Body Shop Retail Strategy
By: Stefany Vincensia (Student of Global Business Marketing)
The Body Shop is a brand that focuses on producing cosmetic and health care products. Founded in Brighton, United Kingdom in 1976 by Anita Roddick, now The Body Shop has expanded themselves to 3000 different stores all around the world. To make sure their products can be enjoyed by their customers, they built a merchandising plan:
- Innovativeness: The Body Shop usually does seasonal sales during special occasions such as Christmas and Ramadhan, such as 50-70% discount for picked items or package. They also sells their products online where there is usually special sales.
- Forecasts: The Body Shop stocks from suppliers through fair trade in 21 different countries, especially developing countries to create sustainable business level that brings tangible impact for the trade fair community. And The Body Shop works with a manufacturing company in Bangkok to produce their products, then the products shipped across the country with less carbon emissions and less cost.
- Assortment: The Body Shop sells mostly cosmetics, health/body care, and fragrances. They also sells tools such as brushes and shower sponges. The Body Shop also has specific store design that speaks for its own brand identity, green and white. The meaning behind the colors are natural beauty and sustainable beauty.
- Brands: The Body Shop is a retail company that owns their own brand, they do franchises with other companies. Each contract with a company includes ethical relationship, where The Body Shop provides product, direction, and key aspects of retailing. The Body Shop protects every franchises by controlling the stocks and products, and maintains long term relationship with the companies that work with them to do franchise.
- Allocation: Their warehouses exist in UK, Singapore, US to keep the finished products then distributed to other coutries in Europe, Asia, and America.
- Timing: The Body Shop usually sells a lot of products during special occassions, so they always make sure to restock before occassions such as Christmas and Ramadhan.
PRICING STRATEGY
The Body Shop cares about what customers desire from them. They usually do market research in finding out what kind of product, quality and price the customers want to be able to get. The Body Shop depends on their suppliers from 21 different countries which most of them are developing countries, to get product materials from. For example, The Body Shop has alot of products made from shea butter, the shea butter is an ingredients mostly found in food and cosmetics. The supplier of shea butter for The Body Shop comes from Tungteiya Women’s Shea Butter Association located in Africa and they have been working together for over 17 years. They also source cocoa from Ghana, hand massagers from India, honey from Euthiopia, brazil oil nut from Peru, and aloe vera from Guatemala. Since they do fair trade to these countries, they have to understand the cultural and social issues of each country to technicalities of production, living costs (economic realities of a country) to be able to count how much they will pay the farmers, labors, and community so they can spend it on education, healthcare, or infrastructure. They use those aspects to price their products in order to earn a perfect amount to pay their suppliers.
PROMOTIONAL STRATEGY
The Body Shop values ethical business. To create a long term relationship with the customers, The Body Shop has been involved in campaigns such as Stop Sex Trafficking campaign, Fair Trade programme, and the anti animal testing campaign to improve the brand’s standard and also improve the environment performace. 83% of customers of The Body Shop prefer buying from retailers who take social and environmental issues seriously where the products are made environmentally responsible and beautifully. This is why the anti animal testing campaign becomes one of the most popular campaign to promote The Body Shop’s brand name. The Body Shop also has an online website to promote their products online and allow the customers to online. In The Body Shop Indonesia, there is an offer or campaign called #BringBackOurBottles for a customer to return at least 25 bottles of any The Body Shop products to get one new product from the store. Not only persuades the customers to buy more products in order to get a free product in return, The Body Shop also takes part in raising the awareness of reducing the plastic bottle waste in the environment. Besides of the campaigns, The Body Shop also does a lot of special occasion sales during occasions such as Christmas, Valentine’s day, and Ramadhan.
The customers can get their products at the store (offline) or online for 50-70% off. The discounted products are usually picked by the store or the company, or the customers can buy gift set. The Body Shop promotes their brand and products on the social media too such as Instagram and Facebook, their ads are usually shown on the peer’s feed in order to gain more engagement from the amount of profile clicks.
OMNICHANNEL ENVIRONMENT
The Body Shop has offline stores, website, social media accounts and an application that can be downloaded on the phone. The customers can buy online or offline and check the product’s availability online before going to the offline store. They always promote sales, new products, and announcement on their social media to approach the customers about what is going on in their brand so the customers can always stay up to date.
REFERENCES:
https://www.compromisorse.com/upload/estudios/000/173/pages.pdf
https://www.thebodyshop.co.id/bbob