Mission statement is regarded as the heart of the business vision and it is the guide to its operation and is very important for any business. The well-crafted mission statement should have following characteristics;

1. Keep it short: 8 words or less can be used as the mission statement. Those statements that are sweet and short and absorb all the meaning of the organization are easy to be placed on cards, and they are also recognizable and memorable to the people.

2. Be specific: focus on what make your organization better and different. The target audience should not be capable of comparing it with any other competitive industry, how you can catch the excellence and what thing is making your business different from others

3. Make it realistic: mission statement should be a brief explanation that why you exist and what is your objective. Statement should be something that is possible but should not be too easy and idealistic. It often seems impossible to have a perfect mission statement.

4. Test it: for making a mission statement, it is always better plan to test the statement on your employees. By doing this, not only the quality of the statement will improve but also the employee will feel that they have their contribution I the statement because they somehow hep in putting all the pieces together to give a more perfect mission statement.

5. Consider longevity: make a long-term vision while building a mission statement that will capable of withstanding the time and also should hold a deep meaning in it. The mission statement cannot be changing all the time when a short-term goal is achieved (Harzing, A.W.K. and Wal, R.V.D., 2008).

The Body Shop mission statement focused more on long term sustainability rather than the quality of the products they will offer. The statement is dedicated yet need a lot of modification keeping in mind the previous characteristic of a perfect mission statement. The mission statement of the Body Shop also explain its environmental needs as in all facets of our business, the Body Shop is committed to a role of environmental leadership.

Vision statement characteristics:

Following should be the characteristics of the vision statement of any organization;

1. Audacious: focus on achievements, Go Large! Explain what is success for the organization

2. Futuristic: vision statement should get started by the gerund verbs like creating, building, moving etc. Choose the verb carefully because the words matter a lot. If the statement is very general the audience will not know what you are trying to say. And if the statement is way more specific then it will limit the success.

3. Clear: the statement should be clear and short. The statement should give the picture of excellence. Reader should be able to imagine what is happening in the organization. It will be clear that what your customer re talking about standing in front of the building.

4. Time bound: the vision statement should be set in time span of four to five years. The world is way more volatile to imagine it to stay longer. The days when we plan for 10 years are gone. With the advancement in technology and over all global environment, a 10-year forecast is just too long.

5. Inspirational: give your vision with the taste of passion. The vision statement should be used to stimulate and encourage the employee in order to make them think clearly and creatively. Create a culture of success, and allow your workers to give them a meaning of work. If you are heading toward something big, give them the tone and relatable environment (Higgins, J.M., 2005).

The Body Shop vision statement is quite long. This statement has good focus on achieve and explaining what success looks like to the organization. It would be better if the statement is started by some gerund verb like “building a world class retailer” The statement is inspirational and is lying on all the basis of vision statement. The Body shop vision statement is “the predominant focus which is being world class retailer, offering the customer prestige product at the value prices by the excellent customer services.

Task 2
Stakeholder Analysis

What is a stakeholder?

A stakeholder could be an individual, or a group or the organization who get influenced through the production of the project. They have clear interests in achievements of the project. They can exist maybe inside or outside the business organization. Stakeholder can give either positive or negative influence to the project (Mankins, 2005).

Types of stakeholder:

Each and every organization own a stakeholder, whether the organization is small or large or whatever purpose it holds on. In the business environment, we can classify stakeholders in two major categories

· Internal stakeholder

· External stakeholder

Internal stakeholder: those parties, or member of the group that have contribution in management of the company. They get influenced by the productivity of the project. Primary stakeholder is another term use for internal stakeholder (Miller, S., Wilson, D. and Hickson, D., 2004).

