EXECUTIVE SUMMARY.
Our report was based on The Body Shop International, which is a PLC operating on a worldwide scale. We chose to carry out this report on The Body Shop as it has a very interesting background; it was founded as a natural soap and lotions company whose cornerstone was to operate as a model of social responsibility with ethics in business. However, The Body Shop has since been exposed to negative press surrounding the controversial business ethics on which this ?green' company is based. Therefore it was interesting to analyse the effects the external environment has on The Body Shop and how the company and the owner, Anita Roddick respond to and deal with these pressures.
The report analyses the external pressures on The Body Shop and how the company has chose to deal with these different issues. The report finds that political, economical, competitive, ecological and socio-cultural analysis can be used to analyse these external pressures. We did not include technological analysis in our study as it was very difficult to access this information and it has little impact on our firm. However, to carry out a more in depth analysis we also used SWOT analysis, which is a measure of the strengths, weaknesses, opportunities and threats of the business, in order to see how the external pressures influence the business and how they can react to them.
The report concludes that The Body Shop is facing several challenges from the external environment.
CONTENTS PAGE.
Page Number:
Executive summary 1
Introduction 3
Background of the company 4
PEST analysis:
Political Environment, 5
Economic Environment, 6-8
Ecological Environment, ...