Learning Business from The Body Shop Success with Business Ethics and Social Responsibility

The Body Shop is a global manufacturer and retailer of naturally inspired, ethically produced beauty and cosmetics products. It is the second largest cosmetic franchise in the world. The first one is O Boticario, a Brazilian company. I choose The Body Shop to be analyzed because it is a successful company that has many strategy to be learned, especially their CSR programs. In addition, The Body Shop company is already well known in 61 countries, especially in Indonesia. The Body Shop really cares about their ethic attitude. Its a really great strategy to gain profit right now. The Body Shop have successfully manufactured an image of being a caring company that is helping to protect the environment and indigenous peoples, preventing the suffering of animals, and selling natural products. From this, they can gain their customers sympathy and respect.

Source: http://www.thebodyshop-usa.com/pdfs/values-campaigns/Values_report_lowres_v2.pdf

That is an example from The Body Shops slogan. From the slogan, we can see that The Body Shop is trying to create company image that people trust. Today, trust is really important to gain much profit. For example, I can make a chain like this. Company doing CSR get customer trust good reputation costumer become happy and comfort customer lead to word of mouth word of mouth lead to more people create many links people become customers save cost for advertising more customer more profit As I have learned in Introduction to Business lesson, there are four areas of social responsibility: toward the environment, customers, employees, and investors. I have searched on the internet what The Body Shop has been done based on these four areas, and this is the result: Responsibility Toward the Environment

1986-Current- Save the World Campaign- Starting in 1986 when The Body Shop developed an oil which replaced Sperm Whale oil usage in beauty products, it has now become the centre of attention for many of their actions. 1992- The Body Shop managed to produce an environmental policy book called the Green Book which outlined actions that all companies could do to support sustainability. 1993- The Body Shop invested in the wind energy firm Bryn Titli wind farm to support eco friendly energy. 1995- Started the Would they Do it in Paris campaign which protested the French testing of nuclear weapons in coral reefs. 2000- The Body Shop started one of the largest environmental actions by a company by changing 100 of their UK stores to renewable energy sources supplied by Ecotricity. 1986- Current- The Body Shop ensures that none of their products are tested on animals and has been an advocate against animal testing since 1986. Actions they have supported have been the ban of testing in the UK which succeeded in 1998 and the recent success in 2002 where Europe banned animal testing of cosmetics. ... etc Responsibility Toward Customer Consumer Rights The Body Shop has a website that inform their customers about the company. The Body Shop also publish a public report value every year to their customers that tell them about the products, all relevant aspects of product, and everything that customers should know. Pricing Quite competitive Ethic in Advertising The Body Shop never advertised in the conventional way. Responsibility Toward Employees 1980-1990- The body shop offers wages that are above the industry average by 57% depending on nation (Body Shop Investors Report, 1993). Body Shop also offers full medical and dental plans to their employees as regulated by local legislation. Overall earnings is still near poverty levels as retail is low income employment. 1990-Current- Body Shop promotes internal promotion from within the organisation and the ability to feel a large amount of self worth from being with an organisation that strives to increase the worlds standard of living

2001- In an interview with BBC1 Anita Roddick said The Company does not formally recognise any Trade Union as representing any of our employees, and has no plans to do so. This enforces a prior argument that Body Shop has not been socially responsible internally and actually has many human resources problems (Newell and Scarbrough, 2004). ... etc Responsibility Toward Investors Financial The Body Shop publish their financial report (public) in website: http://www.loreal.com/_en/_ww/l-Oreal-Finance.aspx

Ethic in business is important and also needed in future. For example, The Body Shop use recycle paper to package their product. Beside, our earth has a problem called global warming. Using recycle paper is helping avoid global warming. So, people will support the behavior and absolutely the business too. One day, all companies will use this strategy in the future. This is the best way to get customers trust, sympathy, and respect and it is also for gaining much profit. Sometimes, I wonder if The Body Shop founder, Dame Anita Roddick really mean the ethics or just only want to get much profit, but whatever it is, I think its still okay as long as both side, customer and company get the benefit. When we do business, the most important is not only about gain profit, the business has to be good for environment and also for human being. Thats the best way to make the company survive in this modern life.

Sources and references: http://www.essaycoursework.com/modelanswer/business/essays/body-shop-testingresponsibility.php ( january 3, 2012) http://www.smallbusinesssem.com/trust/1107/ ( january 3, 2012) http://www.thebodyshop-usa.com/pdfs/values-campaigns/Values_report_lowres_v2.pdf ( january 3, 2012)