Brand Communication And Customer Satisfaction: A Case Study Of The Body Shop UK

Module Learning Objectives

The brand is the main identity of a business. Brand tends to create most significant importance on the minds of the customers and it also helps to differentiate its service line or products from its competitors. It has been identified that brand helps to create blind faith upon the minds of the customers through its quality and service. Some critics demonstrated that brand communication is the other name of consumer engagement technique (Godey et al. 2017). Through this strategy organisations change the consumer buying behaviour on product offerings and service.  Brand can create great impact on the purchasing decision of the customers. Present study is focused on the effect of the brand communication on customer satisfaction. The case has chosen for this research is The Body Shop UK. In modern days, customers of the UK market are getting fascinated with the service and quality of the branded products. Hence, branded products are gaining trust through its service and quality and choices and dependencies of the customers are also developing rapidly. Customer satisfaction and brand communication are two most important part of the business.

Brand denotes the products through which organisation reach to the customers and develop its business. In the consumer market, brand is the significant aspect. This also helps in generating trusts and loyalty towards the specific brand or product. In modern globalised world, internet plays the most important role to maintain communication brand and customers. Hence, the brands of UK follow the internet platform to promote the brand products and to announce product offerings. In the UK, the personal care section, they promote its products through the social media advertisement.

The present study is focused on the case of the The Body Shop UK. The Body Shop UK is a British skincare, cosmetics and perfume brand (The Bodyshop UK, 2018). In the year 1976, the company was established Dame Anita Roddick. It’s headquarter is in West Sussex, United Kingdom. They have wide variety of products and 3000 franchise stores both nationally and internationally. It has about 1000 products lines and its business in 66 countries.

The research is based on the brand communication and customer satisfaction. Brand helps to gain customers attention and their satisfaction. It has been observed that sometimes few brands make wrong commitment in the market before launching its products. Hence, consumer is not receiving their claimed benefit. This type of issue creates dissatisfied customers (Chen, Nguyen & Melewar, 2016). Thus this research is tried to evaluate the effect of brand communication on customer satisfaction.  For example, it has been observed that acne is the most sensible issue for the female customers and thus several UK companies have been introduced personal care products. The customers and feel the effect of the products and it enables satisfaction or dissatisfaction. Thus, the researcher has chosen primary data collection process through qualitative and quantitative methods.

Overview of the Research Methodology Module

To identify the factors which influence the personal care industry to follow the initiatives of brand communication in the market of UK

To explore the strategies of brand communication followed by the organisation like the Body Shop UK

To evaluate the relationship between brand communication and customer satisfaction

What are the factors which influence the personal care industry to follow the brand communication industries like the Body Shop UK?

What are the strategies of brand communication followed by the Body Shop UK?

What is the relationship between customer satisfaction and brand communication?

Brand communication and customer satisfaction are the two most important parts of the organisation which helps to develop the organisation. In this section researcher will analyse several past literatures based on the brand communication and customer satisfaction and will try to identify the gaps. This secondary information will help to analyse how brand communication helps to generate more loyal customers.

Brand communication strategy depends upon the nature of the industry, services or products, brand positioning and target market. UK personal care sector is highly competitive and the sector is fragmented with multinational, national and regional organisations (Schivinski & Dabrowski, 2016). Process of brand communication includes communicating emotional, tangible, rational, and symbolic elements in the market segment. It has been observed that skin care products in the UK personal care market are the most relevant market segment. In UK, the personal care and skin care market is more revenue generating source (Godey et al. 2017). 

Skin care market in UK includes acne issues, dry skins, sunburns and wrinkles. In present days, personal care segments and fashion accessories are the most two competitive sectors and has wide spread degree of competition. These competitions are widespread from regional manufacturers to high-end brands. It is true that effective brand communication helps to enable customer’s satisfaction (Chen et al. 2017). Effective brand communication always depends upon the several parameters and there are several economic issues and a range of demographics. It also involves in targeted customers segment which is targeted by the marketer, utilised promotional channels and nature of marketing.

Through the research it has been identified that brand positioning and communication strategies which varies upon the average age, gender, and customers income. Research also shows that customer preferences depend upon the products quality, environment friendly product, ethical strategy of the organisation and above all offerings and price (Chen et al. 2016).