They are dedicated and committed to give their services toward the organization. The organization cannot survive without internal stakeholders. This is the reason they have large impact on the company. Following are the list of internal stakeholders;

Ø Employee

Ø Owner

Ø Board of directors

Ø Investors

Ø Managers

External stakeholder – those parties who are not actually the part of the organization but they get influenced by the work of the company indirectly. They are from outside but form their part in business environment. They are also called as secondary stakeholders. They do not participate in daily activities of the company but their actions have impact on them. However, they have no idea about the internal matters. Following is the list of external stakeholders;

Ø Customers

Ø Suppliers

Ø Creditors

Ø Clients

Ø Competitors

Ø Society

Ø Intermediates

Ø Government

These different groups, or stakeholders, may have different priorities. The way a business operates affects them as well as their expectations may influence a way a company sets its objectives along with how it seeks to achieve them.

The Body Shop approach to Stakeholder – auditing:

Audit is simply a method that check the progress in any company. The stakeholders are facing the challenge for finding out the ways to evaluate that what people think. A lot of research and development has been done in this regard to come to a final point where the stakeholders will have the approach toward the thinking of people or the target audience. Some objectives are quite easy to quantify like local community objective is to decrease the level of unemployment, then there could be the measure for the creation of new jobs. Sometimes it is quite impossible to apply tangible measures like statistics on the human thoughts and emotions that are intangible. This report was containing both good as well as bad news. Around 75% of the employees said they were proud to be part of The Body Shop whereas 71% said they enjoyed their job. Almost 1 in 4 employees said that they need to change the company in order to grow their careers.

In the below figure Mendolows matrix of stakeholder mapping by using appropriate diagram and power and interest matrix of different categories;

Source: https://www.startuptuition.com/business-startup-guides/mendelow-s-matrix-stakeholder-management-for-startups

A first step is to outline into the stakeholder interest matrix. Some of have highest power and highest influence where relationship to focused on.

• Category A: Low interest; low power: Keep in contact by this quadrant now as well as again yet don't go squandering an excess of vitality on them.

• Category B: low Power High interest: These folks can turn into an interruption. Keep them educated yet don't demonstrate a lot of consideration regarding them or, in all likelihood chance their turning into a squandered exertion that is probably not going to hold up under much by method of results.

• Category C: Low interest High power: The thought is to keep these stakeholder fulfilled however don't bother them to an extreme. Their low interest levels imply that they could immediately get exhausted with you or your business.

• Category D: High interest High power: These stakeholders merit a most consideration (Startuptuition.com, 2019)

Task 3

c

Michael Porter’s Generic Strategies is a framework that is used by the organization to identify a niche where they can get a competitive advantage in the industry.

Source: https://www.businessballs.com/strategy-innovation/porters-generic-competitive-strategies/

Cost leadership: This strategy is for the organization who tend to get the market share by appealing the consumers. So, the aim of the organization will be to become the lowest-cost producers in the particular industry. This can be achieved by the mass production of the products that give the organization a chance to exploit the economics of scale and they can cut the costs. Organization sell products below the market average value that provide them great share of consumers and the profit margin can still remain high (Barsky, N.P. and Bremser, W.G., 1999). Such kind of organization can exhibit a number of traits and attributes that make them suitable for;

· High productivity level

· Low cost base

· Bargaining power

· Effective distribution channels

· Access to technology to drive the cost down

Differentiation: This has the concern to make the products different and attractive as compared to other organizations in order to achieve the competitive advantage. The body shop target larger markets and focus on being different on the larger scale. Organization focus on many different criteria that is considered by the consumers with in the industry and then they can make themselves unique in order to meet those criteria (Beer, M. and Eisenstat, R.A., 2000).

Although not globally but this strategy is quite related to charging premium sale prices for those services and products that are in question. Following are some traits that are related to the Body Shop

· Power of research and development

· Higher quality of the products

· Recognizable branding, effective branding and marketing

· Wide distribution of the industry between the important channels which are stocked by many of the retailers

Cost focus: This is related to the organizations who search for establishing a lower cost advantage but in the area of small market margin. These products are acceptable to sufficient number of consumers for making profit. Within this strategy the focus is mainly on a particular group of the consumers and the needs and requirements of that group is considered while making the products. For example, the items of food that are in budget and some households available only in small markets (Bossidy, L. and Charan, R., 2002).

