TrueColor A Range of Cosmetics

Consumer Behavior Assignment

Group Members: Aniket Choudhary (10) Lamzoulian Vaiphei (30) P. Swami Vivekananda (39) Rajoo Milan (47) Shashi Bharti (58) Sutanu Dutta (63)

TrueColor Range of Cosmetics

Introduction TrueColor, a range of cosmetics, was introduced which was aimed at providing full range of superior cosmetic products competing for premium segment of cosmetic market. It was introduced by Mod cosmetics, which is a joint venture between Modern Pharma and Rave cosmetics of SA. It was launched in 2001 targeting women customers of 27 to 35 years of age, and in the upper income bracket, whether working or otherwise. It was promoted with heavy marketing communication focusing on the brand image and non-transferrable features. Problem Statement The competing brands were seen as closer to what was desired than True Colour on key dimensions of brand persona and self-image. Confusion whether the brand had any clear strengths vis--vis the image dimensions and what the major weakness in the persona was and how to leverage it. Options Available Should the brand manager re-work the communication strategy, and if so, whether she should be starting from the brand persona itself, or the features? Should she focus on some other aspect such as availability and value for money perceptions through retailing and pricing strategies? Or should she approach this with an integrated plan? To find out if the self, ideal and brand image inter-relationships revealed any pattern that could be used to deduce consumer desires and needs in conjunction with the other data, and whether that would be sufficient to devise a more successful positioning than now.

Problem Analysis
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Ori o n

Va u fo rm o e l e n y

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Ch m ra i e

Va e o f s a e ri ty h d s

Figure 1 From Figure 1, it becomes clear that Rave TrueColor is a premium product with the following features: Value for Money: The perceived value of Value for Money for TrueColor is neither too high nor too low as compared to its competitors i.e., Orion and Chimera. This is not good for TrueColor as it shows that the satisfaction level of the customers is more for its competitor Orion. Consumers are more satisfied with Orion than that of TrueColor which is actually not good for the organization where product is not much differentiated. 1. Availability: The customer perceived value for availability of TrueColor is very less as compared to Orion and is almost equal to Chimera, which shows that consumers do not find the product readily available. There is also a possibility that a group of customers find it as a highly premium product which is available at selected places like up class saloons, beauty parlors and spas. But there is a major chunk of customers who couldnt get the product at retail outlets. It is also mentioned in the case that a greater number of respondents have not even heard of the product which shows the lack of communication and availability.

2. Youthfulness: The target age of the women customers are 27 to 35 years of age. For these women the biological clock is ticking away, and they want to retain their youthfulness. TrueColors perceived value for youthfulness is low as compared to Orion which shows that the product would be more preferred to those women who are matured enough and choosy and want to maintain their social status. 3. Good Quality Product: The sad news for TrueColor about this attribute is customers perceive it as not a very good quality product and its competitors are delivering better quality as compared to TrueColor. This is threatening and alarming news for TrueColor as customers when pay high premium price for cosmetics would like to have the best available quality, in the absence of which the customer may switch to other brand providing better quality. Also, the case clearly mentions that customers even though try every new product but they repurchase only if they find it satisfactory and worth purchasing and if TrueColor is not able to deliver better quality, it is definitely going to lose its market share in the long run. 4. Non Transferrable: TrueColor has able to differentiate itself from other competitors in this category as their products are non-transferrable. The company can take a huge benefit out of this specific characteristic of the product and can position their product by showing the benefit of this product to target customers.
5. Variety of Shades: TrueColor comes up with the maximum number of shades as compared

to its competitors which is another differentiating factor for TrueColor. To take the benefit out of this attribute, TrueColor has to communicate this effectively so that they can acquire the maximum market share and it will provide a good perceived value (quality) to their products. Since the customers are choosy and want to be elite in their social circle, this will provide differentiation advantage to TrueColor.
Product Brand Image Relationship Between Selfconcept and brand image Behavior Satisfaction

Consumer Self-Concept

Satisfaction reinforces self-concept

From the above analysis, it is found that relationship between self-concept and brand image influence is low as the customers perceive the product as a low quality product. Hence, they have to increase the quality of the product and communicate it to the customers in most effective way.

8 7

6 5 TrueColour 4 3 Self Image Ideal Self Image Orion Chimera 2 1 0

Figure 2 gives us the idea about the self-image and brand persona. It includes the comparison of TrueColor with both of its competitors i.e., Orion and Chimera in terms of self-image and ideal self-image. Now, the target audience for the cosmetic products is women of age 27 to 35 years and the attributes for comparison of self-image and ideal self-image is given in the figure. DIMENSIONS CONCEPT Private Self Social Self OF SELF ACTUAL SELF CONCEPT How I see myself? How others actually see me? IDEAL SELF CONCEPT How I would like to see myself? How I would like them to see me?

