Evaluate the Internal and External Influence on Primark and Relate to It to Best Practices, Corporate Governance, Corporate Social Responsibility and Ethics?

Primark, an Irish clothing retailer company was set up and headquartered in Dublin in 1969. Nowadays, there are over 250 stores across the United Kingdom, Ireland, Europe and the United States. Moreover, Primark operates with about 700 suppliers in China, India, Bangladesh, Turkey and Eastern Europe. Primark takes corporate social responsibility for the shareholders, owners, customers, suppliers as well as employees. Corporate social responsibility is that a company not only creates profits for the shareholders, but also undertakes the social responsibility for customers, employees and environment, including complying with business ethics, rights of workers and the rules of environmental protection. In order to develop continuously, corporate social responsibility plays an significant role in a company, which drives stakeholders have reliance on the company. This essay focuses on the ways in which Primark taking its duty to society and the ways in which the company should have done better.

This report is based on the marketing techniques/ skills of Primark and Oxfam based on their products/services.

Primark never do promotion, according to one manager of Primark in London. Regular business is what Primark concerns. In other words, they could pay more attention to the regular business. Cost caused by promotion could be saved. In addition, there are fewer advertisements about Primark which should be a big part of their marketing cost. We could never see brochure in Primark. No billboard of Primark in the street. No advertisement on the internet. But we could see Primark bags in people’s hand along the street. Nevertheless, Primark saves a lot of money in this aspect.

In Primark, the company follows code of ethics which allows the rule that similar requirement must followed by every suppliers within their supply chain. Moreover, the organization helps and support their suppliers and workers of suppliers to become more productive and efficient that in turn guides the company in achieving cost efficiency and making sure that the company supply higher

In this report I will be talking about how my chosen organisation, which is Primark, uses ethical issues to consider in its every day operational activities. Primark may not have some ethical issues that I will be discussing about in this report, but I will talk in detail about how they could use them, issues in their business. I will be explaining how Primark’s way of selling affects ethical issues and will be discussing about the things they need to be aware of whilst selling their clothes.

The environment of any organization consists of internal and external factors. An organization should conduct a scan of its environment in order for it to determine development, and a forecast on the factors that may influence the success of the organization. Scanning the environment refers to the possession and utilization of the information that an organization has about trends, patterns, occasion and the external and internal relationship that are within an organization. A scan of the environment may assist the management team of an organization in making a decision about the future path of the

However, today, the focus on stakeholder’s (apart from the shareholders, these are customers, suppliers and employees) expectations has also grown radically. Accordingly, ethical behaviours such as meeting stakeholders’ expectation objectives, environmental objectives and corporate social responsibility, which is accountability to the society and social responsibility, have resultantly become very important. Failure to comply with ethical behaviours can causes a business to damage its brand value and its reputation, which in turn could lead to reduced profits or even losses (Carroll and Buchholtz, 2014).

In Primark, the human relation is based on employees’ behaviour where they have their own needs but at the same time they have to comply with the company’s policy (Rodrigo, 2012). So it is the managers or supervisors’ job to solve such problems and to ensure both employee and the management able to comply in order to get a win-win situation as both gets what they want.

Primark remains unbeatable at price in comparison with almost all products it offers and if not the quality of product is often found to be superior.

Internal analysis are conducted so it can identify an organizations strengths and weakness. Threats and opportunities are identified by assessing the external environment. Either in its broad or competitive environment. The most essential result of a SWOT analysis is the ability to draw conclusions about the organizations situation and need for strategic action.

This section of the report will examine and analyse the internal environment of Apple Inc. which will cover the organisation structure. The internal environment of Apple Inc. would be examined through the use of SWOT analysis. SWOT analysis is used to analyse an organisation 's strengths, weaknesses, opportunities and threats, in this case, the organisation is Apple Inc. however for the purposes of this section of the report, only the strengths and weaknesses will be examined and analysed.

This is due to the fact that it has been able to attract an assortment of customers to its brand. Primark also boasts of a high number of employees as a major strength. Due to the fact that the company is known for rewarding its employees well for their efforts, most of them put immense effort in their work to ensure the success of the company (Associated British Foods, 2012; Key Notes, 2012). Furthermore, Primark’s strength seems to be guaranteed for a considerable period of time since it is evident that the company has made efforts to ensure improvement of its various products and services. Other strengths associated with the company includes; distinctive products as well as the company’s background, a wide range of strategic moves that the company has made in the future and continues to make even presently, and the company’s indisputable workforce diversity among other strengths (Associated British Foods, 2012; Key Notes, 2012).

The process of SWOT analysis is a universal method widely approached in corporations to scan the internal and external environment so that companies can deploy relevant countermeasures to make improvements. It contains four elements, they are strengths, weaknesses, opportunities, and threats (Helms & Nixon, 2010).

The focus of the SWOT analysis is to identify the key internal and external factors that are important to achieving the objective. SWOT analysis groups key pieces of information into two main categories; internal factors and external factors. The internal factors are the strengths and weaknesses that are internal to the company while the external factors are the opportunities and threats that presented by the external environment. The internal factors are determined by their impact on the company’s objectives. What may represent strengths with respect to one objective may be weaknesses for another objective. The external factors may include technological change, legislation, cultural changes, and changes in the marketplace or competitive position (Wood, 2008).

SWOT analysis is a useful tool for understanding and decision-making for all sorts of situations in business and organization. SWOT analysis can be classified into internal and external factors affecting a company. The Strengths and Weaknesses of the SWOT analysis represent the internal factors that influence the viability of the company. While the Opportunities and Threats, on the other hand, are the external factors that may affect the company's performances. A SWOT analysis provides more understanding of the organization in relation to its internal and external environment so that manager can formulate better strategy in pursuit of its mission.