Differential focus:

The organization focus on developing differential products but only to the range of smaller market segments these organization known the smaller consumer group to focus on. They focus on requirements of that group stead of looking toward the wider population.

First the organization need to identify what specific group of consumer has different needs. If there is no differential need then there is no good basis of the differentiation. The Body Shop is using this strategy by making ensure that another competitor is not already dealing with some specific needs that they have identified. This is the most common approach in market strategy. Small businesses use this strategy commonly; develop the unique products that can get sold in higher prices than same undifferentiated products (Harzing, A.W.K. and Wal, R.V.D., 2008).

According to Porter’ five theory, competitive strategy aims to establish a profitable and sustainable position against the forces that determine industry competition.

How to choose a correct strategy: The generic strategy covers a lot of businesses and competitive decisions that the organization make. So, it is important to choose the correct strategy. Porter force on not to use more than one strategy because each appeal to various consumer base. Like sometimes a small organization focus on competing on cost within the industry that is dominated. Organizations should start making strategy by first knowing themselves like what their weak points are and what are the areas where they can grow easily and what are the areas which are stronger as compared to the competitive industry? Organization should evaluate that where their strengths lies, so that they can get the competitive advantage. The SWOT analysis is the best way t identify the strengths and weaknesses and also allow the organization to know about their opportunities and threats. SWOT analysis can be considered in the context of generic strategy (Atkinson, H., 2006).

There is another analysis known as value chain analysis that can be used to identify many tools and processes that can be valuable for the organization and their services and they can be used to get the competitive advantage. In order to get the better understanding of the industry, Porter Five Forces can be used to get the knowledge about the competitiveness within the industry. The organization cam cross reference their strengths and weaknesses and their attributes by applying all these analysis to get the understanding about the nature of the organization and identify that whether the cost base of the differential base strategy can be used for gaining the competitive advantage and they should identify that whether they should focus on large market or small market segments (Miller, S., Wilson, D. and Hickson, D., 2004).

References of Foundation to Business Strategy

Atkinson, H. (2006). “Strategy implementation: a role for the balanced scorecard”,ManagementDecision, Vol. 44 No. 10, pp. 1441-1460.

Barsky, N.P. and Bremser, W.G. (1999). “Performance measurement, budgeting and strategicimplementation in the multinational enterprise”,International Journal of Operations andProduction Management, Vol. 25 No. 2, pp. 3-15.

Beer, M. and Eisenstat, R.A. (2000). “The silent killers of strategy implementation and learning”,Sloan Management Review, Vol. 41 No. 4, pp. 29-40.

Bossidy, L. and Charan, R. (2002). Execution: The Discipline of Getting Things Done, Random HouseBusiness Books, London.

Harzing, A.W.K. and Wal, R.V.D. (2008). “Google scholar as a new source for citation analysis”,Ethics in Science and Environmental Politics, Vol. 8 No. 1, pp. 1-13.

Higgins, J.M. (2005). “The eight S of successful strategy execution”,Journal of Change Management,Vol. 5 No. 1, pp. 3-13.

Mankins, M. a. (2005). “Turning great strategy into great performance”,Harvard BusinessReview, July-August, pp. 1-10.

Miller, S., Wilson, D. and Hickson, D. (2004). “Beyond planning: strategies for successfullyimplementing strategic decisions”,Long Range Planning, Vol. 37 No. 3, pp. 201-218.

Startuptuition.com. (2019). Success with your startup has a lot to do with your ability to manage relationships with stakeholders. The Mendelow Matrix is an important tool for the aspiring entrepreneur. Retrieved from https://www.startuptuition.com/business-startup-guides/mendelow-s-matrix-stakeholder-management-for-startups