BRAND PROFILE Product Category: Beauty/ Retail BRAND ATTRIBUTES Brand Name: Ulta Beauty Brand Quality: Ulta provides affordable products for consumers to indulge by combining unmatched product value, breadth and convenience with the distinctive environment of a specialty retailer. Physical characteristics of the brand: Ulta serves to provide the consumer affordable quality cosmetics against the top luxury brands. Products are designed with black compact cases with the Ulta logo and design placed on the packaging. Brand strategy: Ulta believes in offering over 20,000 mass beauty products across the categories of cosmetics, fragrance, haircare, skincare, bath and body, and salon styling tools. The broad selection of merchandise across categories, price points, and brands offers a unique shopping experience. Brand image: Ulta combines value and convenient locations with the distinctive environment and experience of a specialty retailer. Catering to women who love to indulge in shopping for beauty products as well as the woman who is time constrained. Brand reputation: Ulta has a loyal and active fanbase totaling in over nine million customer loyalty members, have a strong and active relationship with over 300 vendors, which expand through three different beauty categories such as prestige, mass, and salon. Brand price: Depending upon the items in the store, price points vary from Ulta Collection being in the lower price range to designer products hitting in the higher end price range. Certain items are more affordable than most which makes it easy to find a product or brand at a price point which is good for you.
BRAND PROFILE Brand core value: Ulta focuses on delivering value propositions to their customers, by running frequent promotions and coupons for the mass brands, gifts with purchase offers and multiproduct gift sets for prestigious brands, and a customer loyalty program. Brand logo and tagline: “Welcome to Fabulous” tagline “ULTA beauty” logo with a round underscore on half of the title. Colors are white font with orange background. Brand design & packaging: Products across all categories contain the Ulta logo on products as well as packaging. These products are considered the “ULTA Collection” Shopping bags after purchase are orange to signify the purchase was made from Ulta as well as a large logo in the center. Brand satisfaction/warranties: Ulta provides products who offer 2year warranties after purchase. These items are beauty tools such as hair dryers, curling irons, facial cleanser machines, etc. These items are products which require more care; resulting from constant use could lead to products failing. Brand equity: Ulta Beauty continues to add excitement to their stores by adding new brands, products and services to reinforce their position as a beauty and trend authority. Ulta Beauty has added 65 brands, since 2009, and added 20 new brands in 2012 alone. Brand’s primary competition: Sephora Macy’s Nordstrom Bath & Body Works CVS Walgreens Target WalMart CONSUMER BUYING BEHAVIOR Primary Target Audience:
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1845, female, middle class Limited amount of time, necessity for one stop shopping for mass, prestige, and salon products, salon services with wide range of products for purchase.
Consumer Buying Decisions: ■ who most influences the buying decisions? Brand advertising is a crucial role for consumers to know which type of products are out on the market at the moment. Ulta Beauty has in store advertisements, online ads, out of home billboards, print advertisements as well. All of these types of advertisements allow the consumer to do research on the product and decide on purchase. ■ who makes the final buying decision? Ulta Beauty advisors are great instore advertisements, to help consumers with any questions regarding quality of the product and more in depth product knowledge. Once consumers step on on the floor of Ulta Salon locations, any advisor can help them with question, and even demonstrations to finalize their buying decision. ■ who makes actual product purchase? After careful research of new products, the consumers who are loyal to brands tend to be the one making the actual product purchase. Also, the consumer who has used the same product for long periods of time will continue to purchase from the same brand. Most of the brands sold in Ulta are designer, salon, or mass products. ■ who is the user of the product? Brand loyalists are the most common consumers for Ulta Beauty and the brand lines they offer. Many women return to this retail store to purchase items they have bought in the past, or to refill products they have suddenly gone low on. If brand lines are offering any type of new product, this type of retail store is an excellent location to get feedback and test the brands before they make the final purchase. PRODUCT PACKAGING ●
how does it provide product protection? Ulta beauty offers over 500 brands in various categories to cater to the woman who loves to indulge in shopping for beauty products or for the woman on the go. ● how does it persuade consumer to buy? The beauty products are arranged in selfservice displays and fullservice boutiques in a
BRAND PROFILE way to encourage customers to play, touch, test, learn and explore. ● how does it provide marketing support? The well trained beauty advisors can provide unbiased and customized advice tailored to the customers’ needs, which increases both the frequency and the length of the customers visits.
PRICING Suggested retail price: various price points through different brand categories Product value: ■ product components varies on brand products ■ product features brand categories vary to styling tools, salon products, cosmetics, hair ■ product benefits depending upon brand category some benefits vary Pricing set in relationship to the marketplace: Moderate priced brands to higherend prestige brands Pricing strategy (marketskimming or market penetration pricing) Market penetration to compete with other retail stores in various categories PRODUCT DISTRIBUTION Direct: own store, Internet Indirect: 3 distribution facilities Romeoville, IL ; Phoenix, AZ ; Chambersburg, PA Inventory is shipped from suppliers to the three distribution facilities. Stores carry over 20,000 products and replenish the stores with such products primarily in batches, which allows the company to ship less than an entire case when only one or two of a particular product is required. PRODUCT PROMOTION Advertising ■ “The largest beauty retailer that provides one stop shopping for prestige, mass, and salon products and salon services in the United States.” ■ “Welcome to Fabulous” ■ Internet, TV, outofhome ads, Print ads, freestanding inserts ■ other types of media: ● direct mail advertising monthly catalogs, email promotions
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● Interactive media online store site ● social media Twitter, Facebook, Pinterest, YouTube Total media expenditures in 2013: ● direct mail catalogs ● freestanding newspaper inserts
Sales Promotion ■ sales promotion techniques used: ● by reducing the price “Buy 1, Get 1 50% Off”, online coupon promotions such as codes, Ulta Rewards member, Ulta coupon rewards ● by adding value Buy More Save More promotions “Buy 1, Get 1 FREE,” “Buy 2 Get 1 FREE”, Gifts with Purchase promotions Public Relations ■ methods of positive publicity used: ● news releases N/A ● press conferences N/A ● lobbying N/A ■
other public relations activities used: ● community relations Charitable efforts on behalf of The Breast Cancer Research Foundation ● sponsored events partnered with Allure magazine to publish a special ULTA Beauty edition to highlight their position as a beauty and trend authority. ● crisis management
Other Marketing Disciplines ■ Sponsorships or events N/A ■ Trade shows N/A ■ Product placements N/A BRAND PROFILE SUMMARY : SWOT analysis ●
Strengths ○ Differentiated merchandising strategy ○ Unique customer experience
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Loyal and active customer base Experienced management team
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Weakness ○ Remodeling stores take approximately three months to complete ○ Unable to compete effectively in highly competitive markets
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Opportunities ○ Expanding their offers by adding new products, brands, and services ○ Enhance their successful loyalty program ○ Broaden market reach ○ Enhance and expand their digital business
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Threats ○ Ulta products and salon services may cause unexpected or undesirable side effects that could result in discontinuance. ○ Subject to risks relating to the information technology systems, and failure to protect this critical information could affect our operations. ○ The capacity of distribution or order fulfillment may not be adequate to support the recent growth.