595.

Nisar, Q.A., Haider, S., Ali, F., Jamshed, S., Ryu, K. and Gill, S.S., 2021. Green human resource management practices and environmental performance in Malaysian green hotels: The role of green intellectual capital and pro-environmental behavior. Journal of Cleaner Production, 311, p.127504.

Panos, G.A. and Wilson, J.O., 2020. Financial literacy and responsible finance in the FinTech era: capabilities and challenges. The European Journal of Finance, 26(4-5), pp.297-301.

Stahl, G.K., Brewster, C.J., Collings, D.G. and Hajro, A., 2020. Enhancing the role of human resource management in corporate sustainability and social responsibility: A multi-stakeholder, multidimensional approach to HRM. Human Resource Management Review, 30(3), p.100708.

Statista, 2023. Number of stores by The Body Shop as of September 2019, by country Aceess on: 25/01/2023. Accessed from: https://www.statista.com/statistics/871026/the-body-shop-number-of-stores/

Stone, R.J., Cox, A. and Gavin, M., 2020. Human resource management. John Wiley & Sons.

Thebodyshop, 2023. Financial data of body shop. Accessed on: 25/01/2023. Accessed from: https://www.thebodyshop.in/

Vrontis, D., Christofi, M., Pereira, V., Tarba, S., Makrides, A. and Trichina, E., 2022. Artificial intelligence, robotics, advanced technologies and human resource management: a systematic review. The International Journal of Human Resource Management, 33(6), pp.1237-1266.

Wolok, T., 2019. Analysis of the effect of green marketing on consumer purchasing decisions on The Body Shop Gorontalo product. International Journal of Applied Business and International Management (IJABIM), 4(2), pp.75-86.