4Ps analysis
Product
According to the market research, when buying cosmetics, students tend to pay more attention on quality, which can be seen from figure 4, occupying 86.14%, price and skin come to the second, with both 63.37%, over half students will put brand as a choosing standard, so brand recognition actually has already been established during the process. As figure 5 shows, most students buy cosmetics is for cleaning and keeping wet such basic function, nearly half of students to settle with acne and to be white, only a small percentage of students use cosmetics to deal with wrinkle and stain.
Price
Since students are still financially dependent on family, even though some earn money through winning scholarship or doing part-time jobs, it can be seen from figure 4 that they are quite sensitive about price, and figure 2 conclude most individuals accept a price below 100 RMB. Moreover, through analysis of brand recognition, it can be demonstrated from figure 6 that most popular brand shall match their requirement of quality and price, for OLAY and Dabao are middle-level price product and L’oreal also have middle-price series. However, foreign brand can be said hotter than native brand comparing with various percentages, and how to update brand image, remedy its reputation, recover its lost market share and continue the fight against the rush of foreign brand has been an urgent issue to native companies.
Place
Since campus is a relatively closed market, so companies should make strategies accordingly:
1. Set franchise point in or close to campus in order to penetrate product frequently and make good preparation for the following promotion.
2. Establish agent in campus, on one hand, to discover potential consumers, since it is more easily for peers to build trust, and nobody know more marketing information than natives; on the other hand, it can be a good way for company to discover and cultivate reserved talented personnel for corporation development.
3. Group-buying channels. As is said before, youngers tend to recognize internet product more quickly, and group-buying mode is right a typical example. Relatively low price plus brand ensurance, are nothing but match requirement of students, moreover, they like fresh experience. Now more and more B2C and C2C cosmetics websites have discovered such market characteristics and spare no effort to enlarge their market share on internet.
Promotion
Focus on its market characteristics, promotion strategies combination should be made to appeal to young consumers:
1. Advertisement, take advantage of various kinds of media, ranging from campus poster, leaflets, fashion magazine, sponsor to campus activities thus traditional channel, to internet channels, like microblog, social network, instant message, carrying out viral marketing.
2. Personnel promotion, employ sales person and develop agent representative to promote sales, which can be human resource strategy in a near future.
3. Promotion activities, such as sponsor, favorable activities, discount, trial sample, free consultant, to attract more potential consumer and consolidate existing customer source, strengthen its brand loyalty and stickiness.
