How social commerce is taking flight
in beauty retailing
By: Hanna Ryngmark, Meaghan Werle, and Tiffany Hogan
Social media platforms are increasingly monetizing their touchpoints with their massive audiences. As social commerce advances, beauty will be a leading category due to its large following of digital natives for whom social shopping will be a natural next step in the evolution of digital and eCommerce.
Beauty is a very prominent category on social media. Younger shoppers look to social media for inspiration when buying products in this category. This behavior is mainly driven by the large number of beauty, fashion, and lifestyle influencers on these platforms. As a result, beauty brands are increasingly focused on driving conversion on social media, a key reason beauty is ahead of many other categories in leveraging social as a commercial tool.
By analyzing beauty as a category, we can better understand the current and future state of social commerce, and how brands can capitalize on the channel to drive engagement and conversion.
What Is Social Commerce?
Social commerce is the use of social networks and media to support buying and selling products and services online. In many cases, these platforms facilitate direct-to-consumer (DTC) efforts by eliminating the need for a middleman and allowing brands to deepen their relationship with shoppers.
One of the main reasons social media represents a promising commercial opportunity is that shoppers are becoming increasingly channel-blind, seeing and shopping only the brand. Social commerce further strengthens a brand’s ability to be part of the conversation on shoppers’ terms, wherever and whenever they choose, which has become fundamental to retail success.
However, the concept of social commerce is still in its infancy. We believe the social commerce market will strengthen over the next few years as technology advances and a new generation of shoppers starts to flex its spending power. Therefore, it is a key development that brands — especially those looking to win Millennial and Generation Z shoppers in the future — should prepare for and understand.
(Figure 1).
Currently, the rise of social commerce is leading to new trip types, reinventing the shopping occasion online and opening new ways for retailers and suppliers to drive sales. However, barriers to adoption exist. Lack of awareness of retail capabilities and lack of trust with payment information are holding shoppers back from shopping through these sites. Regional differences are also notable. China, for example, has a more mature social commerce landscape than the U.S. and U.K.
As this space evolves, shoppable social media posts will become more widespread, requiring tighter marketing-sales integration. Payment will be more seamless and integrated into the social media experience. In turn, social platforms will become the biggest challengers to marketplaces like Amazon.
By supporting D2C efforts, social media will become the new marketplace for specialty and challenger brands. In addition, social media users will be active participants in developing products and selling to peers thanks to the opportunity to earn commissions or discounts for sharing brand content and recommendations with friends.
Figure 1. The 3 C’s of Social Commerce
The New Social Trip Types
Due to its visual and personal nature, beauty has been one of the first categories to embrace social commerce. In this environment, beauty brands can better replicate the tangible in-store experience online. What’s more, social media fosters entirely new beauty trip types that create opportunities for retailers and brands.
Experiential Impulse
Experiential impulse trips occur when users engage with social media while not in a shopping mindset. In this case, the social content plays a role in generating purchase intent. To capture this impulse, social media platforms are introducing new features designed to reduce the gap between inspiration and conversion.
Custom Curation
Custom curation occurs when social elements are used to tailor the assortment to a shopper’s specific preferences or needs. Supported by social platforms, these more personalized decision aids leverage tools such as chatbots, augmented reality, or algorithms to help shoppers discover and buy on their own terms.
Solution Swipe
The solution swipe occurs when products are merchandised on social media in the context of a lifestyle solution, such as an outfit or recipe. Showcasing items in this environment encourages shoppers to build baskets, with social media features helping shoppers add products seamlessly to their online carts.
Source: Kantar Consulting
Liz Earle, Boots UK, and Sephora use social media to highlight promotions and sales and to create a sense of urgency and insider exclusivity for their followers. Together with shoppable links, the initiatives can capture impulse occasions as shoppers engage with social media while not in a shopping mindset.
Source: Retailer social media
Click to view
Liz Earle, Boots UK, and Sephora use social media to highlight promotions and sales and to create a sense of urgency and insider exclusivity for their followers.
In partnership with Pinterest, Burberry built a customized beauty experience to launch its Cat Lashes mascara. After completing a questionnaire, the shopper receives a personalized Pinterest board based on her makeup preferences. The board highlights ways to use Cat Lashes mascara alongside beauty tips, monogrammed content, and get-the-look guides. From each Pin, the shopper is directed to Sephora.com to complete her purchase.
Source: Pinterest blog, retailer Pinterest page and website
Click to view
In partnership with Pinterest, Burberry built a customized beauty experience to launch its Cat Lashes mascara
Beauty pure player Glossier uses Instagram Stories to teach shoppers how to apply its Cloud Paint product. It encourages them to purchase the product by “swiping up” to get to a shoppable product page. Showing both application techniques and final looks helps shoppers understand how to use a product and provides easy links to shop the product.
Source: Retailer Facebook account
Click to view
Beauty pure player Glossier uses Instagram Stories to teach shoppers how to apply its Cloud Paint product.
Kantar Consulting Point of View
Closing the social media gap is critical. As selling becomes increasingly contextual and personalized, brands can take these actions to attune embedded shopping options:
- Start building a D2C infrastructure to adapt to this new selling environment.
- Reward your most loyal followers by unveiling exclusive access to products and deals via your social media channels.
- Improve product discovery and awareness by personalizing the customer experience based on known preferences.
- Make social platforms part of your R&D by testing shopper demand before selling into your retail partners.
- Use social as a marketing tool by growing the number of ongoing conversations about your products or brand.
- Identify the platforms your shoppers rely on for inspiration and entertainment, and understand your role across the purchase funnel and emerging trip types.
Looking even further ahead, social media will continue to impact retail in the following ways:
- Within the next five years, shoppable social media posts will be the norm. Early adopters will have embedded social as a more commercial function, resulting in increasingly integrated marketing teams and sales functions.
- Technology will have advanced significantly and payment will be much more seamless and integrated. As a result, social platforms will become the biggest contenders to marketplaces like Amazon and provide an alternative channel for beauty brands still hesitant to sell on the site.
- Social media will become the new marketplace for specialty and challenger brands especially in the beauty, fashion, and accessories space where the combination of inspiration and conversion will beat the solutions-focused search terms found on traditional marketplaces like Amazon or eBay.
- Social media users will play a more active role in developing products and selling to peers, motivated by the opportunity to earn commissions or discounts for sharing brand content and recommendations with friends.
Kantar Consulting tracks many best practices and innovations in this space. For our full analysis, see “Social beauty: The current state and future of social commerce in beauty retailing”
(KRIQ subscribers only).