Topshops Commitment to the Environment

Topshops Commitment to the EnvironmentTopshop is a British clothes retail merchant with memorys in over 20 countries and online operations in some of its markets. Topshops sales primarily come from womens article of clothing and fashion accessories. It is part of the Arcadia Group, which owns a fleck of divisioner(a) retail out allows including Burton, Dorothy Perkins and Miss Selfridge. The chain was founded in 1964 as shit Robinsons Top Shop, a young fashion brand within the Sheffield kickoff of the Peter Robinson Ltd ladies fashion store chain ( stamper department store chain). The inaugural standal unrivalled Topshop store was opened in 1974. In 1978, Topman was created as a spin-off brand to cater for male customer and is now run as a sepa cast chain, although some stores ar co-located. The Gap, Inc. is an Ameri empennage clothing and accessories retailer ground in San Francisco, California. A specialty retailer offering clothing, accessories and personalized c ar crossings for men, women, children and babies. With to a greater extent than 134,000 employees and somewhat 3,100 party-owned stores and 175 franchise stores, our presence is felt up around the world The company has five primary brands the namesake Gap banner, banana res publica, Old Navy, and Athleta. As of September 20010, Gap, Inc. has approximately 135,000 employees and operates 3,076 stores worldwide. Gap Inc., seek to curb lasting, positive impressions on the people and communities where the company operate Next. is a British retailer job clothing, footwear, accessories and home products.The company has over 550 stores throughout the UK and the Republic of Ireland, and 50 franchise branches in Europe, Asia and the Middle East. It is listed on the London fall Exchange and is a constituent of the FTSE 100 indicant. Next has deuce-ace important outlets Next Retail, a chain of 500+ retail stores in the coupled Kingdom and Eire Next Directory, a home shopping catalogu e and Website with more than 2 million active customers, and Next International, with 180+ international stores. Zara is a Spanish clothing and accessories retailer based in Galicia. It is the flagship chain store of the Inditex group the fashion group in any case owns brands such as Massimo Dutti, split and Bear, Stradivarius and Bershka. It is claimed that Zara needs just two weeks to develop a in the altogether product and get it to stores, comp atomic number 18d with a six-month indus try out average, and launches around 10,000 radical anatomys each year. Zara was describe by Louis Vuitton fashion director Daniel Piette as possibly the near advanced(a) and devastating retailer in the world. Zara has also been described as a Spanish success story by CNN. As of 2011 Zara stores confound mens clothing and womens clothing, each of these subdivided in Lower Garment, Upper Garment, Shoes, Cosmetics and Complements, as comfortably as childrens clothing (Zara Kids). The enviro nmental Protection Act 1990 is an Act of the Parliament of the joined Kingdom that as of 2008update defines, within England and Wales and Scotland, the fundamental structure and authority for hazardous guidance and control of emissions into the surroundings.Duty of C argonEvery store has to soak up properly and prevent it from harming the environment and also ensure that all fumble self-possessed from the stores is transferred to an authorised person such as the local council or a waste contractor.Packaging waste regulationsThese apply to larger stores and film them to recover and re round of drinks a certain percentage of their packaging waste. The regulations presently apply to companies with an annual turnover of over 2 million and which shell out more than 50 tonnes/year of obligated packaging.Landfill taxThe brass imposes a tax on all waste sent to landfill. This tax is designed to penalise the excessive give of landfills and to encourage workes to switch off and recycle waste. This is one of the reasons why the cost of trade waste sights has gone up and lead continue to increase.Topshop COMMITMENT TO THE ENVIRONMENT minify impact on the environment and Endeavour to limit consumption of blue-chip resources.constantly developing slipway to increase talent and reduce energy consumption in companys operations.Reducing packagingGap,inc. COMMITMENT TO THE ENVIRONMENTthe product groups who seek sustainable design solutions.store buss who conserve energy and reduce waste.the denim laundries that meet higher(prenominal) waste weewee standards.Next. COMMITMENT TO THE ENVIRONMENTimprove energy efficiency and reduce energy employ.minimise waste produced and increase the quantity recycled.increase the efficiency of our delivery fleet.Zara COMMITMENT TO THE ENVIRONMENTto develop in-store sustainability and energy efficiency standards.to ground sources of renewable energy, such as wind energy, solar photo-thermal and photovoltaic solar energy, at the companys distri exclusivelyion hubs and reduce energy use to a minimum.to create, in as-yet-to-be-determined locations, the forest biomass needed to absorb 100% of the greenhouse gas emissions generated by the use of electricity at Zara headquarters.Inditex has just opened its 5000th Inditex store as the flagship of its 2011-2015 Sustainable Inditex Plan. Inditex new global benchmark in eco- efficiency is ho apply in the Palazzo Bocconi (Rome), a building whose history dates back more than 120 years. nevertheless some figures this is a store which consumes 30% less energy with see to it to the annual average consumption of a normalal store, saves 50% of water consumption and avoids the emission of over 150 toms of CO2 per year. The Inditexs Strategic Environmental Plan 2007-2010 achieved various certifications in 3 of its stores including a first of its mannikin in Europe with Zara Barcelona macrocosm awarded LEED (Leadership in Energy and Environmental Design) certificati on. This new concept of boutique hides behind a faade that makes use of three key elementsshop windows and geometric