Management Analysis of Boots UK: Strengths, Weaknesses, Challenges, and Strategies

This article provides a detailed analysis of Boots UK, including its strengths, weaknesses, challenges, and strategies. It covers micro-environment analysis, PESTLE analysis, Porter's Five Forces, and issues faced by the company. The article also includes a reflection on the learning experience and a milestone for the project.

Running head: MANAGEMENT
Management

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Contents
Introduction......................................................................................................................................3
Micro Environment Analysis...........................................................................................................3
Customer Analysis.......................................................................................................................3
Suppliers Analysis........................................................................................................................4
Competitor Analysis........................................................................................................................4
Performance Analysis......................................................................................................................4
Strength........................................................................................................................................4
Weaknesses..................................................................................................................................4
Challenges....................................................................................................................................5
PESTLE Analysis............................................................................................................................5
Political........................................................................................................................................5
Economical factors.......................................................................................................................5
Social Factors...............................................................................................................................5
Technological Factors..................................................................................................................5
Environmental Factors.................................................................................................................5
Legal Factors................................................................................................................................6
Porter Five forces.............................................................................................................................6
Issues Faced.....................................................................................................................................6
Conclusion.......................................................................................................................................7

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Reflection.........................................................................................................................................7
References......................................................................................................................................10

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Introduction
Boots is one of the chains of pharmacies in the country UK. BOOTS UK is the largest company
in the pharmacy that led health related business and the company also work as the retailer of
beauty products. The company is the part of the Retail Pharmacy International Division of
Walgreen Boots Alliance, Inc. The company is the first enterprise of health and wellbeing in the
international market. The company has varied range of variety such as they provide innovative
boots and they have the exclusive products in the skin care that has the large customer base. It is
created around 165 years ago and still the brand is in the heart of the people.It is available on
higher streets throughout the country. The company was introduced in the year 1849 by John
Boots. The company expanded its business in manufacturing as well as more research of drug
with its improvement of the Ibuprofen painkiller. In the recent scenario, the company faced some
challenges due to change in some internal and external environment. The culture of boots takes
significantly changed over the years.
In the following part there will be detailed analysis of the external and internal factors that affect
the performance of the company as well as challenges faced by the company that create hurdles
to grow in the competitive market (Gholipour, 2016).
Micro Environment Analysis
Customer Analysis
The customers of Boots are divided into two groups which include mail order consumers and
walk-in customers.
 Mail order consumers: Such group save amount by ordering their medication through
mail. In general, the consumers that order from mail are mostly older in age which is
normally 60. Older people consume more medication as compare to young people (Boots,
and Wilkins, 2018).
 Walk-in Customers: such groups of consumers are also looking for the cheapest prices
for their medicines. Most of the times they purchase their medicine each month from
local pharmacy sometimes even at higher price (Anderson and Thornley, 2016).

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Suppliers Analysis
There are around thousands of stores are in UK and in which thousands of products of
pharmaceutical and beauty products are available that is from bubble bath to nappies. It is
important that the product that are sourced from should been trustable, responsible and ethical.
Therefore the company has put that it on priority that the products that are produced by the
suppliers must treat their workers fairly and they are responsible towards the environment
(Morgan, allontire, and Foxon, 2017).
Competitor Analysis
There are various companies have emerged in the recent years that provides boots in the
affordable prices and with a good market strategy. The tough competition to the company has
been given by the NORDSTROM, Debenhams, Bergdorf Goodman and Macy’s. These
companies have also made a special place in the market and have affected the market of Boots
Company in a large way (Gholipour, 2016).
Performance Analysis
The company’s performance is rapidly growing due to its global reach in the market through its
mobile app and website that enable the customer to order globally. The website is very customer
friendly that helps the company to have a more customer base (Gholipour, 2016).
Strength
 The company has a good R&D team that provides optical offers or solutions to the
customers
 Various innovative provides by company
 There are various brands of Boots that helps to hold a large customer base in UK.
 The product of the cost is low from the competitors (Gholipour, 2016).
Weaknesses
 The retails stores of boots are not present globally as compared to its competitors
 The most of dependency of the company is on the UK market that leads to fluctuations.

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Challenges
 The expansion of the company into other countries
 To tap emerging economies for the global operations (Gholipour, 2016).
PESTLE Analysis
Political
There are various political decisions that are made by the government had impacted the
operations of the business performance of the company in a huge way. For example the
government has allowed some of the supermarkets to open various pharmaceutical stores within
their stores. By this policy the government believes that it will improve the healthcare and will
also increase the services of NHS. It has created a huge competition in the market (Weiner,
2018).
Economical factors
The healthcare industry has been highly affected due to the global recession. The prices of the
healthcare products have changed the customers spending on the healthcare products which has
affected the business badly (Aithal, 2017).
Social Factors
The social factors that are eating habit, exercise, type of good food that the company is focused
on and has made several products that can fulfill these needs of a customer.
Technological Factors
The internet evolution has made the products online that has helped the company in expanding
its market globally. The company earns three fourth of its revenue from the online selling of its
products.
Environmental Factors
There are various countries that have been committed in generating green energy due to the risk
of global energy. The company has played key roles in increasing the energy efficiency and
reducing the carbon footprint (Gauld, Kelly, Emmerton, Kurosawa, Bryant, and Buetow, 2019).

