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 unfollow the brand? If you had more offline stores, would you offer more trust to the brand?
Analysis
Despite the drafted memo, categories, and codes from the interview content, the researcher also collected personal information about the interviewees, which helps explain the participants’ background and motivation. Here are some data derived from the collected information.
Glossier has done a great job in user experience, consumer psychology, and social media communication strategies as one of the fastest-growing beauty brands in the past decade. Through interviews with four young women aged 19-26 (and they are also Glossier’s target clients), the researchers received a rich context of feedback. The information received confirms the success of Glossier’s strategy of attracting clients through social media. Since the interview questions were designed in chronological order, the researchers divided the interview content into four stages, from knowing the brand from social media. 2) Become a Fan of the brand. 3) Fan to the Buyer. 4 ) Buyer to the contributor on the internet / Offline.
All respondents reported that social media influenced their purchase intention for Glossier. Three respondents reported that YouTube influencers influenced them. One was influenced by peer recommendation, while her friend also received attraction from social media platforms. The fourth interviewee reported that the first time she heard about Glossier was in 2016, but she did not intend to buy it because the product was more expensive than her expectation, and she did not like the texture of the product. However, watching more people sharing the content on social media and the in-depth understanding of the brand’s value made her decide to give this brand a second chance. According to the feedback, we can see that product-sharing content related to Glossier successfully generated their interest in the brand and, with that influence, converted them into users of the brand.
Here are four findings derived from the observation of interviews:
• Key Finding 1: Social media marketing is important, but product quality is even more critical.
Even if users are attracted to social media content and convert to users, once they find the quality is questionable, they will instantly transform to haters from fans.
“I unfollowed their instagram after I received my first item.” The second interviewee reported unfollowing the brand after receiving a disappointing product, and then she started sharing negative comments on Glossier. This might be because she had high expectations for the brand, which added to her disappointment with the product’s flaws.
• Key Finding 2: Positive emotional experience is key to the success of direct-to-consumer brands.
All the respondents noted the importance of the personal experience, including their demands for product texture, whether the product color is unique, and the emotional feedback brought by the product value.
“I use Glossier before my first date with my crush. It is easy, effortless, makes me feel confident but not turning me into another person.” The fourth interviewee said that she feels good while using the blush from Glossier. The positive feedback and value sharing made her feel confident, and that is why she chose to use Glossier products before the first date. More interviewees mentioned that the texture and taste of products made them happy. And this happiness makes them more willing to share with friends. “I mean, why not to share this brand?” said one interviewee.
• Key Finding 3: Accessible offline sites can increase customers’ trust and confidence in the brand.
“Accessible offline experience makes me feel this brand is qualified and can provide good services to customers.” All four customers reported that they would have more confidence in Glossier if they could experience the product in person.
• Key Finding 4: The story with the brand will increase users’ willingness to share.
All the respondents reported they would share their Glossier experience with friends because it gave them a story to tell, whether it is a good or bad experience.
Discussion
As people spend more time on social media, more merchants are shifting from traditional regional marketing to Digital Marketing, which allows them to reach more users. From Glossier’s case study, we can learn what a successful online marketing process looks like. From the feedback from our interviewees, we have gained some valuable experiences and findings. And these lessons can be used for all businesses that want to do online marketing.
However, as it is a small report, the study also has limitations. One is about the limitation on sample numbers – only four interviews were conducted, and some of them are not familiar enough with this brand since they only purchased once or twice. And because of the limited sample numbers, we did not include information and perspectives from male users, younger or elder people groups.
Another limitation of this study is that the strategy and rules of social media platforms are evolving, which means follow-up research would be needed.
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