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Glossier's
Digital Initiative Proposal
Part I.
Presentation & Explanation of the Digital Initiative
Try Before You Buy
Using their mobile phones, customers can ‘try on’ Glossier’s makeup range virtually and see what it would look like on them in a camera selfie view using the new augmented reality feature.
Customers can then share images of themselves with their Instagram, Facebook or Snapchat story feed. After virtually trying on products, imbedded links lead them to purchase their chosen products.
Live Streaming Community
Customers can virtually try on Glossier’s makeup range and share it as a livestream video on their Instagram, Facebook or Snapchat accounts. Friends or influencers wanting to give beauty tips/ training can livestream a video of themselves while those watching try on the products virtually through their phones. Imbedded links again allow them to purchase products immediately after trying them on.
THE THREE T'S OF MARKETING IN THE DIGITAL AGE
Tech-Infusion
The use of Augmented Reality (AR) has a depth- and colour-sensing camera system and motion sensors that scan the face. It evaluates the contours of each person’s face, such as the size of the eyes, lips and cheeks. Highly accurate facial feature recognition - recognising skin colour, spots, wrinkles and freckles, proportions of face, iris size and location (Modiface, 2019) - analyses the scanned face and matches its values to products and Glossier models’ tutorials (Chen, 2017).
This technological advancement removes the stress of purchasing a product online without its physical interaction, gives deeper understanding of the product and enables customers to try out the newest makeup products of the organization in real time.
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This way the organization enhances the effectiveness of their brand marketing as “telling a story”(IBM, 2019).
Transforming
Behavioural change in the consumer devision-making model. The skin assessment and simulation process influence consumers to quicker and more efficiently evaluate the alternative products available on the app.
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These new features on the app provide information in real time, encourage easier decision of purchase, and increases consumer satisfaction and give competitive parity of 3 in 1.
56% of the Millennials report they are usually either one of the very first to try new technology or are among the first group to try a new technology (Millennial Marketing, 2019).
Tailoring
2020s will seek to advocate the digitization of every product, where performance indicator will be customer attraction and engagement. The market approach centres around personalisation, and experience and personality of the brand will determine its growth and success (Zealley, Wollan and Bellin, 2018).
The app aims to personalise the customer experience and engages the customer in post-purchase behaviour to further explore alternative makeup products suggested by the the AR real-time filters and Glossier tutorials.
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A further goal would be creating tailored products for consumers after evaluating their preferred products and data of their facial features.
Part II.
Benefits to the Organisation & Added Value
Achievement of their primary goal - building a customer community
Research carried out by Facebook (2017) shows that 61% of time online in the UK is spent on a smartphone device rather than on a desktop and 46% of beauty consumers use social media to share their opinion on something they have bought. These two statistics indicate the need for Glossier’s very own mobile app, where customers will be able to engage with one another and share their reviews and beauty-related tips.
Leveraging AR in that app, especially the social sharing, “stories”, feature, will provide customers easier access to real-life presentations of the products along with reviews in forms that are more engaging than written text on the company’s website. This will facilitate shared customer experience (McAlexander et al, 2002) and building of personal connections both within the customer community and with the brand, further strengthening the brand ecosystem.
Greater customer engagement
Research conducted by the Temkin Group (as cited by Vermes, 2018) found that 73% of buyers point to customer experience as an essential factor in purchasing decisions and 65% of buyers find it more effective in attracting them to the brand than marketing campaigns. Studies analysing the impact of AR on users’ experience show that the satisfaction, enhancement of the perception of reality and overall funness and personalisation of the AR experience are relevant for customers (Poushneh and Vasquez-Parraga, 2017) and contribute to the “fun factor” of shopping (Pachoulakis and Kapetanakis, 2012).
AR technology allows to enhance the level of customer engagement through transitioning the buying experience from looking down at a screen to looking at the world through the screen.
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According to Gallup’s report, Glossier’s main target group - Millennials - are not fully engaged customers, meaning they are not emotionally and psychologically attached to a brand, product or company. However, when they are fully engaged, they are more profitable and loyal than other groups of customers.
Increased revenues
Implementation of AR into the Glossier’s mobile app is expected to significantly increase the company’s revenues. The Temkin Group (op. cit. Vermes) found that bettering customer experience leads to customers spending more, as 86% of customers willing to pay more for a great customer experience.
Beauty solution company Revieve has found that providing skin analysis of selfies for online shoppers can increase customer conversion, that is the number of site or app visitors who are also paying customers by 50%. The current average customer conversion is 3.8% for Health & Beauty, whereas availability of user generated content can improve that by 203% (Bloom, 2017).
Data
Through AR, Glossier will be able to access real-time data about what products are being viewed the most or the least, how long customers spend interacting with the product and at which locations, as well as the possible sequence of events that leads to purchasing a product. Such data is difficult to obtain without AR and can be used for evaluating product performance or feed into the development of marketing strategies.
Part III.
Action Plan for Implementation
Current industry implementation of AR has focused on buying beauty AR companies. L’Oréal has recently acquired ModiFace for an undisclosed amount (Clichy, 2018) and Ulta Beauty has taken over Glam St (Ulta Beauty, 2018). However, this option is not currently financially viable for Glossier. AR beauty competitors, Meitu, have a market cap valuation of $15.51 billion suggesting a similar purchase by Glossier would be in the $billions (Financial Times, 2019).
Glossier has 2 subsequent, viable options for implementing an augmented reality app:
1. collaborate with ar beauty company
This would require approaching an existing company which creates AR for beauty. Glossier could then tailor the company’s existing technology to meet their feature requirements and create their own app with their own branding. Similar collaboration examples include Sephora and ModiFace (Azfar, 2016).
2. Build their own ar beauty app
This would require building their own technology from scratch either using the expertise of a company which builds AR apps for others or hiring their own in-house team to build and maintain the technology.
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Due to lack of available data, the implementation strategy in this project will focus on Glossier building their own AR app. For a comparison of self-implementation vs. collaborating with an existing company go to Appendix 1.
2 Stage Implementation
Stage 1 Estimates
Total Time: 17 - 29 weeks
Total Cost: $82,500 - $156,000
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*Estimated time and **price is based on software development company, Jasoren's average for an AR e-commerce app (2018). Hours have been rounded up to the nearest week.
Absence of data on cost and timing for developing features in stage 2 (implementing live streaming) meant we were unable to make these projections. Glossier should contact AR development companies to request an estimate. Potential companies to approach are noted in Appendix 1.
People & Skills Required
Skills: ​
(1) Software development and design
(2) Project management
PWC report (2017)
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