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Legal Factors
The company is facing various legal issues as Alliance Boot for the case of sex discrimination
case in UK and European Courts. This is the biggest legal challenge that the company is facing
(Ramanathan, Black, Ghobadian, and Gallear, 2017).
Porter Five forces
The five forces that are used for making the analysis and for the attraction of the business
organization that are:-
Supplier Power: The competitive plays an important role where more suppliers leads to increase
in the bargaining power. The company has bargained with over the 80 of the suppliers which has
lead to decrease in the price
Buyer Power: The loyal customers are the reason that reduced the power of the buyer. The
company provides a nectar card through which the loyal customers are rewarded.
Threats of New Entrants: The entrance of new companies in the market which leads to heavy
competition. This will affect the company’s monopoly in the market and will decrease the
market share in the company (Maple, Civera, and Casalegno, 2015).
Issues Faced
There are various issues that the company is facing which are:-
 The price of the product is higher than the competitors in the market
 The global reach of the company is less than its competitors
 The company is facing a tough competition
 Various legal issues that the company has been facing
 The company is facing from the slow rate of expansion in the global market
 The financial issues due to the recession in the global market (Moro Visconti, 2016)
Conclusion
It can be said that Boots is the largest company of pharmaceuticals and beauty products. The
company has various stores all over the UK and it has been analyzed that the company has

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various strengths and weakness in the market. There are two types of customers of the company
one is mail order customers and the other is walk in customers. The company has strong R&D
and innovative product but the company also has weakness of the reach of the customers in the
worldwide. The company has been widely affected from the political decisions of the
government and the economical condition of the World due to recession. The company has faced
various legal issues and the company has used technology in a very good way. 0 The supplier
and buying power greatly affects the pricing of the company. Thus the company faced many
issues which are needed to be improved.

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Reflection
Date Background to
activity/experience
What happened? Reflections on what
your group learned
11th July Communication In group we have
lacked in certain areas
therefore some points
had either been
missed or overdone
In team various task
has been allotted to
different persons like
few people had done
field work while some
have made research
on the basis of various
journals. But due to
lack of some task had
either been missed or
was done two times
which is not required.
Therefore we had
learned that
communication is an
important part of
doing any project or
anything. This gives a
great learning to me.
12th july Coordination We have worked on
the company Boots
UK and various
analyses had been
made on the company
We in the team had
various several
researches and found
that the company has
various strengths

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that who are the
customers of the
company and how the
company target the
customers and who
are the competitors of
the company. In this
work the coordination
is required of our
team that who will
target which part but
in coordination we
have successfully
reached but due to
technical errors and
poor planning of our
we failed to reach the
loyal customers
initially
whereas some
weakness. I got to
realized that there are
some skills which has
enhanced in me like
graphical skills and
my numeric skills that
I compared this skills
with one another and
consider things
numerically and
graphically (Lejeune,
Beausaert, and
Raemdonck, 2018
27th July Lack of leading All teams require a
leader who can push
and coordinate and
guide. But the
problem happens with
our team that there
were more
dependency on each
other and no one has
taken.
We learned that the
importance of a group
leader who can guide
the team and lead the
team from the front.

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Things I have learned
I had learned a lot of things from my seminars and other that there are various things that I have
learned about the Boot companies and there are various important topics were discussed in the
seminar. The learning’s we had made through the seminar and on the basis of that in the group
we have lacked in various areas therefore through some areas we have lacked and therefore the
research becomes time consuming and found that the strengths of the company are more than the
weakness and the company has taken various steps in removing the weakness. The boots
company has enhanced their market through their website and application from where I learned
that how website and type of website can enhance the skills of a person and from there I have
realized that there are lot of things that I can learn is my Information communication skills will
be enhance from this research and various other skills will also be enhanced and therefore I have
found that these skills are very important for one to reach an milestone. We have decided a
timeline for each task and which task has to do in what time and in between the task what
hurdles can come and how to overcome that hurdles in limited time and from there I have
learned that how I can manage the team (Twigg, Wright, Kirkdale, Desborough, and Thornley,
2017).
To reach the milestone we have read the tuck man and berlin theories where they has stated that
not only coordination will work but it is also required that the employees or the team working
should have mutual trust and therefore we take this learning into our work and started to trust
and learned each other strengths and weakness. Where one group is lacking must push them or
simplify his work by helping and use each other strengths in completing the task.
This work highly helped me in enhancing my employee skills that what are the qualities require
in an employee and also my leadership skills also been improved that how to lead a team and
how to utilize the maximum
Milestone
We will visit the company stores in different areas and we will found that the company has
various loyal customers that have made the company stable in the market. We will also take
various reviews from the customers of the company from which I got the mixed reviews but