Brand communication is often termed as marketing strategy. Brand communication is the way to communicate with the customers and get feedback accordingly. It helps to understand and position of the product or brand in the market place. In order to gain fame in this ultra-competitive era the brand communication need to be performing in such a way that the customer or buyers can feel a trustworthy bond with the brand. This can be done by providing right product at the right time to the customers and at the same time the product need to meet the satisfaction of the consumer. The strategic brand communication needs to be performing in an effective manner with an exact approach. After performing the research one need to identify the brand strategy. The brand strategy is divided into five components and will confirm the remaining plan of action,

• Understanding the audience: Identifying the audience of the particular brand is a major concern one need to achieve. There are certain key features to achieve this audience. The audience is divided into different segment for various products. However multiple audiences has multiple choice of action so in order to handle the audience volume the major concern for the brand communication is to understand the audience at first (Suppliet, 2017)
• Setting target and objectives:The brand communication is the higher measure for an organization to achieve higher revenue. The operational management of the organization need to set the targets and intentions for the company and the leaders need to implement this function into reality. Brand communication is not only for the sake of communicating it is the optimum measure to meet the brand value.
• Develop certain messages: Another major concern is developing certain key messages to reach to more volume of audiences. The audiences often get attract to the simple and easy messages. Some experts have identified that this brand strategy for communicating in proper manner. The more lucid the message is the more easy to achieve the task.
• Develop strategic plan: The strategic plans are the backbone for overall communication process. A strategic plan needs to include the parallel and horizontal strategy to reach to the ultimate goal. Strategy and the low level hierarchy actually support to achieve the actual intention (King et al. 2016)
• Understand the measures of evaluation: Here the managers and leaders need to perform coherently to understand or identify the measures of evaluation. The metrics are the tool to identify the communication measures. It is important to evaluate that the brand communication strategy was successful or not and that need to be performed by the metrics. The mangers need to look closely whether they are reaching near to the company goal or not. There are especially various options available to measure these data. Organization need to apply outcome matrices instead of output metrics (Lu, Chang & Chang, 2015)

The Importance of Brand Communication and Customer Satisfaction

There are seven steps to be followed in order to become a successful brand in upcoming future,

• Be loyal and transparent: The brand communication doesn’t need any celebrity face or any brand ambassadors. If individual understand the brand value, they will share it with the peers and nothing can be more transparent than this. The brand communication needs to be done in such a way that every individual can understand the brand value and get more connected with it.
• Make conversations: Whenever a customer give positive review to the brand then and there the brand communication strategy start by open ended questions like what is best of this brand or how he feels about the brand. This may bring an opportunity for the organization to make a loyal bond with the customers (Huang & Sarigöllü, 2014)
• Provide appropriate content: In the present scenario content is a major part of brand communications. The right content with simple, easy and lucid structure actually helps to connect with the consumers. The effective communication is made by availing the reviews of brands from the consumers.
• No need for self-promoting: People always love to listen about themselves so the brand communication strategy is needed to perform in such a way that the consumers can relate them to the communication. The brands which only speak about themselves face a threat in future while losing the customers (Chen, Nguyen & Melewar, 2016)
• Be lucid: being lucid and transparent the brands can actually get more connected with the customers. The consumers often get attracted to the simple and easy brand communication. There must be always human interference in order to achieve the ultimate goal of industry.
• Providing fun content for refreshment: This is another form of brand communication strategy where the content needs to make in such a way that the consumers don’t feel overwhelmed while reading it.
• Understand individual generated content:Paying close attention to the content which customers are generating is also a major part to achieve the actual intention. They need to understand what consumers are saying about their brand. In case any recommendation found up then it need to be monitored closely and coherently so that consumers also get connected with the brand. These approaches actually lead to success for any brand communication strategy.

In order to make a customer bond with the brand of the certain company the mangers and operational management need to perform a crucial role. They need to understand the customer buying behaviour, requirements and need to learn about the time management in order to place right product at the right time to the customer. The brand loyalty, simplicity and lucidity actually help to attract more number of customers. However, understanding customer or buyers requirements is an important measure for building the buyers relationship with the brand. The brand value of a particular organization can only be effective if individuals feel the uniqueness of the brand. The operational manager needs to focus to the customer review about the brand and set the objectives and business model in such a way that the consumers feel their importance for the brand. This way the brand value actually increases. However, a trustworthy bond between consumer and brand actually enhance the brand performance. The brand performance does not need any celebrity face or illusory visions, rather simple human approach plays a better role in brand performance. With the evolution of the technology every individual uses mobile phone devices and they have accounts in numerous social networking sites like facebook, twitter, whatsapp etc. In order to reach the brand fame to the end consumer the particular organization need to adapt all these technologies inside its work frame. The consumers may attract with the little bran d commercials and by authentic, simple and easy contents. Often the consumers also give some reviews through online media, the operational management need to understand the reviews and adapt the new possible up gradation inside its working. The customer relationship with the brand is the major concern to achieve success in this ultra-competitive brand market (Ding, Eliashberg & Stremersch, 2016).

