Introduction to online beauty technology
Would you have imagined a few years ago that you would be choosing the shade of your foundation with an online shade finder or buying perfume online without smelling it with an online fragrance finder? Well, now it’s possible, and it’s even become a must-have tool for big beauty brands to stand out.
ONLINE SHOPPING
Offline shopping still represents a dominating 81% share of beauty sales (according to Statista) vs online sales. This is mainly due to the fact that the beauty industry is filled with products that people want to see, touch, smell or try on. It is very hard to imagine buying a fragrance without smelling it for instance or buying a foundation just by choosing a shade online.
However, with the rapid rise of e-commerce (expected to grow by 9% annually according to Statista), cosmetics, fragrance, and skincare brands are increasingly faced with consumers demanding services that match what they have experienced in-store.
THE DOMINATION OF E-RETAILERS
When consumers search the web, several criteria come into play: price, user experience, and services. However, the price has long been the decisive criterion when choosing a product online in the beauty industry. Therefore, D2C (direct to consumer) websites and e-retailers are battling to attract and retain customers.
This study from Wunderman Thompson illustrated by Statista shows that today, e-retailers and marketplaces still dominate online shopping, even in terms of customer experience.
Brands selling their products on their own e-commerce site must therefore differentiate themselves by having a more aesthetic site, with a seamless user experience, and leverage their services: gift with purchase, samples, aesthetic wrapping, free and/or fast delivery, and more recently online beauty technology.
ONLINE BEAUTY TECHNOLOGY, A NEW SERVICE
However, recently, online beauty technology has become one of the most important features for a D2C website. Groups like L’Oréal tend to have more internal resources and the beauty expertise to develop new features allowing customers to choose their products online with a seamless user experience.
In order to understand general consumer opinion regarding this new technology, we have collected the testimony of an acquisition manager working in the real estate industry but very interested in online beauty. We questioned her regarding online beauty technology and her personal use of it.
“I actually did try a few online beauty technology features or experiences. The first time was on Rituals’ website, I was asked to complete a questionnaire regarding energy, relaxation, and the vibe and I was feeling at the moment in order to get a selection of products. It was a good experience but I don’t really kow about the accuracy of this kind of questionnaire though. I also heard about Lancôme’s skin diagnosis.
This comment led us to check Lancôme’s D2C website and it actually offers a person to scan this QR code :
They can take a selfie and get an analysis of the 8 facets of their skin “thanks to an algorithm built on a database of 10 000 clinically graded pictures”.
It also provides customers with a tailored skincare routine which is the most interesting part for a brand like Lancôme (One of L’Oréal Group’s top performing brands) as they can sell their products with more legitimacy. It’s a way for them to win their clientèle’s loyalty in the long term by showing them their expertise in terms of research.
A WORLD OF OPPORTUNITIES
This skincare diagnosis is not the only online beauty technology service that beauty brands have developed.
For instance, when you go on Dior.com in their “Exclusive services” :
You have access to a wide range of online beauty technology such as Virtual Try On, a perfume diagnostic, a skincare diagnostic etc.
However what’s interesting is that on Dior.com, the skincare diagnostic is a questionnaire that you can answer in 2 minutes with questions about people’s main skin concern or their current skincare routine. They try to have customers make a self analysis of their current skin. It clearly shows that the race for online beauty technology development is still on as Lancôme has a more advanced feature in terms of technology for people to get a skin diagnosis.
In Forbes’ article, Beauty’s New Frontier: How Technology Is Transforming The Industry, From Virtual Reality To Livestreaming, written by Kristin Larson, a beauty industry analyst at Coresight Research named Erin Schmidt says that Virtual try-on capability has been a game changer for beauty retail. It also deals with VR and AR in online beauty and how digital is driving online beauty sales today.
This sets new barriers for beauty brands to overcome and with the technological advances our world is experiencing, who knows if one day we will be able to smell a fragrance through a website feature on our smartphone.
About this article
This article has been written by a student on the Grenoble Ecole de Management’s Advanced Masters in Digital Strategy Management. As part of a content creation assignment, students are given the task of writing articles based on their digital interests and disseminate the articles online. Articles are marked but we make minimal changes to the content. Thanks for reading! James Barisic, Programme Director, MS DSM.
