This report will examine L 'Oréal, the beauty and cosmetic company originating in France. By evaluating the organization and their operations, this report will aim to reach a coherent conclusion as to whether they are a suitable placement provider. This is highly important due to the increasing number of students choosing to partake in a placement year to gain vital experience in the business world. It is therefore important to assess the business in general to establish how suitable a business is as a placement provider.
To assess the suitability of L 'Oréal as a placement provider, this report will first analyse the business itself, identifying the brand divisions, analysing their marketing strategy and identifying key competitors …show more content…
This allows for clear focus within different aspects of the business and enables teams within the company to work towards a common goal. This is an example of Cross Functional Teamwork, recognised by Daspi (2013) to result in commitment and motivation to the team and the goal.
In terms of control within the organisation, L’Oréal does appear to be of a centralized structure whereby decisions are made at the top of the hierarch by managers, organized by Geographical area. This does however have its benefits, Andrews (2009) recognises that one of the major benefits of centralised decision making is that faster decisions are made making the business more efficient. However, with such high employee satisfaction rates, it is clear that employee opinions are important and do play a significant role in the decision making made by senior managers.
4.2.3 Mission/ Vision
The mission of L’Oréal is to promote the universality of beauty and to offer it to people all over the world. As a company, they aim to do this through innovation centred on safety of and quality of …show more content…
This appears to be expected as the Consumer Products Division is mass marketed through retailing within supermarkets and other retail stores. Therefore the brands that fall under this product range not only have a much further customer reach, but they are far more accessible to a wider demographic of age and gender for example. The Brand Division contributing least to sales is the Body Shop with 873.8 €m (Appendix A), this appeared to be somewhat disappointing to L’Oréal evidenced in the annual report as a ‘satisfactory end to the year’.
This figure clearly supports the point made earlier about diversification. With sales low in some brand divisions, this by far made up for with high sales in Consumer Products and L’Oréal Luxe for example.
4.3.1.2 Sales by Geographic Zone
Figure 2 clearly shows that the majority of L’Oréal’s sales come from Western Europe with 35%, this is most likely due to the domestic home market being included in this division, with France as the founding country. Sales still remain relatively high in North America and Asia, Pacific however sales in the other geographical zones are relatively small in comparison. These countries are however, new markets therefore sales are expected to not be as high as those in more established