Blog 5: Visualizing Insights--Fragrances

One of the issues in fragrance markets today is that mass merchandising, supermarket, and drug store sales are declining, while people are buying high-end retail products at department stores and specialty retailers. Mintel published a report in September 2013 that summarizes some of the ways we can correct this problem, and I have represented the problem and some potential solutions in the chart above.  First, I represented the problem stated above by using perfume bottles to represent respective sales for each market. In the mass-merchandising category, I incorporated a perfume bottle tipping over and becoming smaller to represent loss of sales in these markets. On the other side, I have represented the growth in high-end retailer sales from 2010-2013 by the growing perfume bottles. There are many possible solutions to this problem, but I’ve listed three potential categories in my data representation; creative retailing, expanded product benefits, and more convenient shopping. In each of these categories, I have included some potential solutions listed in the report as well as the consumer group they are most likely to influence.

The first category is creative retailing; mass-retailers are commonly at a disadvantage compared to specialty stores because they do not have sales representatives assisting consumers with their decisions and also do not offer product testing. Therefore, they need to be creative with their retail strategies. For women specifically, these merchandisers could consider subscription boxes; data revealed that 63% of women with less than $75,000 annual income would be interested in these, and 56% of women with more than $75,000 annual income would be interested, more than half of women respondents in each category.  To target men, who appreciate the convenience of mass-merchandisers and are therefore a great target, these stores could use technology to help bring creativity to retail. 52% (over half) of men ages 18-34 would be interested in mobile apps to help them choose a fragrance. This is fitting because men are probably looking to get in and out of stores as quickly as possible without the delay of speaking with a salesperson. Finally, stores should offer travel-sized options for less-affluent consumers who may not be able to afford full-size items but still want to purchase nice fragrances.

The next category of solutions is expanded product benefits. These solutions benefit all consumers. The first is that old people especially would like to purchase fragrances with added health benefits like the ability to remove headaches or colds or the ability to product a warming or cooling sensation. This would clearly require significant research and development capital; however, it could be beneficial for the market. In addition, 58% of people want fragrances they can use at night; this makes sense because many people see fragrances as products for special-occasions such as a date or a night out; mass merchandisers could respond with a category of nighttime fragrances catering to this need. Finally, 66% of consumers would be interested in fragrances they could spray on clothes instead of skin. This is a beneficial insight for drug stores and large retailers because they already probably carry laundry detergents and similar products and could possibly combine the two into one product for low cost.

Finally, the third category of solutions is to make shopping more convenient. For everyone shopping at mass-merchandisers, presenting by category or theme could be more strategic than presenting by brand. This is because specialty retailers have salespeople to help with customers’ needs in-store when they are looking for a particular category, so a reorganizing strategy could be a competitive response to that. In addition, there is a wide misconception that people like to receive fragrances as gifts; however, only 37% enjoy these gifts. In turn, 41% of women like to “treat themselves” with fragrance, so stores could place fragrances in convenient locations where they could be positioned as impulse buys.

The data above is an overall summary of these categories of solutions. If retailers are able to use the insights generated in this report to successfully implement new strategies, they could have a real winner on their hands. Consumers would enjoy shopping for fragrances more and sales have the potential to increase greatly.

Source: Mintel Issues in the Market, Fragrances, September 2013