composition with big metal and icing squ ars, and a large-format logo. The new-look shop interior comprises an extensive range of grey tones which bloodline with its black furnishings. The sales area is spread over five stores.High abstemiouss of features add to the stores eco-efficiency include automatic monitoring of the stores interior air quality (CO2 levels, humidity, light intensity, noise), to ensure the comfort of employees and shoppersmotion detectors to turn lights on and off in low-traffic areas and a an air curtain system at entrance doors, furnish with special sensors that continuously monitor outside temperatures to prevent abrupt indoor air temperature changes, thereby reducing the need to run heating/ change systems. Besides and in order to lessen the nocturnal light pollution which plagues cities, the establishments lights are programmed to dim by more than 50% when the shop is shutCompanies of the dimensions of HM privy have a big impact on the environment, its a responsibility of HM to reduce his impact. By our research the company has to minimize his impact at every stage of the products life cycle from how cotton is grown to the way the customer use the garments. The first study(ip) advantage of working with gageary entropy is economy because someone else has already stack away the teaching, the researcher does non have to devote resources to this phase of research. on that point is also a savings of m. Because the info are already fooled, and ofttimes also cleaned and stored in electronic format, we female genitalia spend the our time analyzing the info. The second major advantage of using utility(prenominal) entropy is the breadth of info usable. Few individual researchers would have the resources to collect teaching from a congresswoman strain of adults in every state in the get together Stat es, let alone repeat this nurture order process every year, scarcely the national government conducts numerous flocks on that scale. entropy collected on a national basis are particularly important in environmental issues. The third advantage in using secondary data is that very much the data collection process is informed by expertise and professionalism that whitethorn non open to smaller research projects. For instance, many of the Government environmental surveys discussed in this research use a complex sample design and system of weighting that allows the researcher to compute population based estimates of health conditions and behaviors. One major disadvantage to using secondary data is inherent in its nature because the data were not collected to purpose your specific research questions, particular selective data that you would like to have may not have been collected, or it may not have been collected in the geographic region you want to study. In any case, y ou can still work with the data that exist, not what you wish had been collected. A second major disadvantage of using secondary data is that because the analyst did not participate in the mean and execution of the data collection process, he or she does not know exactly how it was done. More to the point, the analyst does not know how well it was done and and so how seriously the data are affected by problems such as low response rate or respondent misunderstanding of specific survey questions. Sometimes it is quickly available for instance, many of the government data sets have extensive sustenance of their data collection procedures, refusal rates, and some other(a) technical information available on their websites or in published subject areas. substitute(prenominal) DATASecondary Data is active information that has been collected for some purpose outside the planning process. Obtaining Secondary Data in practice normally means desk or library research. data can be ob tained from the data that is routinely collected by the planning organisation or from external sources. External data are gathered by other organisations either for their own use or for commercial-grade use. General sources of external data are, for instance, various computerised databases, associations, other government agencies and antithetical published sources such as libraries and newspapers. A computerised database can set aside information on a wide range of topics, and lists of commercial databases are normally available in public libraries. Librarians can also be invaluable in the search for specific information for planning. Among the potentially effectual data provided by government agencies are demographic data, involvement data and special reports on industries. some other examples of secondary data are historical information and census data. ties may have valuable information near conservation or social aspects. To estimate the relevance of information for the p lanning process it is essential to know how and why the information was produced. fire and Bush (2000) claim that a researcher should examine five factors when evaluating a ingredient of secondary data. These areThe reason the study was undertaken. Sometimes a piece of research is not independent in nature but has been carried out to support a specific point of view. Obviously, an organization should try to avoid taking decisions based on information that has been produced as a result of a biased piece of research.The credibility of the organization or individuals who undertook the research.What specific information was collected and what method the researcher employed to step or evaluate the data.How the data was collected. There are many different methods for collecting data, which exit be discussed later in this chapter. Each method may have an affect on the quality of the findings of a piece of research.The consistency of the findings of a piece of research with other studi es.If several studies report similar results, that may provide support for the reliability of any findings. If a report contradicts a number of other studies it may be an property that the research is not reliable. However, in both cases the researcher has to evaluate a