NEW YORK — Mass market retailers are at a crossroads when it comes to service in the beauty department.
Some, such as Walgreens, never veered away from consultants in cosmetics. Others, including CVS, Brooks and Duane Reade, are putting trained professionals back into beauty, especially skin care. Some are debating whether the time is right to consider staffed departments. For the drugstore industry in particular, the return of service brings them full circle since most pharmacies in the Sixties and Seventies had well-trained and respected consultants.
Service could be the key to survival, according to research from WSL Strategic Retail in New York.
“This is the time to bring [service] back,” said Candace Corlett, principal partner in WSL, which just published a report discussing service that consumers are willing to pay for.
The study of 1,000 people, conducted in February, reveals consumers are willing to pay extra for service to choose beauty products. What’s notable is that assistance in choosing skin care and hair care is as important to women as service for selecting cosmetics. Those two categories are often overlooked in the areas of education and assistance. Many shoppers are leaving traditional mass marketers for locales where they can find more expertise in these categories.
According to Corlett, 27 percent of women already are buying most of their hair care at specialty stores like salons. And, just more than 10 percent are purchasing cosmetics and skin care in specialty stores. The shift from mass to these types of stores is a trend WSL is closely monitoring, just as it observed the migration from department stores to mass marketers years ago.
“The price differential between a drugstore and a salon is not that great and more salons are putting up walls and walls of hair care,” warned Corlett. There’s also a new breed of skin care clinics expanding across the country where women can get facials and other services while also buying products recommended by the experts. “A treat used to be a manicure for a special occasion. Now it’s a facial that is a must-have,” Corlett added. One company leading the growth of these skin care centers is Nuvo, where women can pop in for facials and other services while buying the products the experts use.
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She applauds efforts by CVS and Target to add upscale Boots departments to elevate the mass channels. In the supermarket arena, she points to Wegmans, Whole Foods, Kowalski’s and Food Lion’s new Bloom as bringing a new level of passion to mass retailing. “Everyone has four walls and a floor. It is what you do with it that counts,” she said. “As everyone looks for strategies for dealing with Wal-Mart, many are finding it isn’t always about low price, but also about things like service.”
Surprisingly, consumers want the help in the aisles, rather than at the cash register. More than 80 percent noted they would not pay more for good service at the checkout. “That’s why we are encouraging retailers to transfer associates from the checkout to the aisles where they can help build sales,” she explained. Many chains are experimenting with self-checkouts, which free up personnel to assist consumers.
Skin care is a category where mass market products are becoming more sophisticated and require additional help to navigate the plethora of choices. Hispanic consumers in particular said they would dig deeper into their pocketbooks for help with skin care selection. Affluent shoppers were also more likely to voice a willingness to pay for better service.
Drugstores, the survey said, may want to add experts across the whole store. Shoppers are willing to pay more to understand the over-the-counter medication category, especially children’s medications. Some chains such as Rite Aid are encouraging pharmacists and other trained professionals to roam those aisles to offer assistance. A new Rite Aid prototype that debuted last year in Akron, Ohio, clearly directs consumers to the pharmacy and promotes asking the expert about over-the-counter medications.
Hair care is another somewhat surprising area where shoppers crave more knowledge. That explains the growth of hair care sales in salons where stylists recommend products and willing consumers snap them up. “This is an opportunity for mass retailers to expand service throughout the entire beauty department or risk losing these shoppers to specialty stores,” Corlett concluded.