Premium Beauty Gets Personal

One of the key themes explored in this year’s Premium Market Report 2015, is the trend for personalised products and experiences.

It’s a trend that is happening wherever you look and reflects consumers’ rejection of mainstream sameness in favour of something that has been carefully constructed with their needs in mind.

Premium brands have, of course, been playing the customisation/bespoke game for years. It’s what singles them out from the mass market.

However, recently this hasn’t been the case as pressure to go global and chase volume has meant that many premium values have been dropped.

Instead, premium beauty has become more like mass.

And conversely, mass brands have adopted high-end values and edged closer to their premium rivals.

Premium brands can put distance between themselves and mass brands through personalisation and are in a prime position to take advantage of this trend which is taking hold across all sectors of the market.

In this year’s report we explore how personalisation can be used effectively by premium beauty brands sector by sector.

FragranceIn 2014, there were 1620 new launches globally, according to Michael Edwards, author of Fragrances of the World®. The vast majority are flankers, limited editions or pale imitations of other successful brands.

Originality and creativity is often sidelined in the rush to get product to market, while marketing budgets are channeled into promotional activity to generate sales turnover.

“It will need a crisis for the fragrance market to change,” Michael Edwards told me.

Or a more inventive approach to make fragrance something truly special so that consumers believe has been formulated with their needs in mind

.The Premium Market Report examines some of the most interesting brand and retail initiatives to personalise fragrance products.

SkincareThe focus on new science, technology and ingredients is causing premium skincare brands to lose sight of one very important issue: why should someone buy their expensive products when there are perfectly good alternatives on self-service shelves?

Personalised approaches in skincare are helping brands to maintain their kudos with consumers and provide an aspiration point of difference from masstige ranges.

But only a few premium brands recognise this fact.

We look at how this can be achieved in terms of brand and retail strategy and most importantly, the one-to-one advice premium brands can give which sets them apart from mass.

Make-up

The biggest threat premium make-up brands face is from the growing number of budget products which happily sit in women’s make-up bags. Why spend £20 on a lipstick when you can buy one for £1.99?

What strategies can premium brands use to entice consumers back?What can retailers do to ramp up the in-store experience for premium brands?

Which demographic groups are most likely to buy premium?

And which prefer to stick with cheaper brands?

The answer lies in getting more personal.Find out more from this year’s Premium Market Report, which launches on Monday April 20th, 2015.

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