Company Audit

As the years come and go, there will always be a need for beauty products. With the changing times and trends within the industry, Sephora has been able to withstand these changes. Sephora, first launched in 1969 in Paris and later opened United States stores in 1998. Now, Sephora is one of the most recognizable cosmetic chains. Since I frequent cosmetic stores like Sephora regularly, I decided to delve more into their social media “footprint” for my company audit.

After visiting all of their social media sites and researching news stories, Sephora seems to have a positive presence in the realm of social media. However, the company can be affected by “fake news” that is generated throughout the social media world. One of the biggest rumors that affected Sephora was the story that the company had bought out one of their biggest competitors, ULTA. While this doesn’t affect Sephora negatively, I found it interesting that someone out there would want to create this fake story. As I continued to read about this fake article, apparently creating this fake story it seems that fraudulent companies create these fake stories to bring awareness to their specific products. There is always a fake story that is put into the public, so it does not surprise me that people believe these stories. With this particular situation, I think that is quite elaborate to write and publish a fake story, just for the purposes of promoting a low-selling product.

Sephora uses their social media presence to engage with customers and continuously gain recognition. The company will often have giveaways and offer different discounts weekly. Because of the magnitude of that presence, the company has received backlash from a recent giveaway. The company promoted a giveaway with tons of prizes including high valued cosmetic products and a trip to Paris. However, it seems that the company did not plan to receive the participation that they did. Within seconds, the prizes that were up for grabs, were gone within seconds. In response, many customers took to Twitter to express their anger of the quick giveaway of Sephora’s rewards.

As customers are turning more and more towards online shopping, many retailers are seeing a decline in their in-store sales. Sephora has used this change in shopping trends to become one of the leading innovating cosmetic companies. I have noticed recently, browsing Sephora’s website online, that the company now offers an option for customers to upload their own pictures to test how products, such as eyeshadows, will look on them. I feel that Sephora is becoming more innovative with features like that. For women of color, buying cosmetic products is difficult but certain colors do not always look the same on everyone. Being a black woman, I do appreciate this feature. It makes it easier in making online purchase decisions. On the other side of that I still think that its hard to get a real feel for the product even being able to see it on yourself through a picture. Without a doubt, I am sure that there are many other customers that have the same opinion as I do. So, to encourage and continuously upkeep the in-store sales, Sephora has incorporated the use of the above-mentioned technology in their stores. In my opinion, in incorporating this technology in-store and online, Sephora is able to bring in consumers and at the same time increase their consumer engagement online.

Although, the company posts a lot of the same material across all their social media accounts, the content is specific to the platform. Sephora has made good use of the features that each has to offer and make it unique to the users. As mentioned above, Sephora’s innovation in-stores is something new and fresh for makeup fanatics. In order to capitalize on that, I think that Sephora should promote those cool features that they offer on their websites or even try to incorporate them into their social media platforms in some way.

Related posts:

Reach out on Twitter with feedback and questions. Receive this free newsletter every Friday morning by clicking here. A Light Switch for Gene Editing: I’m a sucker for CRISPR, but it has its…

When your hiring process sprawls across so many different locations, lots of information and context gets lost in the shuffle. You can avoid this danger by developing a single resource that contains…

At the beginning of the year, I made a public commitment to write and publish a new article every business day. But the secret to winning is not about never failing. It is about analyzing your…