Coty
Designing a merchandising concept
Coty, Inc. is the world’s largest fragrance company. The company faced an important strategic imperative to increase fragrance sales and merchandising effectiveness in the mass-drug channel.
Coty engaged with Lippincott to assist in developing a merchandising solution based on a systematic understanding of the fragrance category, including best practices, customer shopping preferences, emerging trends and opportunities to improve the environment at drug stores and mass-market retailers.
Challenges
While the global fragrance market remained strong, the U.S. domestic market was falling and further declines were predicted. Factors contributing to this decline included saturation of new product lines, an exacerbated celebrity fragrance trend, low product brand loyalty and unmet customer expectations at mass-market retail.
Due to the range of sales channels in which fragrances are carried, the merchandising solution needed to work across channels (e.g. drug stores, big box stores, traditional grocery stores) and be easily tailored to meet specific store needs.
Actions
Conducted ethnographic research with female consumers to understand what role fragrance plays in their lives including beauty/cosmetic routines, triggers to purchase and keys to making informed fragrance decisions
Audited varying retailers across channels (e.g. drug stores, big box, specialty) in the U.S., Canada, and United Kingdom to determine how best to attract fragrance customers
Developed fact-based barriers and opportunities including hypothesized customer shopping preferences, functional operating requirements and ways to increase category awareness at retail
Mapped out the purchase process to identify how best to attract, inspire and capture consumers in the aisle
Developed image attributes and functional criteria that reinforced our value proposition in order to guide concept design
Designed a merchandising concept which included:
- Intuitive organizing principles based on how consumers shopped the category
- An overall hierarchy related to gender, brand, scent and celebrity vs. premium
- A scent education panel to help consumers make informed decisions based on olfactory notes
- “What’s new” section to highlight product launches, seasonal relevancy and gift-giving
- Technology materials and lighting to create focus and differentiate the category within the aisle
Design included a flexible kit-of-parts including signage, materials, colors, lighting and graphics that could be tailored to meet store requirements