Julie Bornstein the Senior Vice President of Sephora Direct, wants to significantly increase
The budget for social media, video, and mobile. Bornstein must first explain to the President and CEO, David Suliteanu, how this can be justified. In order to do this, her team must identify what the company could gain from “winning” in the social media, video and mobile space and what it would mean for the company and how to measure the success of these platform and how it would secure client loyalty.
Sephora is identified as a brand that associates prestige to a beauty “specialty” retailer. While being present in more than in 2 dozen countries and 1,000 stores. It also carries over 30,000 products making it one of the largest beauty retailers in the world. This brand encourages trial and error and experimentation making it a great candidate for women between the ages of 25-35. It’s main competitors are ULTA, Amazon and some smaller but still competitive opponents such as Birchbox.
SWOT
Strength-
Sephora is the largest “prestige” and “beauty specialty” retailer with international presence, has over 30% market share in “prestigious” makeup store. Sephora is also unique in that it provides a safe playful space to trial and error different beauty trends and a unique experience. Due to its uniqueness it also appeals to customers who value quality over cost.
Weaknesses
Sephora’s biggest weaknesses are that it limits its audience by only being available in shopping mall, not catering to budget conscious customers and rarely offering discounts.
Opportunity
Sephora’s biggest competitors lurk over Sephora in areas such as e-commerce establishment, online customer loyalty and general successes in mobile platforms.
Threats
Sephora’s competitors also offer threaten Sephora with perks such as savings programs, large customer loyalty and strong social media presence. Sephora also has a hard time properly calculating and tracking return on investment, so it is hard to measure what works
My recommendation for Julie to be successful is to use the statistics and comparisons of Sephora’s lack of aptitude in social media platforms to David to get the budget she needs. She should recommend that Sephora needs to blend each of its online platforms together, creating a user-friendly platform that directs consumer traffic to each customer’s respective needs. The implementation of Geofencing technology for mobile Twitter, Facebook, and mobile app promotions will increase impulsive purchases on local situations and will continuously keep customers engaged and loyal to the brand. If Sephora can measure the true ROI on each platform, they will be able to invest in successful lines and eliminate under-performing platforms and beauty lines. Having all these platforms will also create data that Sephora can analyze to better suit customized marketing.
