Segmenting the Market for Bath & Body Works Lotion
Emily Le, Cheryl Rosenberg, Vicky Shi, Rathi Vinod BMGT 451, Section 0301 Mediamark Segmentation Project
Introduction Bath & Body Works is an American retail store founded in 1990 that specializes in shower gels, lotions, perfumes and candles. With over hundreds of different varieties of body lotion and creams, this chain has become a popular destination for affordable, luxury skin care items. The market for body lotion is constantly evolving to satisfy fickle consumer preferences, and is currently moving in a direction towards products with an innovative edge. Benefits such as anti-aging, sun protection, and other therapeutic remedies are becoming more popular among users. Research shows that the target customer include women between the ages of 25-34 years old. These users tend to have less problematic skin and are more likely drawn to more functionally beneficial aspects of lotion, such as anti-chaffing, sun protection, calming itchiness, and more. Also, eco-friendly packaging and the use of organic materials in the lotions have been on the rise as an increasing number of consumers have become more environmentally-focused. However, it is important to note that these benefits have come to be expected by consumers and do not aid in differentiating our brand and product.
Target Customer Demographics In order to learn more about the demographic characteristics of the target market, we analyzed the “Hand & Body Cream, Lotion or Oil� category based on adults who have used a product in this category within the last six months. This analysis helped establish a bigger picture of which types of customers make up the bulk of our target market, further enabling us to develop a marketing strategy focused on their desires.
We found that women are significantly more frequent users than men. In line with this piece of information, we also found that our target market frequently watches certain TV networks that target women. Some examples of networks most frequently viewed by our target market are Oxygen, QVC, SOAPnet, Style, and WEtv. We further analyzed our target consumer’s preference of magazine and found that they most frequently read All You, Brides, Cooking with Paula Deen, Family Circle, House Beautiful, Martha Stewart Living, American Baby, Woman’s Day, Woman’s World, and Women’s Health. Many of these magazines imply that our target female user is an adult with young children and just starting a household. This is confirmed by Mediamark, which shows a higher user age of 35 and up than younger users. Another major user in the Mediamark report was the African-American population, showing a significantly higher user rating than other races. According to primary research through interviews, we learned that it is a large part of the culture to use body lotion. When darker skin becomes dry and cracks, the color contrast increases the visibility of the dryness. For that reason, they moisturize more frequently than other demographics. As we analyzed the cable networks most frequently viewed by our target market, we found that many were networks targeted towards the African-American population. Some examples include BET (Black Entertainment TV) and Centric. We noticed the same trend with magazines as well; some examples include Black Enterprise, Ebony, Essence, and Jet. Based on the Mediamark report, we chose two clear high users that we will target with our marketing campaign: females and African Americans. In addition to the Mediamark report, we analyzed the Mintel report for the Body Care industry, which helped us determine what our target customer valued in body lotion. The Mintel report emphasized that our target market focused on functionality, such as reducing chaffing, light coverage, and more. One functional
benefit is an anti-aging cream. Mintel reports that 76% of body-care users are interested in antiaging claims, with 30% of those willing to pay more for those benefits. We hope to focus our educational efforts around anti-aging claims because, as mentioned earlier, at the current time the interest in anti-aging benefits is not translating to actual sales. According to Mintel’s Global New Product Database (GNPD), containing botanical and herbal ingredients is the second leading claim for body lotions. However, only one-quarter of users purchase their body lotions based on that claim. Instead, we hope to target our discussion on the ingredients’ functional benefits, rather than just the ingredients.
Marketing Campaign In order to reach out to these consumers, companies have leveraged social media to engage with audiences across different platforms. Social media has transformed from merely promoting products, while now it is a platform that fosters deep and meaningful discussions with customers. Online communities have developed for companies, such as Eucerin, whose customers use forums and message boards to share about their experiences with the product. Since many seek out these platforms for skin health information and product reviews, this serves as a great opportunity for marketers to penetrate and advertise their brand. We especially want to focus the conversation online around the function of ingredients in our lotions. Additionally, we want to increase the education surrounding anti-aging properties of our lotions because the current confusion surrounding the topic has stood in the way of it becoming a sales booster.