specific piece of research across all criteria and not solely agree with or discount a reports findings on the basis that it does not agree with the majority of the results from other secondary research sources. Secondary data can be obtained from a number of sourcesBENEFITS OF SECONDARY DATAThe major advantages of using secondary data areCost.It is ofttimes less overpriced to obtain information from existing sources than to develop holyly new data. These existing sources may require a nominal charge for the information, but it lead be much less than the cost of undertaking primary data collection.Timeliness.Secondary data are available almost instantaneously. A theater director can have access to data very qui ckly and therefore does not have to wait weeks or perhaps months for primary data to be collected, analyzed, and summarized. By using secondary data whenever possible, a motorbus avoids the frustration of developing the research methodology design, designing the data collection instrument, pretesting the instrument, devising a sampling plan, gathering the data, prevailing all data for true statement and omissions, analyzing the data, and summarizing and reporting the results. Instead, a managing director can merely locate the give up source and access the information desired. This process can be absolute in a hardly a(prenominal) hours or days, whereas primary data collection can take weeks or months to complete.LIMITATIONS OF SECONDARY DATAHowever, secondary data collection does have the following disadvantages.Limited applicability.A manager has no assurance that information gathered by others will be relevant to a particular hospitality operation. For example, information obtained in New York about the popularity of a specific menu item is not necessarily useful to a manager operating in another part of the country. Information that pertains to one operation may apply only to that operation and be of limited value to anyone else.Information may be outdated.Managers need rate of flow and accurate information on which to base decisions. any too often, secondary data are not as useful as they competency be merely because they are not current. For example, the results of a consumer attitude survey conducted by a restaurant four years ago would be of limited value to a manager making plans today. During the four years, a number of changes in consumer attitudes are likely to have taken place. These changes in attitudes will make the original data outdated and useful only in a historical sense. If a hospitality manager makes use of less-than-timely data, the results are likely to be less than satisfactory.Reliability.Whenever a hospitality slattern us es secondary data as the basis for a decision, the manager runs the luck that the information may not be reliable and accurate. A manager would do well to determine who collected the data and what method of data collection was used. Information is only as good as the individuals who collect it and the methods they use. If a study is administered in a haphazard manner, the results and conclusions should be viewed with caution.SOURCES OF SECONDARY DATAThere are two main types of secondary data that can be used by managers within a house (see Figure 6.2). Internal data exist within the firm and can be obtained with minimal time and essay. Advances in computer technology have made it easier to obtain this information and provide it to managers in a form that is useful. External data are not readily available within the firm. Managers must obtain this data by spending more time and/or property contacting outside sources. The Internet has made this a much easier task, but there is stil l a fair amount of effort involved. The various sources of immanent and external data are discussed below.INTERNAL DATA.The circumstances of a marketing information system that is the simplest to design and implement is an inherent system, or the persona designed to collect data from within the organizational environment. When considering the organizational environment, management needs to be concerned only with information available from within the physical confines of the organizations units, whether they are hotels or restaurants. This function of a marketing information system requires less time and money than does the competitive environment or externally generated marketing information. The inbred component of a marketing information system is very valuable to management because it provides a wealth of information. Management has three main sources of internal marketing information invitee histories and sales data, employees and management staff, and customer feedback.E mployees and management staff.All too often, hospitality management ignores the wealth of information that is informally gathered by hourly employees such as front desk personnel, telephone operators, restaurant service people, and hosts and hostesses. These individuals are in constant contact with guests, yet they are rarely asked to relay customer comments and reactions to operational changes, such as new menu items or guest room dcor changes. These employees represent an dainty source of information, although the information they provide may not be wholly objective. It is a good idea for management to meet with employees on a regular basis to discuss problems and opportunities. Employees crave recognition from their supervisors this recognition increases the employees gladness and commitment to the organization. All employees need to be exposed to some motivational techniques, although managers often ignore the simple and basic needs of employees as individuals.client feedback .The focus of the marketing concept is the hospitality operations clientele. All aspects of the entire operation should be aimed at satisfying these individuals. The purpose of using an internal marketing information system is to solicit opinions and comments from the current clientele. This can be done in a number of ways, such as having the manager talk with a few of the customers or having