HUMAN ETHICS IN BODY SOAP

QUESTION

In your selected company, how does the sales manager seek to positively influence ethics in (management department/ HR) and how important is it?

The selected company is bodyshop

SOLUTION

The Body Shop International plc, also known as, The Body Shop deals in selling natural-based cosmetics in more than 60 countries (The Body Shop n.d.). Body shop’s core values of supporting community-trade, no animal testing and protecting the planet have made it unique among the other cosmetics companies.

The Body shop does not follow conventional marketing practices; rather it emphasizes on relationship marketing(Rapacz 2008). The Body Shop emphasizes on marketing through word-of-mouth and public relations(Bethell 1994).It does not have a conventional marketing department. Hence, the role of Sales Managers is to enforce that the values of the sales team go hand-in-hand with the corporate values.A sales manager at the Body Shop, thus, plays a great role in influencing management.

The Body Shop actively promotes ethical consumerism. The sales people and sales manager at the Body Shop emphasize on ethical consumerism while communicating with the customers, by briefing them about the natural products from which the product was made, how the raw materials were sourced etc.  The Body Shop employees communicate to the customers at a higher level, going above beauty and fairness that other brands talk about (B 2006).People associate Body Shop with environment, nature and ethical practices. As their point of contact in the organization is the Sales Persons and Sales Managers, the role of a Sales Manager is thus important for influencing ethics in the Management/ HR department.

At Body Shop, the Sales Managers take up their responsibility of practicing ethics in business quite seriously. They seek to positively influence ethics by requesting the HR department for conducting ethics training at frequent intervals. The Sales Manager is also involved with the HR department and corporate team to a large extent in the recruitment of Sales persons of his area.Some other areas where the Sales Manager is actively involved to ensure that ethically-motivated people join the sales team are training the newcomers, frequent ethical training workshops, coaching and mentoring the sales team. The sales team is trained to highlight the environment-friendly characteristics of the products to the customers; convey to them that a part of their money is going towards helping the backward communities; promoting sales offers as the Body Shop does not rely on conventional marketing strategies. The management also calls for feedback from the customers, wherein their experience with the sales team are recorded, and provided to the Sales Manager for effective action on those feedbacks.

References:

B, Harish. “Body Shop: Profit With Principle.” Marketing Practice. November 24, 2006. http://marketingpractice.blogspot.in/2006/11/body-shop-profit-with-principle.html (accessed May 14, 2012).

Bethell, James. “Body Shop changes strategy on public relations.” The Independent. October 14, 1994. http://www.independent.co.uk/news/business/body-shop-changes-strategy-on-public-relations-1442891.html (accessed May 14, 2012).

Rapacz, Deb. “Is “Relationship Marketing” Killing The Body Shop.” Customer Think. July 09, 2008. http://www.customerthink.com/blog/relationship_marketing_killing_body_shop (accessed May 14, 2012).

The Body Shop. n.d. http://www.thebodyshop-usa.com/about-us/aboutus_company.aspx (accessed May 14 , 2012).

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