Beauty trips to mass channels increase
Beauty. It’s a $48 billion mega category that is battling only moderate growth — especially within the mass channel — because of a shift in consumer attitudes, increased competition and a lack of effective advertising. The question then becomes, “How can suppliers overcome such challenges and break through the clutter?”
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While the scale remains within the mass market, coming in at about $22.1 billion, sales growth was relatively flat at 0.4% for the 52 weeks ended Jan. 5. Meanwhile, prestige and department beauty sales, which total only $11.2 billion, climbed 3.4% during that period, according to Nielsen during its recent webinar, “The Beauty of Creativity.”
Looking to take a deeper dive to better understand the mass channel, Nielsen examined shopper beauty trips and found that consumers are taking less trips to stores — a dynamic playing out across the CPG landscape for such reasons as online growth.
“But what I don’t want to dismiss here is the growth that we are seeing within mass [merchandisers] and grocery — the two mainstream mass channels that are actually showing growth in shopper trips for beauty, which represents a very significant opportunity for retailers in that space, who are trying to drive growth in to store and increase transaction size,” James Russo, SVP global consumer insights at Nielsen, told webinar attendees.
The good news is that, according to Russo, there are steps that suppliers can take to help reverse the slowdown.
Align to the larger consumer trends of health-and-wellness, multicultural and men to drive sales growth. “Health-and-wellness ... does matter within beauty. Sometimes you don’t think it does, but it does. Multicultural consumers, specifically Hispanic consumers, you need to win with Hispanics. ... And the importance of men — that men are becoming increasingly focused on beauty,” Russo said
Reverse industrywide underperforming ad effectiveness by developing ads that have a strong storyline and appeal to key sub-demographics. “Do not treat all millennials the same, ... female empowerment being a role. This is a roadmap to creativity to address this sea of sameness,” Russo said.
Shift online campaigns to those generating higher brand lift, which are search and entertainment sites. “When you think about your online play, ... where are we getting the greatest bang for our buck? ... It’s in areas such as search and entertainment, which are generating the highest lifts and are also reaching very important consumer segments,” Russo said.
Breakthrough on shelf with package designs and terminology, which not only resonate with consumers but generate strong sales. “This is a balance strategy of in-store and online. When we talk about in-store we want to make sure that our packaging communicates the personality that is important not only to the brand but is important to consumers,” Russo told webinar attendees.