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Introduction

Beauty Lab Inc is a start-up business in business idea stage which will deal with offering unique beauty products and services in America through e-commerce basis. Beauty Lab will offer customized services to the customers by stocking the items depending on the customer preferences. The company will source products that appeal to individual customer needs and deliver them to their premises upon placing an order. Further, will target those customers that have busy schedules and cannot visit beauty stores and offer them customized services. The company hopes to bring the taste of manufacturer’s products at the door of the customers. Moreover, the company will offer after sales services such demonstrating the usage of the products to enable the consumers to reap maximum benefits of the products. The company will promote its products and services on the social media platforms such as Facebook, Twitter, among others. Finally, the company will offer the user-friendly functionality of the website pages so that the users can easily navigate through the products and services being offered and place an order faster and conveniently.

The company’s external or competitive environment

Beauty Lab Inc. operates in the beauty industry. This beauty industry is very competitive, especially to the new entrants. The competitors in this industry range from “brick and mortar” stores to online stores (John, 2010). The first big competitor in this industry is Gloss.com. This company offers high-end cosmetics, perfume, and skin care. Other big competitors are Estee Launder, Chanel, Avon Products, Inc., L’Oreal S.A., Elizabeth Arden, Inc., Neutrogena, and Clarins. When Gloss.com entered the US markets the other big competitors backed it and this shows how the big brands in this beauty industry in America collaborate to command the market terms for themselves and perhaps make it hard for customers influence the market (Head & Horn, 2010). Gloss.com was embraced by these big competitors as the sole online beauty retailer to carry their products to the market.

The big competitors in this industry have established strategic stores in malls and supermarkets targeting the mature middle and upper classes. In very malls and supermarkets, these beauty products companies have established big sections of displaying their products. The major manufacturers of beauty products have franchised their products to independent retailers.

The major competitors in the beauty products have significantly greater resources which allow them to carry out promotional activities. Substantial resources are devoted to these companies to advertise their products in the traditional media such as television commercials and print media. These mass marketing approaches allow the products of these companies to achieve higher recognition and visibility than the products of emerging beauty retailers.

The major competitor retailer commanding the US beauty products industry is Ulta Beauty (ULTA). Ulta offers a wide assortment of beauty products, fragrances, and cosmetics across the price spectrum. It also has a high-touch customer care with low-pressure (Salancik, 2012). Further, the company has incorporated salon services such as hairstyling and brow tinting in its stores. All these ranges of services make Ultra an ideal one-stop beauty shop becoming the most popular retail stores in the industry. In fact, Ultra currently runs a chain of 800 stores across the US.

The company’s general environment

Beauty Lab aims at building brand recognition. Brand recognition relates to how the services and products of the company attain the loyalty of the consumers as they associate with these products. To measure this goal, Beauty Lab can conduct a market survey to establish how the consumers perceive the products of the company. That is, to establish the perception and attitude they have on the services and the products of Beauty Lab. Further, the success of this goal can be measured by looking at the number of referrals made by the existing consumers. That is, it is assumed that happy consumers will refer their friends to the services of Beauty Lab.

The second goal for Beauty Lab internal environment is to provide accessibility for customers to the products directly. This relates to ensuring there is a convenient way for customers to access the products of Beauty Labs. This can be measured by looking at how the website of Beauty Lab remains functioning for customers to access it. Further, we can look at the how convenient the physical store is for easier shipment of the ordered products to the customers. We can also measure how long it takes for a customer to navigate through the website and place an order. That is, is the functionality of the website easier and friendly to the users?

The other goal was to increase sales and expand market share. This can be measured at the sales figures of a company and the size of the market the company is commanding with respect to the industry’s market size. The goal to attract potential customers can be measured by looking at the number of new customers achieved compared the previous trading year. The goal to improve customer service can be measured at looking at the level of customer complaints about time, the time it takes for the company to address the complaints, and the level of customer satisfaction and loyalty. Finally, the goal to collect the customer’s information can be measured by looking at the database of the customer’s details the company is in possession over a given period of time.

Organization's industry operating environment

Every e-commerce business is susceptible to some risks. Today, the issue of hacking of systems has been on the rise as hackers up their tactics in launching attacks on these online businesses. There have been a number of online business which has failed because of online fraud. In fact, statistics show that e-commerce business lost above $2 billion annually in sales in online-fraud risks (Fleisher & Bensoussan, 2015). For this reasons, the online companies must devise protection and protocols to safeguard themselves from online threats.

Beauty Lab is likely to be vulnerable to online risks for a number of reasons. These include weak authentication due to lack of SSL installation on the website, lack of fraud monitoring software to detect fraud, lack of proper verification tools for orders, unreliable web hosting service providers, as well as lack of CVV/AVS for verification of credit card transactions (Morrison, 2013). The likely effects of these vulnerabilities are many. First, they may lead to loss of product along the hackers re-direct it to their premises. Second, the company is likely to lose reputation as many customers will lose trust in transacting business with it. Third, these vulnerabilities are likely going to lead to loss of sales as many customers will continue to cease doing business with it.

Beauty Lab is an online business venture and as such, it is likely going to face various internet-related risks which the company will face for being connected with internet. The business needs to come up with Internet Security Assessment to deal with these risks. The risk assessment will involve both internal and external assessment of risks (Morrison, 2013). Beauty Lab should conduct a risk assessment for a number of technical reasons. First, risk assessment is necessary because internet systems are usually part of the problem. Internet systems define them as a subset of the whole online infrastructure and for this reason, it can be separated, analyzed, and secured. Second, internet systems are common the target points of the cyber-attacks. Therefore, the internet connections must be well secured. The threat launched through the internet can easily be detected, analyzed and eliminated. Another reason is that internet systems are sometimes beyond the control of a business. In order for Beauty Lab to identify the internal risks facing it is to conduct an intensive business audit.

References

Fleisher, C. S., & Bensoussan, B. E. (2015). Business and competitive analysis: effective application of new and classic methods. FT Press.

John, K. (2010). Leadership and Management: 21st Management Approach. London: Oxford Press

Morrison, D. (2013). Risk Management and Loss Control Manual for Local Government; The Local Government Institute; Seattle, WA.