service personnel check with the customers. One method used frequently is the comment card. These cards are placed in guest rooms or are provided to the guest upon checkout or when they have finished a meal in a restaurant. The purpose is to solicit their opinions and comments concerning the operations quality. All three internal sources of marketing information are very valuable. Together they can provide a great deal of useful information with which to make decisions. Historically, hospitality managers have failed to use these sources to maximal advantage, but the current competitive blank s pace in the hospitality fabrication dictates that all sources of information be used to gain a competitive advantage and to earn maximal pecuniary rewardsEXTERNAL DATA.Although externally generated marketing information is extremely valuable, it is normally not collected on a daily basis, as is the case with internally generated marketing information. This is due to a much larger investment of time, money, and other scarce resources required for externally generated information. Management should consider using a wide variety of sources of external marketing information. Literally thousands of sources are available, and these sources are limited only by managements own efforts to locate them. A few typical sources of external marketing information areTrade associations. numerous industries form trade groups that provide data for their members. These trade associations collect information from their members and then provide industry averages that can be used to assess a firms rela tive performance. Some of the popular trade associations for the hospitality industry are the National Restaurant Association, the American Hotel Lodging Association, and the Hospitality sales and Marketing Association International. Two of the more popular tourism associations are the World Tourism Organization (WTO) and the Travel and Tourism Research Association (TTRA). However, most of the data for the tourism industry are collected by government give-up the ghost bureaus.Travel bureaus.Cities, states, and countries usually form organizations that are trusty for promoting travel to the area. Most cities have a chamber of commerce that is trustworthy for promoting business in the city and, in some cases, tourism as well. Larger cities and regions form convention and visitors bureaus for the sole purpose of promoting business and unfilled travel to the region. A chamber of commerce has member firms from all types of industries, whereas convention and visitors bureaus tend t o have member firms from travel-related industries such as lodging, restaurants, and tourist attractions. Finally, most states and countries have government travel and tourism bureaus that are responsible for promoting travel to that state or country.Trade journals and periodicals.Many industry, or trade, journals are available to firms. Trade associations often publish their own journals, but many other organizations publish periodicals covering certain industries. Some of the more popular hospitality publications are Restaurants Institutions, Restaurant Hospitality, Nations Restaurant News, Restaurant Business, Lodging Hospitality, Lodging Magazine, and Hotel Motel Management. The articles in these publications provide information on new products and advertising campaigns, as well as current trends in the industry. These articles also provide a valuable resource for case studies involving successes and failures of industry firms.Other Periodicals.In addition to trade journals th at specialize in a certain industry, other publications cover business in a variety of industries. Some of the more popular business publications that cover the hospitality and tourism industries are Business Week, Wall highway Journal, Fortune, Barrons, and Forbes.Internet.The growth in both the quantity and quality of information available on the Internet is well documented. Using one or more of the available Internet search engines will uncover information, some of which will be highly valuable for managers. A key consideration for managers is being able to determine the accuracy and usefulness of information gathered from the Internet.University sources.Universities and colleges have well-stocked libraries that can be a valuable resource for firms in the area. These institutions often have access to many of the other sources of external data. In addition, universities and colleges form centers to research specific areas such as hospitality. This information is often innocent t o the public or available for a reasonable fee.Government sources.Local, state, and federal governments maintain detailed data on all aspects of the economy the data are free or available for a nominal fee. The United States nose count gathers detailed information about the population and retail business, and the statistical Abstract of the United States contains similar information in abbreviated form. Census and statistical documents are now available in electronic form, modify quicker searches and data retrieval. The federal government also collects information about foreign countries and provides specialists to answer specific questions and address inquiries.Syndicated services.Firms such as Harris and Gallup polls, nates Group Index, Nielsen, and W. R. Simmons specialize in collecting and distributing marketing information for a fee. These syndicated services provide information about consumer profiles and shopping behaviors, consumer responses to sales promotions and advert ising, and consumer attitudes and preferences. This information is useful in focusing on market segments using entirety data. These services often advertise in trade publications and marketing periodicals.Guides, indexes, and directories.Other valuable sources of external information include guides, indexes, and directories that are available at most university libraries and larger public libraries. Guides such as the Business Periodicals Index provide references by subject matter for articles