For the present research the researcher will choose primary data collection process. In order to collect the actual data the researchers need to identify the primary and secondary division of data. The primary data need to collect or obtain through qualitative and quantitative methods. Survey and questionnaire will be used to gather the data through the respondents. On the other hand, secondary data will used to analyse the previous literatures to identify the previous research gaps and it will be used in the literature review section.

Background on The Body Shop UK

The data need to collected in an efficient manner and the operational management need to sample the exact information from the available data. The researcher will consider 30 customers of The Body Shop UK and 5 managers. The managers need to develop the strategy and need to set the business model as per the data and exact information for running the operation smoothly.

In order to achieve the overall proposal the researcher will analyse the collected quantitative data through graphs and charts and the qualitative data through descriptive way. Both the analysis process will help the researcher to meet the research objectives.

One of the major concerns of the researchers or scientist is the shortage of time to accomplish the most accurate result. In accordance to that finding the accurate data is also a major time consuming issue for the writers. So, the originality of the final proposal might have been hampered.

Purpose	Amount
Literature Review	$1000
Data collection	$2000
Data Analysis	$1200
Total	$4200

Task	Duration	Start	Finish	Predecessors
Primary research to identify the problem	5days	10/08/2018	15/10/2018
Literature review	6 days	16/10/2018	22/10/2018	1
Secondary data collection	7 days	23/10/2018	30/10/2018	2
Formatting the conceptual framework	6 days	31/10/2018	5/11/2018	2
Analyzing the data via SPSS	5days	6/11/2018	11/11/2018
Critical analysis of Data	2days	12/11/2018	14/11/2018	5,3,4
Final submission	0 days	15/11/2018	15/11/2018	6

Conclusion: 

 It can conclude finally that, without the proper branding strategy the brand performance cannot achieve the exact measure. In case the brand performance is low then it will harm the company’s total business performance, which will cause a great threat for the company. In accordance to that with the absence of the actual brand strategy the brand cannot connect with the customer in right manner. Without the customer relation with the brand, it is impossible to achieve the goal of the company and the customers also would not able to get the information of new product entered into the market. Branding has the tremendous impact on the whole quality customer services provided by the particular industry.

Reference List:

Chen, C. C. M., Nguyen, B., & Melewar, T. C. (2016). An investigation of the uses of corporate reputation: A managerial perspective in the Taiwanese pharmaceutical industry. Qualitative Market Research: An International Journal, 19(3), 357-376.

Chen, C. C. M., Nguyen, B., Melewar, T. C., & Dennis, C. (2017). Investigating the Uses of Corporate Reputation and Its Effects on Brand Segmentation, Brand Differentiation, and Brand Positioning: Evidence from the Taiwanese Pharmaceutical Industry. International Studies of Management & Organization, 47(3), 240-257.

Ding, M., Eliashberg, J., & Stremersch, S. (2016). Innovation and Marketing In The Pharmaceutical Industry. Springer-Verlag New York.

Godey, B., Manthiou, A., Pederzoli, D., Rokka, J., Aiello, G., Donvito, R., & Singh, R. (2016). Social media marketing efforts of luxury brands: Influence on brand equity and consumer behavior. Journal of business research, 69(12), 5833-5841.

Huang, R., & Sarigöllü, E. (2014). How brand awareness relates to market outcome, brand equity, and the marketing mix. In Fashion Branding and Consumer Behaviors (pp. 113-132). Springer, New York, NY.

King, R. C., Schilhavy, R. A., Chowa, C., & Chin, W. W. (2016). Do customers identify with our website? The effects of website identification on repeat purchase intention. International Journal of Electronic Commerce, 20(3), 319-354.

Konje, J. A. (2016). Effects of Print Media Coverage on the Performance of Pharmaceutical Industry in Kenya (Doctoral dissertation, United States International University-Africa).

Lu, L. C., Chang, W. P., & Chang, H. H. (2014). Consumer attitudes toward blogger’s sponsored recommendations and purchase intention: The effect of sponsorship type, product type, and brand awareness. Computers in Human Behavior, 34, 258-266.

Schivinski, B., & Dabrowski, D. (2016). The effect of social media communication on consumer perceptions of brands. Journal of Marketing Communications, 22(2), 189-214.

Suppliet, M. (2017). Umbrella Branding in Pharmaceutical Markets.

Thebodyshop.com. (2018). The Body Shop® – Beauty Inspired by Nature. Never Tested on Animals. [online] Available at: https://www.thebodyshop.com/ [Accessed 23 Nov. 2018]