Impact of Innovation, Business Ethics and CSR on Burberry Group PLC

This report discusses the impact of innovation, business ethics and corporate social responsibility on Burberry Group PLC. It elaborates on the importance of innovation in staying ahead of competition, the benefits of following ethical business practices, and the role of CSR in enhancing the company's reputation and sustainability. The report also highlights Burberry's use of business models to innovate and its efforts towards sustainability through CSR practices.

BUSINESS ENVIRONMENT

Table of Contents
INTRODUCTION...........................................................................................................................3
MAIN BODY...................................................................................................................................3
The Impact of Innovation on BURBERRY GROUP PLC..........................................................3
The Impact of Business Ethics and CSR on BURBERRY GROUP PLC...................................5
Corporate Social Responsibility..................................................................................................7
CONCLUSION................................................................................................................................9
REFERENCES..............................................................................................................................10

INTRODUCTION
Business environment refers to all those factors which affects business operations, in
business environment both internal and external factors affect the performance of the business.
The role of business environment is very important in the performance of the business. This
report will highlight the concepts by choosing Burberry as the firm which is a fashion retailer
company headquartered in United Kingdom (Dziubaniuk, Nyholm, 2020). The company offers
luxury products all across the world. Later, this study will elaborate the impacts of innovation,
business ethics and corporate social responsibility over BURBERRY GROUP PLC. This study
report will discuss about the impact of innovation, business ethics and corporate social
responsibility. The proper innovation is done by investing the time and money in it, customers
also attracts towards the efforts provided to them by the extra value and services which cost to
more sales (Carroll, Brown, 2018).
MAIN BODY
The Impact of Innovation on BURBERRY GROUP PLC
The business innovation means launching something new to the company which can be
new products, market strategy, method etc, and promoting the new value and growth. A
successful innovation adds the value to the business which increase the profit margins which also
improves its present products or it can also form the new one as well. The innovations help to
stay ahead of the competitions. As with the globalization and quickly change in market, the
business competition has increased more than before. So it is necessary to take the step forward
in the market and analyse and fulfil the customer needs (Manuel, Herron, 2020).
Failure in improving the products and poor services can bring down at the risk to losing
the customer attention and more to the innovative competitors.. There are three different models
of the business innovation, each model includes innovating the different features of the
organizations.
 Revenue model innovation : the business owners looks at the revenue model for the
places to innovate the products and services which is offered by them. The organizations
select the revenue model for certain aspects like change in prices of their offering,
creating the new changes in the supply chain, to bring the innovative products and stop
selling the old products, and sell to the new customers.

 Business model innovation : this model is used by organizations to take forward and
update to their sales from physical stores to the online stores. The business owners look at
the business models for places to utilize the innovative result in business processes,
business strategy, technologies, and their partnership in the businesses.
 Industry model innovation : when the organization selects the industry model
innovation it is used for market their product to totally different industry or creating a
new industry to adjust with the new products.
In order to elaborate the aspects of innovation within the Burberry, it has been identified that the
company is utilizing business model to take certain advantages. The company was established in
1856 and introduced as Burberry luxury lifestyle fashion house brand. The products offered by
them are designed, manufactured and sold under their brand name only. It is specified for the
products like ready-made, apparel, accessories, fragrances, cosmetics and sunglasses. The brand
was famous for its gabardine raincoat, the founder was not satisfied the product and after he took
inspiration from the country folk's loose smocks and designed the breathable weather proof
fabric which got the trademark as “Gabardine”, Burberry also underwent a modification to
revitalized the brand and encourage its performance, in its pursuance to develop the well
maintained and brand identity and to provide a excellent customer experience.
The Burberry has engaged a powerful social strategy to reach out the target audience in the
digital space and the brand has created the outstanding performance in online consumer
experience through both the social media and websites. It also provided the new opportunities
and helped the company to function in regional and international markets. The majority of the
social media platforms are twitter, Facebook and Instagram where it also well-kept the unique
themes among different platforms with optimizing the suitable content in each platform. It is
among those luxury brands who utilize social media platforms in order to gain competitive
advantages in regional as well as global market area. Company continuously maintained their
presence over the site with the development of the brand in continuous manner. Burberry
introduces one of the best feature namely Art of the Trench which is basically a community
where the individuals can upload their photos wearing the Burberry trenches which positioned
customers at centre of the brand and attracted numerous users. The company also follows the
innovative culture which gives access to the customers to use their products freely from
geographic locations across the world (Nguyen, Nguyen 2020).

