The Body Shop International

The Body Shop International PLC

Case 2A

"In terms of the power and influence, you can forget the church, forget politics. There is no more powerful institution in society that business - I believe it is now more important than ever before for business to assume a moral leadership. The business of business should not be about money, it should be about responsibility. It should be about public good not private greed." 1

-Dame Anita Roddik, Founder of the Body Shop in her book Business as Usual, in 2000.

" It is ironic that a company ( The Body Shop ) well known for its anti-animal testing, stance should sell out to one ( L'Oreal) that tests on animals and which has yet to show its commitments to any ethical issues at all." 2

-Ruth Rosselson, Ethical consumer magazines in March 2006. 3

"I do not believe that L'Oreal will compromise the ethics of the Body Shop. That is after all what they are paying for and they are too intelligent to mess without DNA......I want to make things happen to spread human values wider in business if I possibly can and this scale gives us the chance to do so." 4

-Anita Roddik, In May 2006

1 www.sonoma.edu. Visited on 06/25/2007

2 Body Shop's shares rice at its ethical rating plummets, "www.ethicalconsumer.org , visited on 06/26/2007

3 Ethical consumers is a magazine in the UK that is produced by the ethical consumer research association (ECRA). ECRA is not for a profit consumer organization that seeks to promote human rights, environmentally sustainability animal welfare and provide information on the social and environmental track record of well known organizations.

Source: www.ethicalconsumer.org visited on o6/24/2007

The Body shop was regarded by many as one of the pioneers of modern corporate social responsibility (CSR). The company was also strongly associated with the social activism of Roddick. It addresses the main components of corporate social responsibility - opposition to animal testing, developing community trade, and building self esteem, campaigning for human rights and protection of the planet. As the part of the tensions the company face a real threat from the existed big market giants like Revlon, Clarins etc. in marketing cosmetics indeed limited product line or product segment and target market is one of the tensions to ensure its long term survival.

Anita Roddick claims that her firm does not advertise, yet it receives free media exposure and publicity through the social causes, it champions and her personal appearance approach for a business to follow.

The important point here is that as one analysis corporate power, one should think in terms of the different levels at which that power is manifested when this is done, it is not easy whether corporate power is excessive or has been abused. Specific levels of power need to be examined before conclusions can be reached. Here, in this particular case study, the body shop( Anita Roddick) comes under the final level is the individual level to the individual corporate leader exerting power.

From the question four, my assessment for Anita Roddick's philosophy regarding "the purpose of business" that in the current scenario to avoid the threat from the big giants, the body shop want to clear its place in the market by identifying themselves