Makeup Shake-Up: The Challenge of Multichannel Marketing

Abstract

Multichannel retail shopping is quickly becoming the norm for consumers in many industries. Multichannel shopping, however, has the potential to frustrate the historical house of strategies that companies such as L'Oreal have implemented successfully for decades. Instead of a neat hierarchy of brands available at specific retailers, from class to mass, companies need to integrate an in-depth understanding of how consumers shop across channels to rethink marketing tactics and strategies that are appropriate for the new environment. L'Oreal USA had to adjust its marketing approach to respond to changes in beauty shoppers' path to purchase. The company developed beauty-shopper personas to derive insights for developing multi- or omnichannel marketing strategies. This case describes how the beauty-retail environment has changed, how consumers have changed their path to purchase and the implications for channel- and chain-specific strategies. The results of in-depth consumer interviews and tracking research designed to produce useful insights into consumer behavior are included. Excerpt UVA-M-0865 Rev. May 20, 2014 MakeUp Shake-Up: The Challenge of Multichannel Marketing It was late on a Monday night in February 2013, and James Black, associate vice president for Shopper Insights and Innovation at L'Oreal USA, was still in his office digesting the latest information from his consumer-insights team. The American female beauty consumer and her path to purchase were becoming increasingly complex. She was growing more and more channel agnostic. For instance, the same consumer who was buying Lancome mascara at Sephora was picking up her Garnier shampoo at CVS. The new “multichannel shopper” was becoming the standard, not the outlier. The assumption that customers shopped in one specific channel for one type of product or brand—the foundation of L'Oreal USA's marketing approach—was quickly becoming irrelevant. L'Oreal USA needed to better understand the multichannel shopper to better align its marketing strategy and tactics with the reality of 2013's beauty consumer. Black needed insights, not just data. He needed to know “why,” not just “what.” L'Oreal's Background . . .