The Body Shop in Macau doesn’t set any retailers. It has three specialty stores. The distribution channel of specialty stores help The Body Shop gain advantages when enhances its brand equity.
The three specialty stores of The Body Shop are all locates at downtown district of Macau. The big green eye-catching logo of The Body Shop will attach many passably and build very strong brand awareness to customer. And at the same time, the professional facade of the shop makes the brand image more powerful.
The brand which set counters in the shopping mall like New Yaohan in Macau has limited shelf space and salespersons. It cannot displace all of the product of its brand.So it narrow the choices of customer ,cannot provide an overall services to customer which will decrease its sales to a certain extent.However, the specialty stores have enough shelf spaces to display its products and the products can be set in a convenient way which customer prefer. The products of The Body Shop are displayed by different product lines which is easy for customer to choose. And since there are more salespersons in the specialty stores than in the counters, customers can get better and more comfortable services than in counters of the shopping center.
Another advantage of the distribution channel of specialty stores is that much more distribution cost will be saved. The brand which set counters in the shopping mall or have some retailers will always share the revenues with the shopping mall or pay for the retail cost to retailers. Sometimes the payment can be more than 20% of the sales. So by setting specialty stores, the company will save a lot on this kind of cost. * Product assortment
The Body Shop does well on the product assortment. As mentioned above, The Body Shop displays the products by different product lines in its specialty stores. The product lines are classified by functions and series.
For the facial