CH. 7 Business Marketing

 

Sephora is such a huge success mostly because of their business-to-business electronic commerce, Sephora turned to EPAM (NYSE:EPAM), a leading provider of complex software engineering solutions and a leader in IT service delivery to launch website.  This initiative builds a solid foundation for our partnership with Sephora, enabling us to deliver the next generation of cross-channel, user-centric e-commerce experiences," said Valeri Makovik, Vice President, Technology Solutions of EPAM Systems, and head of EPAM's E-Commerce Center. This new move by Sephora gives them the competitive advantage because this ecommerce website is the first of its kind.

An excellent interview from Brian Solis with Julie Bornstein SVP of Digital at Sephora

Sephora showed its stickiness on the web with staggering numbers, Sephora bills its website as the world's largest beauty store, with 13 million visitors each month. About 20 percent of that traffic comes from people browsing on their iPhones, Bornstein said, and sales through the iPhone have grown "in the triple digits" for the past two years. The iPad drives about half that much traffic to the online store, she said, but iPad users spend more money.

Sephora’s strategic alliance include J.C Penny ,while it’s positioned itself as the ultimate beauty expert, Sephora isn’t above aligning itself with leaders in other industries to strengthen its own brand position. The first major synergistic relationship it formed was with the J.C. Penney department store chain, creating a “store-within-a-store” retail concept that positions each Penney’s Sephora in the center core of the store, staffed by Sephora consultants. This offensive strategic move indicated the cosmetics giant wasn’t content to passively compete with the department-store cosmetics counter across the mall aisles,it was ready to invade and vanquish from within.

Loyalty isn't something that brands create, it's something that consumers grant based on trust.

CH. 8  Segmenting and Targeting Markets

Sephora’s market segment are women between ages 20- 40, these are women with a demand for skincare and cosmetics to fulfill their needs. Sephora’s in store design indicates several target markets including women and men. Specific sections of the store show pictures of women of all cultures from 20-30, 30-40, 40-50+ and men 20-40+. The segment of women attracted to Sephora would be those who value fashionable/quality skincare, beauty, and fragrance products and are open to a medium to high price range. Also, there are product sections with richly decorated cosmetics that would appeal to young girls (pre-teen to teenager). The black and white colors of the store allow for the customer’s focus to be on the products and letting the products stand out and speak for themselves. The wide assortment of brands, vendor exclusives, and private label combinations would attract any shoppers looking for variety.

As far as Sephora’s geographic segmentation, Sephora tends to carry more of a brand or product that is in high demand in the particular country that Sephora stores are located; for instance, in France women tend to use more skin care than American women, so you would find more skincare products in stores located in France. Sehpora’s demographic segmentation tends to be young and middle aged women, with a relatively stable amount of income that can afford to buy their high end products. These women are typically from different ethnic groups and cultures.

What makes Sephora stand out from the rest is their “one to one marketing.” The loyalty card program was valuable in helping to identify a select group of repeat in-store customers and their preferences, Sephora was rapidly coming up against the limits of using a marketing database managed by a third party. Seeking to gain more timely access to the specific buying habits and behavior of its customer base, and the ability to effectively identify links between online and in-store shoppers, Sephora took its database in-house and developed its own customer-centric marketing program to assist in driving sales across channels and building better, more personalized customer relationships.

Sephora Shopper

Sephora Manhattan 

Katie Holmes with daughter Suri 

Sephora Manhattan