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most of the reviews are good. The customers stated that although the products are good but are
costly according to the other brands which have recently emerged in the market. We have also
found that the customers are loyal for the company because of its maintained quality and
innovative products which the other companies in the market have failed to do so (Gupta, Gupta,
and Gupta, 2019). This is due to the strong R&D of the company that has made the innovative
products in the company. We have the company invest a huge amount in R&D that has made the
company innovative and different from others. The company has a large number of highly
qualified employees in the R&D branches. The company generates incomes not only from a
single brand but there are various brands of the company that creates a huge customer base and
that has created a big market base for the company.
The milestone we have to reach that the company is the largest producer and supplier of the
pharmaceuticals and beauty products. We have to found that the company is facing the issues
that most of the revenue is from the UK market and as researched we found that the other
companies in the market is generating income from the most of the outside the UK markets that
provides power to invest more in the expansion and in the promotion of the company. The
company has facing the certain issues such as the there is the communication gap between the
employees and top level managers that results into failure of operations. We will talk to the team
with some of the ex employee of the company as per their reviews we will find that the company
will fail in certain areas due to the communication gap between the employees (Gould, 2017). In
the research we had found that there are number of entrance in the market of pharmacy and that
has damaged the market of Boots in a huge way and as the price and the quality of the product is
very good. Therefore from the issues hi have analyzed that the company is required to change its
marketing strategy and try something innovative so that they can compete their competitors. On
the basis of some reports we have analyzed that the company is required to make the company
globalize by expanding its market to more countries that can help the company to have more
consumers and that will increase the revenue of the company and has the make the company that
there are various laws that has generated that the company that can help the company in making
the company worldwide. I have found from various reports that has given the idea of the
company which I have referred in the references and my researched is based on the
communication from various people like employees, consumers and suppliers of the company
and from there I found that what the problems the company is facing. There are various

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customers who had purchased the product had given a good review about the company rather
than the bad reviews (Gholipour, 2016).
The company has various suppliers and buyers and we have to find that the product quality,
price, customer following are the important factors from which the price and demand depends. If
there are large suppliers of the product than the price of the product will decrease and the
customers can easily bargain as researched by our team. The buyer will lose the bargaining
power if the company has the loyal customers. We have a plan to complete this research and
action till the end of August (Hammad, 2015).

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References
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Research. International Journal of Case Studies in Business, IT and Education (IJCSBE), 1(1),
pp.1-13.
Alderson, A.J., Green, A., Whitaker, D., Scally, A.J. and Elliott, D.B. (2016) A comparison of
spectacles purchased online and in UK optometry practice. Optometry and Vision
Science, 93(10), p.1196.
Anderson, C. and Thornley, T. (2016) Who uses pharmacy for flu vaccinations? Population
profiling through a UK pharmacy chain. International journal of clinical pharmacy, 38(2),
pp.218-222.
Boots, J. and Wilkins, R. (2018) Three New Technologies Whose Time Has Come in Equipment
Finance. The Journal of Equipment Lease Financing (Online), 36(1), pp.1-6.
Gauld, N.J., Kelly, F.S., Emmerton, L.M., Kurosawa, N., Bryant, L.J. and Buetow, S.A. (2019)
Medicines reclassification from a pharmaceutical industry perspective: an international
qualitative study. Research in Social and Administrative Pharmacy, 15(4), pp.387-394.
Gholipour, A. (2016) Human resource development by means of personal development plan in
project-based organizations. Journal of Public Administration, 8(1), pp.15-32.
Gould, J. (2017) Career development: A plan for action. Nature, 548(7668), pp.489-490.
Gupta, A., Gupta, N. and Gupta, M. (2019) British Airways-A SWOT and PESTLE Analysis-
The impact of Europe 2020 policy. NOLEGEIN-Journal of Corporate & Business Laws, pp.1-11.
Hammad, A. (2015) Strategic Change and Its Management to Expand Business Through
Implementation of Models: A Case Study of Boots UK. Available at SSRN 2676800.
Lejeune, C., Beausaert, S. and Raemdonck, I. (2018) The impact on employees’ job performance
of exercising self-directed learning within personal development plan practice. The International
Journal of Human Resource Management, pp.1-27.

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Maple, P., Civera, C. and Casalegno, C.G. (2015) An investigation of ‘The Spectrum of
Corporate Social Responsibility’. Or to be more precise: Over-communication-a comparative
analysis of the UK and Italian banking sectors from the customers' perspective. In ISIS Summit
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