Those days, Sephora has promoted the annually 20 percent off sales for customers who own their VIB membership. Almost my every female friend has participated into this sales, and made contribution to Sephora’s revenue. Shockingly, me and two other girls ordered nearly eight hundred dollars’ beauty products on Sephora website last week. I can’t stop thinking about the reasons behind Sephora’s success. I googled online, and found an article, called The Sephora effect: How the cosmetics retailer transformed the beauty industry, which provided some deep and valuable insights on Sephora’s sales model.
As the article mentioned, Sephora has clearly set their target customers and gotten well-know of their shopping preference. Today, girls like my age have different habits of buying cosmetics than our mother did. Unlike our mothers, we are not particularly loyal to any single brand, instead we approach buying beauty products as more of a treasure hunt. For us, the experiences of shopping at Sephora are always much joyful and relaxed than shopping in any other cosmetic stores. Before the rise of Sephora, consumers mostly shopped at no-frills drugstores, (such as Shoppers and London Drugs, or go to department store counters (like Nordstrom and Hudson Bay) and taking lessons about those products from some so-called specialists. However, Sephora adopts the sales models that research shows this generation of shoppers prefers—sense of individuality. Consumers can test out any products by themselves at store, the beauty consultants will only be there when you need.
Besides, Sephora’s marketing strategies are pretty unique but effective as well. Sephora sending the sales email for their registered customers at least twice a week, and holding the big sale once or twice a year for their VIB consumers. Being Sephora VIB require to purchase at least $350 items annually. Those coupons and promotion sales encourage consumers to stick with Sephora. Moreover, Sephora encourages consumers to shop online by giving away the free samples and offering small discount. As long as the consumers purchased the certain amount of dollars, you will receive twice amount of free samples than you will receive in stores.
Sephora’s success demonstrates that there’s nothing important for a retail company to adopt the sale model and marketing strategies base on their target customers’ preference. Apart from the traits that listed above, Sephora also well-known of their stores’ modern designing the variety of extraordinary beauty services that they provide for female. Sometimes, winning the game from other competitors, requires the courage of breaking traditions.
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Resources:
Halzack, Sarah. “The Sephora Effect: How the Cosmetics Retailer Transformed the Beauty Industry.” Washington Post. The Washington Post, 9 Mar. 2015. Web. 13 Nov. 2016. <https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/business/wp/2015/03/09/the-sephora-effect-how-the-cosmetics-retailer-transformed-the-beauty-industry/>.