Introduction
Personal Profile
The name behind the Body Shop, a famous cosmetic line for decades now, is . On October 23, 1942 in Littlehampton, Sussex, England marks her birth to an immigrant Italian family. After completing her degree at the College of education, she worked as a part-time teacher and for the United Nations in Geneva. She traveled to different places like Tahiti, New Hebrides, New Caledonia, Reunion, Madagascar, Mauritius, Australia, and Johannesburg. Her fascination with the women she encountered in these places became an episodic event in her life, as it later became the basis of her tale of success. As stated in (1999), she was mesmerized by the organic products that women in the Polynesian islands use to nurture their bodies. Then, she went back to England and married a Scotsman poet and traveler named Gordon Roddick in 1971. Five years later, the Body Shop was born.
Critically Appraisal
Business Domain
The Body Shop is known for its cosmetic products that are naturally made and environment-friendly. Struck by the body rituals among the women in the Polynesian islands, Roddick made sure that the kinds of cosmetics that her shop will sell are naturally-made.
Products Life Cycle
Target Customers Selected and Why
Body Shop, as the brand implies, deal with the body. However, it is not mainly concerned with making the body merely to be beautiful as what most cosmetics pledge to do. When we think of cosmetics, the immediate implication is that it pertains to beauty products. Therefore, Body Shop is for women. Is it only for women? It is for individuals, male and female alike across various age brackets, who are geared towards nurturing their bodies.
Unique Selling Point
(2002) says that differentiation deals with offering uniqueness. Being different implies being unique. This is not the function of a particular entity in the organization, but the entire organization as a whole. Value is placed either on the product or the service or in both cases. In order to attain competitive advantage, he suggests focusing on the value that customers seek as the operations strategy. This can be done by looking at the quality, reliability, variety, features, services, location, delivery, after sales support, etc.
What makes Body Shop unique? On the one hand, it deviates from its fellow cosmetics line with regard to its advertisements. It never made use of famous celebrities nor supermodels to endorse its products. On the other hand, the business is bound by principle. According to (2000), two essential factors make Body Shop to be distinct. First, the value of integrity defines its interaction with its customers, staff and suppliers. Second, it is the intense environmentalist philosophy of the business. Body Shop products are known for being naturally-made and environment-friendly. Thus, both the product and service compose Body Shop’s competitive advantage.
In eyes, Body Shop succeeded because of two reasons. Economic survival of her family, especially during its beginnings, was a primary driving factor; and, the passion to establish a shop of her own and to engage in trading was the other ( 1999).
The organizational belief that wants the Body Shop to live by is essential for the business’ performance. Body Shop has grown into a multinational company. However, in perspective, she preferred her shop to be described as “global.” She believes that a global company functions because of values, whereas multinational ones “just trade.” Profit is not merely the motive of business. To be a “live, vibrant, and honorable” organization is what she believes as the function of business (1999).
“To courageously ensure that our business is ecologically sustainable, meeting the needs of the present without compromising the future. -To meaningfully contribute to local, national and international communities in which we trade, by adopting a code of conduct which ensures care, honesty, fairness and respect”
Credit:ivythesis.typepad.com
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