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Who Buys What: Key to a Successful Ethnic HBC Category Drug store retailers are using a variety of merchandising and marketing strategies to increase their market share in the competitive ethnic health and beauty care category. Most major drug store chains have allocated at least a 4 foot ethnic department in their stores that have consistent 10 percent African American foot traffic. In high traffic stores, drug store managers have installed massive displays and end caps in an effort to attract more ethnic consumers with hopes of generating more category sales. While all of those strategies are effective, drug store strategists can devise more efficient category practices by gaining a more profound understanding of who actually buys ethnic toiletries. One major assumption that needs to be revised in the process of trying to understand the ethnic toiletries consumer is that all African Americans will automatically patronize the category. Although African Americans are more likely to purchase ethnic toiletries and are the obvious starting point when studying the category consumption patterns, there are other socio-demographic factors to consider in determining who buys ethnic toiletries. For example, our research indicates that the African American woman between the ages of 15 and 55, with an income ranging from $22,000 to $36,000 is the core consumer for ethnic health and beauty care toiletries. As far as her purchasing habits are concerned, her income will not allow her to spend beyond her budget. Furthermore, her income will limit her experimentation with products that are not part of her brand psyche and do not have a perceived fair retail point. It is possible that this African American woman will be the primary breadwinner in the household. Therefore, she will have to be responsible for key purchasing decisions for about 1-3 children in her household. Because of the limitations, due to a daily job and family obligations, she has to plan all of her shopping trips and decide what she is going to purchase before she begins shopping. What strategies can drug store retailers use to increase category sales with this type of information about this consumer? One strategy that should be considered is that the shelf level product assortment should match the purchasing behavior of the core consumer. As stated earlier, the core consumer is a brand conscious and price motivated shopper. Therefore, brands that she wants priced at fair retail points must be prevalent at shelf level. Private label and unknown brands will probably have strong profit margins for the retailers and manufacturers, but will be unappealing to this brand-related consumer. Another key factor about this core consumer is that her income will not permit her to pay a professional beautician to style her hair on a weekly basis. She will probably use the products she purchased from the store to style and maintain her hair as well as other household members' hair. An effective strategy to address this need is to allow professional stylists to hold in-store demonstrations that provide styling and self-maintenance tips. Regardless of the chain's objective for the category, understanding the demographics and lifestyle habits of the ethnic toiletries consumer will help the chain develop strategies to meet those objectives. Tom Tyree is President/CEO of TWT Distributing, an ethnic health and beauty care product category management company based in Charlotte, NC. |
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