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Figure 2

The target audience, women of 27 to 35 years of age, vary on a large number of attributes to differentiate the ideal self-image than the actual self-image. TrueColor and other competitors help women in attaining the ideal self-image and women would prefer those products which would help them achieve their ideal self-image on a maximum number of attributes and up to the maximum extend. The analysis of the different attributes and the role of TrueColor in that are done below: 1. Appealing-reserved: The self-image of target women is more reserved as compared to appealing. But, the ideal self-image is towards appealing. It means women who are reserved are trying to be appealing and in no way TrueColor is helping them to achieve that as TrueColor is also more towards reserved, in fact more reserved than self-image. So, TrueColor has to change its positioning accordingly. 2. Fashionable-ordinary: The actual self-image of women shows that women are mostly ordinary and they want to be much more fashionable, and TrueColor is able to connect between this desire of its customers very well, but this is done in better way by Orion and Chimera on the same scale, so even improvement has to be done on this attribute as well. 3. Natural-ornate: Women want to be more natural than ornate and the brands TrueColor and Orion are not in line with the customers self-image and the ideal self-image. Only Chimera is connecting to women very well in this category. 4. Aristocratic-plain: Target women are very much plain and not aristocratic. But they seem tending towards aristocratic attribute and TrueColor is helping them to achieve this thing as the product line of TrueColor is perceived to be special and women are satisfied using this product line for this particular attribute. 5. Youthful-content: Targeted women are those who are moving away from youthfulness and they have started missing it, so they are tending more towards youthfulness than being contented. TrueColor is not able to reach the ideal self-image i.e., youthfulness in this case, it is more on the self-image side i.e., content side, so the image has to be changed. 6. Adventurous-non adventurous: Target women are not very adventurous at this age but they still want to be a little adventurous. TrueColor is more inclined towards adventurous but the inclination is more than what the women actually want. TrueColor makes women feel more adventurous than what they actually want, so improvement has to be done on this attribute as well.

7. Delicate-insensitive: The actual and ideal self-image for this category is not very different. Women still wants to be a little more delicate than what they really are, and TrueColor makes them become more insensitive but on a small extent. 8. Prestige-non status: Women are actually seeing themselves as non-status but they want to be prestigious one i.e., their ideal self-image is to be prestigious. TrueColor is helping them to achieve their ideal self while on the other hand women perceive Orion as a highly prestigious product line. 9. Bold-shy: Women are shy and does not want to be more bold i.e., the actual self-image and the ideal self-image is more or less equal and the product TrueColor is perceived to be very much bold, which is actually very opposite to what actually the target women expects. 10. Choosy-non choosy: Women are actually non-choosy and they have realized this fact and they do not want to change this fact. The ideal and actual self-image is almost same and it is neither very much choosy nor non choosy. On the other hand, products like Orion and TrueColor are perceived to be highly choosy which shows that women are either afraid to purchase it, due to improper communication or this product caters only to the highly premium segment. The above analysis of the self-image of women and the brand persona of TrueColor comes up with a very different conclusion. The catchy points that women dont like about the product and TrueColor should notice are: TrueColor carries an image of more of a reserved kind of product which is not liked by women. TrueColor should position itself more towards natural than being ornate. TrueColor image should be more delicate. It is perceived more insensitive. TrueColor need to become more youthful. TrueColor is more bold, while women still prefer being shy. TrueColor is highly choosy which is not preferable by most of the women.

There are also some key factors that women like about TrueColor and by the help of which TrueColor can position itself and can generate benefit out of it. The key points are: TrueColor makes women more fashionable which is liked by target women.

TrueColor provides aristocratic feeling to target women, which is also preferred by most of the segment. TrueColor makes women adventurous, which is preferred. TrueColor users feel prestigious about their product which is one of the main factors.

So, we should keep the above points in consideration while doing the STP Analysis. STP ANALYSIS Segmentation: Some of the problems faced by TrueColor are Its product is perceived as a great quality product Less than half of its customers are ready for repeat purchase, which is not a good number

We can segment the market into three main parts. First segment of customers are those who brought the product and are using it repeatedly. They are content with the performance of the product and loyal towards the brand. Second segment of customers are those who bought the product once and then stopped using it after first use. They dont consider that the performance of the brand is up to the expectation level and brand is unable to bridge the gap between self-image and ideal selfimage. Third segment of customers are those who have not used the product yet. It is mentioned in the case that 42 % of those who have heard of this product are willing to give it a try. This means that marketing of the product is not that effective because once your message has reached the end user then also the message is able to convince only 42% of receivers to give it a try. The other part of last segment is those who have not heard about the product and very high 82% liked the concept and willing to give it a try. Targeting: We have to focus our attention on two groups: The customers who have used our product once and never bought it again.

Second group is customers who have never used our product.

So we will basically go for multiple targeting. First of all, we have to target the customers who have never heard about our product as a part of our integrated marketing plan. We will raise awareness level by focusing on the points of differentiations; non transferability of colors and very high availability of colors. So a customer will have wide variety to choose from. We will target this group of customers who have never used our product by providing demos at high end malls where our target segment comes regularly and then give a discount coupons for repeat purchases so that it helps us in retaining the customers. Most importantly we have emphasized to our current and potential customers that our product is of highest quality and uses products that are FDA approved, laboratory tested as perfectly safe on skin. Our research had indicated serious quality issues perceived by customers. Then we have to work hard to regain our lost customers who stopped using our product after one use. The previously mentioned attributes of our product will be re-emphasized by colorful and informative advertisements at womens magazine like Womens era, Femina, Cosmopolitan. Positioning: We shall position our product as a premium product having far more positive benefits to classy women. As a premium brand customers will feel pride in using it. It will provide them an aristocratic feeling. It will be a product with a youthful touch. Customers will be able to easily match their cosmetics with their dress and purse as our brand has huge availability of shades. We have to avoid getting our product perceived as ornate or insensitive as these are huge turnoffs for our customers. It will be exclusive product and will be available at selected beauty parlors spa etc.