According to the innovation 1opportunities, Innovation is the method of technological,
institutional and human resource to form the findings which result in new practices, products and
institutions which is improved and efficient enhancing. In the company like Burberry, it has
accelerated by the conventional application of scientific ways to promote the production in the
company. The modification in technological change outcome in positive platforms which
promotes the effective and efficient ways of production. The formulation provided the various
opportunities to the Burberry for development of its actual position. The company has also
introduced its new application where it has linked up with digital production agency Koffeecup
which is specialised in AR, VR, XR and other tech (Pelikánová, Němečková, MacGregor, 2021).
The application includes the gaming technology and designs for speeding up and the method of
locating the print on the garments.
The software creates the two-dimensional print on a 3D product template, to see how the
finished product will look and get the at a time feedback. Afterwords the 3D development team
creates the B bounce and B surf games, and they shocked to see the opportunity in which their
technology is being part of the product designing process. The application brings the benefits for
the company where it reduced the paper usage at the design stage by two-thirds. Reaching to the
perfect sample with few repetitions leads to cuts off the factory waste. In the Burberry digital
strategy it provided the services available to its customers in the pandemic using the various
tools including live chat, virtual appointments and client events. The strategy is also consisted of
the pop-ups and local activations on their portal (Rodriguez-Gomez, Arco-Castro, Lopez-Perez,
Rodríguez-Ariza,2020).
Hence, from the following discussion it concludes that the Burberry has done the proper
innovation by following the effective market strategies and models.
The Impact of Business Ethics and CSR on BURBERRY GROUP PLC
The business ethics is moral guidelines for business based upon the notions what is right,
wrong and fair. It includes system of practices and procedure which helps in building the trust
with their consumer. Some ethics are integrated in law like minimum wages, insider trading
restrictions and environmental regulations. The people in their business depends on their own
principles in making the decisions (R.ěmečková, MacGregor,2021R). They are also affected by
their superiors and colleagues while making the decisions and feel pressurized to act unethically
in making the profits. Burberry follows the business ethics, the technology and digital

communication has made easy to identify. Companies are devoting more resources to business
ethics to avoid the negative involvement.
Businesses that gives priority to the ethics over the profit will see the good benefits,
Burberry must show the good ethics if they want to be accepted by the society. Burberry also
requires all of its supply chain partners, if they are providing products or services, they must be
agreed with company's responsible business principles. They must maintain the correct
accounting procedures, and give applicable information about the performance of the firm to
investors and protect the owners rights and investments. In relation with their employees
Burberry must provide a safe workplace, and pay them adequately for the work and treat them
fairly. There are some impacts of business ethics : Build customer loyalty : a loyal customer base is the key to long business growth and
success. Serving to the existing customer do not require the marketing cost, but getting
the new one requires. Burberry follows the ethical ways and gives benefits to its
employees by serving them better quality of goods and services at reasonable price from
its competitors. Retain good employees : individuals in organization levels wants to be paid fairly for
their work and time they have given to achieve the organization goals. Burberry has the
positive working environment as the employee's safety and well-being is the top most
priority. Due to its positive aspects it also has the good employee turnover ratio. The
company supports its employees regarding their concerns and it also maintains the base
pay for all the individuals who are not be able to fulfil their roles. Employee performance : With the help of adopting great and ethical business practices,
the employees of Burberry are highly satisfied with the management of the company.
This automatically assist them in order to give their best and thus increase their
productivity level. Moreover, with the satisfied employees, the environment also has been
in optimistic manner which hence in any way benefit the firm.
 Company credibility : The company's reputation is affected when the company is
unethical. In that situation not only the leaders and company lose respect from
employees, but also they lose the credibility with the public. But with the proper adoption
of ethical policies and approaches by the Burberry, the company is extremely able to
sustain their brand image and goodwill within the competitive market space in which