Mommy Bloggers A very influential portion of our consumers include mothers, who seek the best quality for themselves and their families, and are likely to share product quality information with their
peers. Recently, the Internet has seen a growth in “Mommy Bloggers,� who consist of stay-athome mothers that blog about product reviews, personal narratives, do-it-yourself tutorials, and life advice. By reaching out to the top mom bloggers with free promotional materials and samples of our lotion, we will construct a win-win situation: the blogger benefits from free merchandise and a provided blog topic, and we receive publicity on our lotion. If influential mom bloggers endorse our product, then their followers will also purchase our lotion and share the product with their families.
Giveaways We want to engage in strategic giveaways that show the consumer the benefits of our lotion. For instance, we will locate the most popular outdoor ice-skating rinks in the nation, and implement giveaways at places like the Rockefeller Ice Rink. Because it is winter, and people’s hands get chapped more easily, giving away lotion at the site and at the time of need encourages consumers to accept the giveaway and test the product immediately. Our strategic giveaways will directly and immediately show potential consumers the benefits of our product, which will then increase purchases and attract positive publicity.
Celebrity Endorsements We plan on focusing a large portion of our efforts on celebrity endorsements, particularly those that would appeal to our target consumer. For the mothers and overall middle-aged women, we want to emphasize the healing benefits and include celebrities they are familiar and grew up with. For example, Martha Stewart emphasizing the therapeutic effects on her wrinkled skin would appeal to this crowd since she is very relevant to this age group. Her magazine, Martha Stewart Community Living, is read very frequently by our target user, and her endorsements would most likely appeal to our consumer. The specific methods of these endorsements for our
campaign would be: television commercials, magazine advertisements, and billboard promotions. For African-American females, strong celebrity endorsers could be Serena and Venus Williams, the professional tennis players that represent this community very well. The Williams sisters play tennis outdoors, and they could promote the therapeutic benefits of our lotion on their chapped skin. According to Mintel, consumers are much more willing to pay higher prices for soothing and therapeutic benefits rather than a pleasant smell, or other appealing characteristics. If we have celebrity endorsers emphasize benefits that our target consumers identify to be the most important, we will be most effective.
In-Store Promotions We plan to target stores that our heavy users shop at most frequently. Since we are focusing on African-American females, we hope to offer promotional deals within various department and convenience stores, where these women are likely to frequent regularly. Young mothers especially go to these stores because they want to be able to find several different products in one place, due to their busy schedules. Specifically, stores such as Macy’s, Lord & Taylor, JCPenney, Target, Walmart, and CVS. However, rather than distributing our products among the other lotions in the cosmetic areas of the stores, we plan on having kiosks within the store which will draw more attention to our Bath and Body Works products. Otherwise, it is likely that these body lotions would be lost among the already distinguished department store brands that consumers are habitually used to purchasing. Additionally, with the current state of our economy, everyone loves the opportunity to save money. We want to offer deals such as buy one, get one free coupons and 50% off our initial product sales. We wanted to highlight the convenience element, so that consumers do not have to go out of their normal routine to come across our Bath and Body Works lotions.
Works Cited Laird, Sam. Modern Mothers. 2012. Mashable. Web. 5 December 2013. Mintel. "Women's Bodycare." Jul. 2012. Mintel. McKeldin Library, College Park, MD. 7 Jul. 2010. <http://academic.mintel.com> Read more: http://academic.mintel.com/display/590235/?highlight=true MRI+ MediaMark. Fall 2012 Health & Beauty Aids - Hand & Body Cream, Lotion or Oil. Retrieved December 1, 2013, from MRI+ MediaMark. <http://ureporter.mriplusonline.com/selectdemo.asp>
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