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E-Business Management
During my second year at University, I wrote a report for my E-Business Management module on the E-commerce situation of The Body Shop along with recomendations as to how they could use E-commerce to further their online presence and to make a profit. Since I wrote my report in May 2006, The Body Shop has launched an online store where you can buy their products from their website based on the format of their US store.
In my report I talked about the current state of E-buisness of The Body Shop which was, "the Body Shop have a website in the UK which lists what kind of products they sell by category along with images and descriptions of the products. It has a store locater to find the nearest retail store." I talked about how The Body Shop was a bricks and mortar company, meaning that they have a presence in the digital world as well as retail stores in the UK and worldwide.
I used the Boots.com annual report to highlight how an online store can positively benefit an organisation. Boots' Annual Report 2005 said that “boots.com managed to deliver sales growth of more than 30%, despite some operational challenges, as we worked to make the site easier to shop and our backshop more efficient.” This shows that during the first year of operation though there were some teething problems, the website has started to pay for itself and it’s an indication of the sales growth for the recommended The Body Shop UK and Ireland website."
I touched on Customer Relationship Management, which is what my Research Project was about, and talked about how The Body Shop could utilise software to strengthen their relationships with their customers based on studies I had found in my research.
My report showed who the Body Shop's main customers were and touched on Logistics, which would be an important factor in any online business.
My conclusions were "The Body Shop need to develop an E-commerce presence in the UK, learning from their USA website and the success of their competitors. They need to work toward internal integration of their front and back offices as well as external integration with their suppliers to become a true ebusiness. The Body Shop should also make local stores a priority and continue to grow The Body Shop at Home selling channel.
The logistics side of The Body Shop’s business operations should be outsourced for the first few years and they then need to decide if the demand for ecommerce products exceeds their outsourced logistics capabilities, they need to insource the logistics operation which gives them the advantage of easy access to products and the exclusivity of service from their own fleet."