Lush Study

Introduction

The aim of this essay is to study the marketing environment and strategy of LUSH. LUSH is a successful company on sustainability, the advantage and disadvantage about its marketing environment and strategy are necessary to study. This essay starts with description of the key information of LUSH’s marketing background, which includes current situation of cosmetics industry. To introduce LUSH’s sustainable cosmetics marketing environment and industry indication especially about its sustainable practices. Then, an analysis about how LUSH’s main products, services, suppliers and customers work together and effect each other are stated. After that, this essay describes the strategies of pricing, promotion and distribution of LUSH, and describes the marketing mix that they had compare with its competitors. Finally, basing on these information about LUSH’s marketing environment and strategy, a SWOT analysis and a  positioning chart will be used to find out whether there is any recommendation could be given to LUSH to improve its marketing mix, in order to gain more advantage for their products in competition.

Marketing background

Cosmetic industry becomes a significant industry worldwide, which generates a multi-billion cash flow per year. It could divide into different parts, and one method is that cosmetic industry could divide into five parts. They are hair care, skin care, fragrance, make-up and others. The one other method is that, cosmetic industry may make up with sustainable products and unsustainable products. What the essay focus on is sustainable products. Green products have to be mentioned because it comes from sustainability, it is a particular part of sustainable products. They are asked to use recycled waste content to make package, and products have to be made of natural resources, avoid toxic emissions, save energy or water and contribute to the environment in a safe, healthy way. (Philip & Carolina, 2013, p. 6)

Brand of LUSH belongs to Lush Cosmetics Ltd. This company is a privately owned company in the UK. It products fresh handmade cosmetics which might be called green products. (Philip & Carolina, 2013, p. 6) LUSH owes over 820 stores and 30 subsidiaries, and they are in 50 countries such as UK, Japan and South America. (Tim & Jobs, 2012, p. 8) There are some beliefs in LUSH, and they stated the opinions about sustainability they hold and the sustainable practices they do. In the environment side, LUSH first against to use unnecessary package to reduce the waste as much as possible. At the same time every package they use is recyclable. Second, LUSH use sustainable raw materials instead of some traditional materials, such as palm oil, in order to reduce the negative effect on environment through stopping over-use. In the society side, LUSH stated their determination about non animal text for all products. (Stoddart & Brown, 2014, p. 390) Then, the supply chain of LUSH could deliver their products as soon as possible to every stores. (Sahota, 2014, p. 9)They makes sure every products are in good care before they are in front of customers. Further, each product of LUSH has its complete records to support check the information about it. In the use of resources side, LUSH insist to use fresh organic fruit and vegetables to make products. They encourage customers to use bags and containers in circular. (Tim & Jobs, 2012, p. 16) In the other side, they also support some activities about environmental and animal protection. For this causes, a number of events took place in their stores to spread the belief.