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This is a sample stakeholder analysis for Body Shoppe. Most importantly, I want you to learn how to access a situation and determine all the stakeholders, their respective stakes, and distinguish between primary and secondary affiliation.
Stakeholder Analysis According to the textbook, the primary stakeholders are the individuals that have a “direct stake in the organization and its success” (76), and therefore, are the most influential. On the contrary, secondary stakeholders “may be extremely influential as well, especially in affecting reputation and public standing, but their stake in the organization is more indirect or derived” (76). With those terms defined, the most important primary stakeholder for the Body Shop would be Anita Roddick, the founder of the company. She has a direct responsibility of the actions that are done within the business, as well as the one that cares most of the stake of the business. When asked about her role in company, Anita stated that “the purpose of a business isn’t just to generate profits to create an ever-larger empire. It’s to have the power to effect social change, to make the world a better place. I have always been an activist. I have always been incredibly passionate about human rights and environmental issues. The Body Shop is simply my stage” (633), offering a very unique perspective on business and ethics, arguably making herself distinguished from many other business founders and CEOs. To further support my argument towards Anita Roddick as being the post important primary stakeholder, stakeholders have attributes such as “legitimacy, power, and urgency” (Carroll, Brown and Buchholtz 76), elements by which managers are able to decide upon which stakeholders deserve the most attention. Roddick, ultimately, embodies all three of these attributes as she is at the core of the Body Shop’s values, and is the one that has driven the Body Shop’s sustainable profile.
The second most important stakeholder for the Body Shop are the customers. They are the stakeholders which produce profitability, visibility and popularity for the company. In an interview with Across the Board magazine, Roddick explained that “the hardest thing for me are the marketing people, because they focus on us as a brand and our customers as consumers. We’ve never called it a brand; we call it the Body Shop. In 25 years, we’ve never, ever, ever called a customer a consumer. Customers aren’t there to consume. They’re there to live, love, die, get married, have friendship – they’re not put on this planet to bloody consumer” (Carroll, Brown and Buchholtz 638-639). The customers have high interest in the stakes of the company, and a steady amount of power as they are the ones that allow for the Body Shop to continue to grow. Another group of primary stakeholders include the Body Shop’s competitors. As mentioned earlier, once the Body Shop entered into the United States marketplace, the company experience high threats of competition. Although the competitors do not have a huge amount of direct power over the Body Shop, they are influenced by the actions made from the Body Shop. In addition, the competitors have, arguably, a higher amount of interest in the stakes of the Body Shop as they are in direct competition with the company over customers, who, unless are very loyal to the Body Shop, will most likely switch between buying products from the Body Shop and it’s competitors. Lastly, another important primary stakeholder in terms of the Body Shop, is the actual government, in the United States and more global. The government does not have a huge, or much at all, interest in the stakes of the body shop. However, they have a huge amount of power. Arguably, the most amount of power out of all of the primary stakeholders that have thus far been listed.
In addition, two examples of secondary stakeholders would include the media and special interest groups. As described earlier, secondary stakeholders “may be extremely influential as well, especially in affecting reputation and public standing, but their stake in the organization is more indirect or derived”. However, in the case of both the media and special interest groups, their interest in the stakes of the Body Shop can allow them to shift to more primary stakeholders depending on the urgency. For example, the media overall was a secondary stakeholder of the Body Shop until the company made their first broadcast advertisement with American Express. After that, the company then received an increase of media attention. Unfortunately, it was not until the Body Shop received bad press with The Financial Times and Jon Entine in is published story in the Business Ethics magazine that the media then shifted more towards primary stakeholders. The media has a good amount of power to manipulate company reputation, and relatively high amount of interest. Similar to media, special interest groups stay secondary stakeholders until the Body Shop reaches out to them or their company directly correlates with their own values. Therefore, special interest groups have high interest in the Body Shop, and relatively decent amount of power to influence change, spread the word, and create visibility of a company’s values.