Essay Sample on Sephora: Beauty Services, Luxury Products & Growing Market Share

Introduction

Sephora is a company dedicated to offering beauty services through its luxury products that are consumed by different customers across the globe. The company is registered under the consumer goods industry, targeting women who value beauty as part of their daily lives. Even though Sephora Company has taken a more significant toll in this industry, the company has been faced with fair competition from other brands, that are fighting for the broader market. Through this, the firm has been forced to adopt numerous changes that have affected its performance

Is your time best spent reading someone else’s essay? Get a 100% original essay FROM A CERTIFIED WRITER!

Save 25%

Products/Services

Like many beauty companies, their goal is to supply their customers with durable and innovative products that make an impressive transformation to their clients. Thus Sephora Company understands the need and the demand of the market. Sephora operates over 2,500 stores in more than 33 nations, with an expanding base of more than 450 stores across the United States (Kotha, & Bhattacharya, 2018). As a result, this gives the organization broader support of dealing with a variety of cosmetics and beauty products to its consumers. Among the most selling products in the firm includes milk makeup, skincare, hair, bathing and body appliances, tools, and brushes. The products in these categories are oriented and geared towards both the genders to help achieve the company's vision.

Despite the use of products as their primary selling brand to the customers, Sephora offers a variety of services, through taking advantage of the emerging technology concepts. Among one of the services offered to the customers, is the customer support services, which are used to coordinate and track customers' purchases. More so, this helps customers to create a social relationship with the organization. On the contrary, the services also provide an avenue to foster loyalty to the customer. In addition to the above, Sephora utilizes the concept of the internet as one of the technological factors that boost the company's sales. Through its official website, Sephora provides online selling to customers, rather than making long and tiresome ques on the stores. More so, this helps the company to diversify across a wider community. The company can offer services even to those that are not covered by the local store. As a result, this concept has benefited many local customers of the organization.

Organizational Vision

The organization's vision statement is "to create a worthwhile experience for all its customers with its products" (Kotha, & Bhattacharya, 2018). The company has fully incorporated this concept to help give customers who use its products a better experience. Nevertheless, the vision of the company has widely affected the management, through adopting different strategic concepts that are used to favor the customers more than the organization.

Strategic Concepts at Sephora

The beauty industry is one of the challenging sectors that has affected many firms, especially those in the same sector of cosmetics. Most of the companies are faced with numerous challenges that have changed the firms to adopt various management concepts to gain a competitive market advantage. While many businesses in the industry struggle on this concept, Sephora has utilized a different strategic concept that has ultimately affected the management style and the performance of the company. Among one of the strategic concept adopted by the firm, is the development of a unique dialect in the organization, that creates an interactive culture within the organization. Managers are forced to embrace the concept of strategic management, rather than transactional management concept, that rewards active employees while punishing others for their mistakes. Sephora understands the tightness of competition in the organization, and thus, the company employs a suitable form of management to help the firm achieve all its strategic concept. According to Rey and Ricart (2019), employees who interact with the customers on the sales floor are dubbed cast members. On the contrary, managers are regarded as directors. Additionally, employees refer to their uniforms as costumes. The essence of adopting this concept is to help give the customers who visit their stores a theme of a theatre.

According to Santulli (2019) observation, the performance of an organization is well defined by the skills and experience of the workers to help cope with different emerging challenges. While this concept may be accurate enough to suggest that workers are the sole backbone of the company, it is essential to ensure that the workers operate in a safe and friendly environment to help them deliver to their best. Sephora has adopted this concept of making workers feel comfortable by trying the company's products to set an example for customers.

As a way of ensuring that the organizational vision is attained, Sephora allows the employees to wear mandatory makeup, a strategic concept that is used to show the customers that the products they are buying are safe and consumer-friendly. While many organizations may force their customers not to wear makeup, to help customers spot the workers easier, Sephora has maintained this culture to help demonstrate that beauty is for everyone. They are thus influencing the management team to create a positive atmosphere that accommodates the changes within the organization. As a result, this concept has not only paid off, with consumers being attracted to try out different makeups and products from the store.

