Paper Example on UK Beauty Industry: Exploring Its Trends and Market Size

1.1 Introudction

The United Kingdom is the centre of innovation in the beauty industry, with major developing and emerging trends in marketing. The UK is the sixth-largest market in beauty and personal care products globally, that accounts for about $11.3bn in 2019 (British Beauty Council, 2019). While per capita spending is fifth globally. The UK beauty industry is divided into four main classifications that include the beauty and personal care products, spa, salon and in-store treatment services and hairdressing and barbershop services.

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A major trend affecting the beauty and personal care sector in the UK is the sudden shift of customers towards a more focused towards feeling more emotionally connected. Although premium attributes were largely attributed to luxury, the contemporary aspects are shifting towards ethics and health characteristics. The top leading beauty and personal care brands in the UK include L'Oréal, Unilever, Estée Lauder and Procter & Gamble. However, these top companies hold almost a similar market share, showing high competition among the leading brands.

The recent beauty and personal care sector in the United Kingdom is different from the past 10 years ago because of technology and innovation as well as the rise in digital selling. Together with ensuring their products significantly impacts the market, beauty and personal care brands ensure they create shareable moments with consumers. Experiential marketing plays a critical role in consumers sharing their experiences in social media (Alexis, 2019). There are various activations in the beauty and personal care sector in recent years, while some brands purposely developing them for online sharing. For instance, L'Oréal launched a virtual makeup try-on experience that aimed to attract consumers and change their perception of the makeup product. The company offers a try-on engagement as well as virtual foundation consultation engagements where customers queue to taste the experience. Therefore, such experience marketing components is important to the company since it is a direct way they communicate with customers. Experiences such as personalization of brands reflect the particular products that are appropriate for the consumer, convincing them about the great quality the company offers.

Brakus et al. (2009) conducted research on customers' experience towards a brand, how it is measured, and its influence on buyers’ behaviours. The research indicated that brand experience division of importance to various organizations. Experience occurs if a person faces or feels things to gain first-hand information. Experience constitutes the whole features of a person stimulated after observing things or participating in activities. The experiences can be dreamt, imagined, or felt. Mostly, personal experiences are prompt or occur through initiation processes. Experience is linked to thinking, action, feeling, and sensing of a consumer. The results of experience are observed in the intensity, value, meaning, and development of a product or brand. After the establishment of the existence of positive experiences, a system should completely be incorporated in a way that every fundamental part delivers the sense of the product. Hence, the entire incorporated system lacks a vacuum between product promise and its delivery. Thus, customers are connected with products at an individual level in a vital manner that they always remember. Ultimately, the customers have an opportunity to completely obtain the experience of the products in a more sensory way. The existing literature review showed that few efforts have been made to describe the brand experience concept together with its dimensions. Therefore, this research paper is intended to improve the study on experiential marketing through an exploration of variation in opinions of consumers towards a certain brand. This paper ought to establish the relevance, appropriateness, and effectiveness of experiential marketing on beauty and personal care products in the United Kingdom. It intends to understand the effect of experiential marketing on consumer’s viewpoint of a product’s essence.

1.2 Problem Statement

The current beauty industry in the UK is very different compared to 10 years ago. A significant number of beauty and personal care brands focus on digital marketing such as using social media instead of traditional advertising. Most companies are investing in experiential marketing since such marketing campaigns allow the beauty and personal care brands to influence the behaviours as well as interests of customers as a way of motivating them to try something new (De Barnier et al., 2006). Digital retailers are increasingly beginning to recognize that a change in the approach to give consumers more experience, similar to what offline companies and retailers. Experiential marketing is a valuable tool with several direct-to-customer brands in the UK market. Since the majority of beauty and personal care companies now sell online, consumers are gradually becoming more comfortable. However, customers desire for the physical experience when shopping for such products, specifically, testing the product before trying. Therefore, this current study ought to establish the appropriateness, effectiveness and relevance of experiential marketing in the UK beauty and personal care brands.

1.3 Purpose of the Study

This study aims at assessing the efficiency, appropriateness, and the significance of experiential marketing in the beauty and personal care industry in the UK. Therefore, facets such as consumer loyalty, experiential value consumer behaviour will be explored, concerning experiential marketing.

1.4 Research Objectives

1. To assess the efficiency of experiential marketing in the beauty and personal care sector in the UK.
2. To examine the appropriateness of experiential marketing in the beauty and personal care industry in the UK.
3. To establish the relationship between experiential marketing, customer behaviour (loyalty), and experiential value in the beauty and personal care sector in the UK.
4. To establish the relevance of experiential marketing in the beauty and personal care sector in the UK.

1.5 Research Questions

The primary research question is how efficient, appropriate and relevant is experiential marketing by the beauty and personal care sector in the UK? However, to be able to explore the research question, several questions were addressed to explore the various facets of the research.

1. How relevant is experiential marketing considering the beauty and personal care sector by UK companies?
2. How efficient and successful are experiential marketing in the beauty and personal care sector in the UK?
3. How are experiential value, purchase behaviour and customer loyalty related to experiential marketing?
4. Is experiential marketing appropriate with beauty and personal care sector in the UK?

1.6 Significance of the Study

This research contributes to the existing knowledge of experiential marketing and its relationship with purchase behaviour, customer loyalty and experiential value. It is well defined and affirms to the dimensions that contribute to improved consumer experience in the BPC brands. The current study contributes to the theory of experiential marketing by providing a founded theoretical framework that describes the effectiveness, appropriateness and relevance of experiential marketing in the BPC in the context of the UK. By designing a beauty and personal care brand experience, the beauty companies will positively influence their performance compared to other beauty brands that do not implement experiential marketing as a strategy. This study identifies the important factors that influence the BPC brands experience, hence effective in guiding managers to consider the factors that positively contribute to the brand experience. Hence, the BPC sector can prioritize these factors since they are controllable, such as the sense, smell, sound and sight by developing an ambient odour, visual appealing and resonance. In terms of the methodology, this research contributes to the use of quantitative research technique, although the instruments are derived from an existing scale, they were tested for validity and reliability.

References

Alexis, P.A., 2019. The Big Beauty Business: A Fundamental Analysis of The Beauty Industry Institute, And Its Economic Value. Omega Publishers.

Boyer, K.K., Hult, G.T.M. (2005). Customer Behavioural Intention for online purchase: An examination of fulfilment method and customer experience level. Journal of Operations Management.

Brakus, J.J., Schmitt, B.H. and Zarantonello, L., 2009. Brand experience: what is it? How is it measured? Does it affect loyalty? Journal of Marketing, 73(3), pp.52-68. https://doi.org/10.1509/jmkg.73.3.052

De Barnier, V., Rodina, I. and Valette-Florence, P., 2006. Which luxury perceptions affect most consumer purchase behaviour? A cross-cultural exploratory study in France, the United Kingdom and Russia. Proceedings des Congrés Paris-Venise des Tendencies Marketing, Paris, 8, p.7.

Krishna, A. (2010). Sensory marketing: Research on the sensuality of products. New York: Routledge.

McLuhan, R., 2008. Plan now, enjoy later (experiential marketing). Marketing, 20, pp.33-34.

Rohatgi, D., 2011. Consumer Engagement-The Experiential Way. PRIMA: Practices & Research in Marketing, 1(2).

Smilansky, S., 2017. Experiential marketing: A practical guide to interactive brand experiences. Kogan Page Publishers.

Smith, S. and Wheeler, J., 2002. Managing the customer experience, FT Prentice Hall.