May 27, 2023

Executive Summary  With the growing screen time people spend on screen. Social media marketing has taken the top place in the beauty product industry. Nowadays, beauty product companies are investing crazy on social media platforms, but how and why can social media content influence users’ buying behaviors? To explore the research question, the researcher conducted four in-depth interviews on Glossier – a New York-based unicorn beauty brand that has earned great success from its smart social media branding strategy. As a Direct to Customer (DTC) brand, Glossier does not provide any offline purchase options. Instead, they market online and only sell products online. The strategy saved a massive amount of costs on sales and marketing and brought huge exposures to the brand.  The research method that has been used is qualitative interviews, which allows the researcher to capture the rich context of the consumer experience through their own words. We could derive valuable suggestions for other DTC online businesses by analyzing how social media fans turn into customers.    Rationale  Nowadays, social media has been widely used by enterprises as a marketing strategy tool. (Ajina, A.S. , 2019) Compared to traditional marketing channels, digital marketing seems broad reachable, offers more diverse choices, helps target users precisely, and has more potential to gain influence in the global market. (Chen, S.-C.; Lin, C.-P., 2019) With the growing screen time people spend on screen. Social media marketing has now taken the leading place in the beauty product industry. One of the most representative examples is Glossier – a New York-based beauty and skincare brand founded in 2012, now has reached $1.8 Billion Valuation and received 80 Million dollars funding in Series E financing. Its marketing strategy relies entirely on social media, subtly relies on the influencer sharing economy, and has achieved great success in a decade.  Due to the brand’s popularity, there are existing business analyses and press releases on the Internet about Glossier brand marketing, about how they can use the influencer economy to gain audiences for the brand and win business success – but this is not the whole recipe. As a new cosmetic company that has found new opportunities in a saturated market, Glossier has a deep understanding of consumer psychology, understands the concept of community-based communication, and provides customers with the ultimate consumer experience. However, there is no academic report that takes consumer experience as an entry point in this field. This report aims to fill the blank with four in-depth qualitative user experience interviews and analyses. We will explore the reasons behind the numbers with real user feedback, such as how and when social media influences customers buying behavior and what brands can do to encourage people’s engagement on the products.    Conceptualization  Social media has emerged as a prevalent form of digital communication in the fashion and beauty marketplace where consumers freely share their perceptions and feelings about a product or brand (Escobar-Rodríguez & Bonsón-Fernández, 2017). The majority of the world’s population uses the Internet as part of their day-to-day lives. Within this environment, social networking sites (SNSs) play a new form of communication channel in the recent era. (Evans, 2006). Interacting with consumers on Social Media may increase potential consumers and the probability of turning potential consumers into real shoppers. In addition to changing existing potential consumers into buyers, social media encourages those buyers to promote and share their purchases experience among their friends by giving their positive or negative opinions towards a purchased product (Parson, 2013).  Social media has emerged as a prevalent form of digital communication in the fashion and beauty marketplace where consumers freely share their perceptions and feelings about a product or brand (Escobar-Rodríguez & Bonsón-Fernández, 2017). Except for content generated by the brand, the experiences customers share on online communities also influence how other shoppers perceive products and make decisions (Braverman, 2008).  Glossier values and encourages users to share their real experiences with products on social media platforms as a leader in emerging beauty brands. And to encourage users to share, the brand invited many influencers to the event and asked them to share their feelings about using the product through social media. This decision earned Glossier a tremendous amount of exposure and brought attention to the brand in a short period.  All business reports are praising Glossier’s decision to be in line with the trend of the times, and that is an intelligent choice. However, will users pull out their wallets to buy products because they see Influencer’s sharing? The answer is always not that simple. Out of curiosity about the real motivations of consumers’ buying decisions, the author conducted interviews with four lovely real-world users of Glossier.    Methodology  The research method that has been used is qualitative interviews, which allows the researcher to capture the rich context of the consumer experience through their own words. The researcher conducted 4 In-depth interviews of consumers of Glossier. Study participation was solicited from consumers born between 1994 and 2002. To identify the qualified interviewees, individuals who own at least one Glossier product and have browsed Glossier’s official site or social media content were initially identified.  The researcher provided the interviewees with a series of predesigned open-ended or descriptive questions from which additional information will be obtained. By recording the process that social media users turned into customers of the brand, researchers can identify the influences that Glossier’s strategy brought to customers.  Interview questions were designed in chronological order to help respondents recall how they knew Glossier, converted to consumers and contributed to the social media community. According to the feedback content, the whole process will be divided into four stages, from receiving attraction from the social media to the feedback on the product.  The researchers will record and compare the feedback given by different users at different stages to explore what factors influence users’ decisions and behaviors.  To obtain more information from diverse experiences, for users with unique feedback, the researchers provided a series of follow-up questions: What made you