various competitors are available who also offers similar kind of products at competitive
price range (Ugwuozor, 2020).
Corporate Social Responsibility
Corporate Social Responsibility is a proposal in which the company shows it efforts
towards its stakeholders by giving them the social and economic benefits. It increases the
customer loyalty and boost engagement and also shows outcome of increased sales and profits,
operational savings, and improved productivity. It is the business model by which companies
form a combined effort to handle in the ways which enhance rather than break down society and
environment. It also helps the both factors i.e. society and brand image of the companies. CSR is
the huge concept which take many forms depending upon the company and industry. By CSR
programs, philanthropy and the volunteer efforts, business profit the society while rising their
brands. As more the CSR is important for the community, it has the equal value for the company.
Burberry is involved in moving towards the sustainability which shows their interest, and
they also ranked in DJSI. Burberry have started to take sustainability into consideration and it
has a lot to improve. From the rankabrand tool, it analysed the sustainability level of Burberry is
D-label. Its competitor Gucci also has the same D-label but it has more score than Burberry,
different competitors like dior, fendi has the E-label. It is the lowest score and represents they are
not indulged in the sustainability. The other brands like vaude and Stella McCartney has B and
C-label, and they are on the way to sustainability, needs more improvements. Burberry can
further proceed to the steps of both the brands and analyse what different they are doing than
others (Siltaloppi, Rajala, Hietala, 2021).
By applying the Carroll's pyramid method it discuss the companies to move forward and
help the various institutions and communities, and fulfil the shortages for the benefit of the
society as a part of their Corporate Social Responsibility. It discusses that how and why the
organization must take the social responsibility. There are four elements of Carroll's pyramid of
corporate social responsibility, and they are not mutually exclusive but complement each other.
 Economic responsibility : This is the basic and foremost responsibility of any business
organization as this is based upon profitability aspect. Profit generation are the primal
approach as without revenue generation, no business is able to survive within the market
space. In context of Burberry, the company adopts CSR practices in order to maintain

their goodwill as well as revenue generation because it helps in becoming sustainable in
front of their competitors. Hence, to fulfil this specific responsibility, the Burberry
produce goods and services as per the requirements of their consumers along with
offering it at very reasonable prices (Valentinov, Clausen, 2019.).
 Legal responsibility : the second level is the most important responsibility among the
four levels as it says the organizations must follow the rules and regulations. The markets
are created by the governments where the company exists. In context of Burberry, it
follows the legal responsibility in order to maintain its brand image and value for the
better growth and further development which makes its identity in the marketplace.
Employment laws, competition with other companies, tax regulations and health and
safety concern of the employees are the legal methods.
 Ethical responsibility : this is the ethical layer of pyramid which is based upon the doing
the right thing and being fair in all the circumstances by avoiding the harm. According to
the CSR practices the third layer is more concerned about morals and ethics. In
discussion of Burberry, they are doing their business ethically which is also important
not only for their stakeholders but for their consumers as well. With this, the buyers also
feel more comfortable and make purchase of their goods and services in most suitable
manner. Ethical responsibilities work as being environmental friendly, treating
employees and suppliers with a code of conduct (Tormo-Carbó,Seguí-MasOltra, , 2018).
 Philanthropic responsibility : this occupies the small space and it is the highest level of
the CSR and should not be taken lightly. This responsibility holds to the company true
value and the relation of giving back to the society they take from. Burberry follows this
responsibility and work as environmentally friendly by serving the society. They
contribute 1% of their profits margins to the charitable trust every year, which improves
the quality of life of the general society in complete ways.
By the following Carroll's CSR pyramid it has been concluded that a responsible and
quality of business is the one which qualifies all the levels of responsibilities before getting up to
the philanthropic level. Without completing all such responsibilities, a business cannot able to
sustain in front of their competitors (Sroka, Szántó, 2018).

CONCLUSION
This study report has discussed about the impact of innovations, impact of business ethics and
Corporate Social Responsibility in relation to the Burberry group which is established in United
Kingdom. This report have also discussed about the elemensts of the corporatye social
responsibility which are economical, legal, ethical, philanthropic

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