According to Kotha and Bhattacharya (2018), the employees' performance is tied to the knowledge they have acquired about their surroundings and the things they use to generate the final products. As a result, managers, in conjunction with the HR department, have the responsibility of showcasing and arranging training programs for the employees. Similarly, this provides employees with proper training about new technology or innovation plays a vital role in the performance of the business. As a result, Sephora utilizes this strategic concept as a method of extending beauty to every customer across the globe. Through this, the company fulfills its vision of making beauty accessible to every customer around the world. The management in the firm has been affected by arranging regular training programs that help train employees on the company's new products and how they are used. In this case, the strategic concept allows the workers not only to explore the latest products but also to have more details that are essential to convince a customer to buy the product.

While many organizations have utilized the concept of commission, pressuring the employees beyond their limits, this results in poor ratings and adverse relationships with customers. As a result, employees working to meet their targets, always offer bias information to help lure the customer in buying the product. However, in this case, Sephora has adopted a different concept of management, unlike the transactional management, which was practiced several years, resulting in customers offering incorrect information to lure them into buying the products. As a result, this concept affects the performance of the firm, as most of the customers opted to shop with other stores, delivering a significant blow to the organization. As a result, this strategic concept of refraining from transactional management has created a healthy and conducive environment between the management, employees, and customers.

Current Managerial Style

Sephora believes in the artistic nature of its employees, especially considering that the world of beauty is widely inspired by creative one has. The company, in this case, as adopted a visionary concept of management to help employees deliver their best to the customers. The makeup process, especially in the stores, entails the creativity of the employees, reinforced by support from the management. The management plays a vital role in setting the standards and offering little supervision to skilled employees. Through offering little monitoring at the stores, the present clients feel a sense of privacy and willing to open more to the workers. On the contrary, workers are given free samples of the products to help bring out their creativity, as a concept of pushing beyond the limits of beauty, hence assisting the organization in achieving its vision.

Organizational Culture (Sephora)

Sephora store employees are well distinguished from their unique uniform that follows a unique dress code of red, black, grey, and white, as part of the company's culture. While many people are quick to note this form of customs, Sephora has also natured and cultivated a culture of openness and honesty to the customers. Since the company deals with a variety of customers with different sensitive skins, the company has undertaken the initiative of emphasis on the need to adopt a culture of transparency and hard work. Employees are encouraged by the firm to open up to customers about the effects of the product. Emphasis is paid to customers with susceptible skin. The organization employs a culture of transparency and communication to help provide all possible information about the products sold in the company. Workers benefit from this concept since they can have a direct impact on the changes in the organization's performance.

Recommendation

While Sephora is battling to maintain the grip of a larger market share across the globe, it is evident that the company has shifted its focus on luxury branding. As a result, this has widely affected the company's performance, as its market has been focused and geared towards customers with higher purchasing power. Through this, the company has not sufficiently concentrated on the bottom line of the customers by offering affordable products to all customers. In this case, the firm has not fully explored the low-income market, in different parts of the globe, since its products are still pricy. Moreover, this has posed a severe competition from other local firms in the industry. The bottom line, Sephora should undertake the initiative of exploring this market to help attract not only higher-income consumers but rather engage and courage every customer to their platform to help diversify beauty.

Sephora has highly implemented the concept of visionary management to help workers feel in control of their activities. However, the organization does not consider adopting another essential form of governance, such as democratic management type, which allows the employees to be part of the decision-making team. As a result, this concept increases employees' morale and performance. Sephora should incorporate this form of management to help increases the productivity of workers.

References

Kotha, R., & Bhattacharya, L. (2018). Luxola to Sephora online: Opportunities in beauty.https://ink.library.smu.edu.sg/cases_coll_all/228/

Rey, C., & Ricart, J. E. (2019). Why Purpose Needs Strategy (and Vice Versa). In Purpose-driven Organizations (pp. 43-56). Palgrave Macmillan, Cham.doi.10.1007/978-3-030-17674-7_4

Santulli, M. (2019). The influence of augmented reality on consumers' online purchase intention: the Sephora Virtual Artist case (Doctoral dissertation).doi.10400.14/26957