New Niche Fragrance Marketing in Qatari Market - Essay Example

June, 3 2016

Market Research

Introduction

The multi-billionmoneycosmetic market in Qatar and the entire Middle East is significantly growing due to the transformed economic growth in the countries with favorable consumer spending pattern. The rising demand for cosmetic and other self-care products in Qatar and entire Middle East is motivated by high disposable consumer incomes, newfangled sales networks and the evolving lifestyle trend among gents and ladies with respect to body care.

Qatar niche fragrance consumer

Cosmetic sales in Qatarhave been remarkably vigorous. The Qataris have high affinity to cosmetics especially the perfumes. Normally, personal products like perfumes are often considered to be luxuries; they are basically wants and not needs and therefore one can do without them.In spite of this, Armani Privé niche fragrance has received sufficient usage in the Middle East starting from Qatari to the neighboring GCC States due to its uniqueness. Qataris especially have offered a very good market for Armani Privé. This has also been facilitated by the stable Qatari economy given that it is one of the six members of the Gulf Cooperation Council (GCC) of the Middle East oil producing nations. The oil economy has stabilized the country’s economy thus making most of the products affordable to the local man including the high price Armani Privé niche fragrance (Łopaciuk& Łoboda, 2013).

Consumer desire while buying the niche fragrance

The consumers are basically guided by the uniqueness and exclusiveness of the fragrance when purchasing the perfumes. Armani Privé is a rare kind with a unique scent distinguishing it from other sorts of niche fragrances. Its high price also attracts consumer confidence because of the general belief that high-priced products are always super-quality products. Consumers also check on the physical outlook of the niche fragrance while making purchase. How does it look? What is the appearance? And what is the size? Consumers are normally attracted to products that are appealing to the eyes, appear nice and attractive; convenient and reliable products, portable and of the expected sizes according to the price. Armani Privé has an appealing outlook and a generally attractive appearance. The size also fits the price; it’s portable and convenient for use by travelling consumers as they can easily carry it around with them without causing any baggage.

Niche fragrance consumption habits

The consumption habits research done by Euromonitor International market research firm established that by 2011 fragrance sales in the GCC States should have hit $1.3 billion. This was Qatari included. The marketing research firm indicated that in twoyears up to 2014, fragrance and cosmetics sales could increase by 15.1% to an annual sale of $1.88 billion with fragrance sales contributing $1.33 billion. This shows a rising pattern in consumption of this type of perfume. A regional consumer survey of perfume consumption conducted in 2010 by Chalhoub Group in conjunction with Datamonitor research agency from UK reported that youths in Qatar between the ages of 15 to 29 years and women had an uncorrectable addiction to luxury shopping. The youths and women were identified to be big purchasers of perfume products and cosmetics every quarter each with an average expenditure of close to $400 on theseproducts. Qatar perfume consumers buy averagely two perfumes per month of both Arabian and international brands. The niche fragrance being a unique development, it has attracted a significant number of youths due to the trendy, classy and fashionable nature of youths. The youths want to identify with new products in the market and must always have a test of the products whether the products fit them or not. This ‘test habit’ of the youth and women has thus earned Armani Privégood sales in the beauty market (Jones, 2008).

Competitors’ marketing of Armani Privé fragrance

Before the development and launch of Armani Privé fragrance, there have been other competitors of the niche fragrance in the market who have been using various marketing strategies to popularize consumption of their perfumes. Other sellers of the niche fragrance range of products use measures such as internet and blog marketing since most of the youths are quite receptive to individualized kind of communication and spend averagely two or three hours on internet on a daily basis, one or two hours on social media and similar one or two hours visiting blogs. The sellers have therefore designed social network marketing schemes to satisfy their consumers especially the youth. The retailers of the niche fragrance perfumes have also had to adjust their sales plans to match the changing behavior of consumers. They’ve brought in many beauty sales assistants while expanding their sales space to accommodate a number of customers at a time without causing congestion. The competitors have also upped their distribution patterns by diversifying the distribution patterns more.The above discussion on Armani Privé niche fragrance marketing research therefore gives a framework for developing the marketing strategy for our perfume in the Qatari beauty market and the entire Middle East.

Marketing Strategy

The niche fragrance positioning

As the Product manager at L'Oréal Middle-East specifically dealing with Armani Privé niche fragrance, there would be need for development of a product positioning strategy that will occupy a better part of the consumer’s mind with respect to Armani Privé as compared to competing niche fragrances. The main market for this product is the youthful ladies and women.A simple, clear and concise message directed to them must therefore come to play in order position this fragrance in their minds.Besides, as the manager, I would establish the product’s points of parity (POP’s) and the brand’s points of difference (PODs). Points of parity would relate the fragrance to other competing similar brands in the market. The PODs will on the other hand show the benefits gotten from our fragrance that can’t be gotten from competing brands (Choi, DeSarbo& Harker, 1990). A unique and simple POD will make our fragrance easily differentiable from other brands in the market. A simple and up to date POD will make it more deliverable than other brands.For our product, the POP would be ‘freshening body perfume’. This would be comparing it to other perfumes in the market. The POD would then be‘ultimate freshness’, a simple message relevant to the product. It is clear and concise; quite memorable to the consumers. The consumers will therefore infer to our fragrance whenever ‘ultimate freshness’ is mentioned.

Selling proposition

The fragrancemarketing would be through both adaptation and standardization unlike competing firms which solely use either of these but not both. Our selling proposition would be the unique slogan, ‘Your personalized fragrance, Unique like You!’ It will be sobecause of the fragrance’s unique elegance. Unlike competing brands made of various chemicals, the perfume would be made of natural herbs and spices like coriander, bergamot, almond, conifer resin and flowers with no health effects to the users. These natural ingredients would also be part of the selling proposition under the slogan ‘The natural You’. The uniqueness of our product would therefore be derived from the beautiful elegance of these natural substances of flowers, coriander, almond and bergamot.

The niche fragrance designing and packaging

Our fragrance would be called ‘Armani Queen’s Scent’. This is because of the elegantfeminine scent that it would have from the natural flowers. It would be designed for ladies.The design would match the market requirements of both the consumers and the government agencies like the product licensing authorities. The container would be unique and appealing from a distance. On the container, would be the fragrance notes written ‘48-hour freshness’ to show how long the scent would be smelt. It would be packagedin a dark translucent glass bottle to shield the vapor from direct sunlight. The glass bottle would then be inserted in a fine velvet cuboid casing for safety and security. The casing would be labeled ‘Armani Queen’s Scent’in an outstanding and visible color. The velvet casing would then be wrapped in a transparent paper so as to keep it away from dirt. This packaging would be superb and dazzling to the customers.

The Armani Queen’s Scent bottle outlook

Pricing strategy

Armani Queen’s Scentwould be priced based on its quality and with respect to the prices of other competing fragrances. The pricing strategy would be dependent on the target market, category of the product and the brand heritage will be considered in setting the price for this product. Since it would be a naturally unique high quality body shower, the price will be a bit higher than that of the ordinary perfumes. It will adopt the high price-high quality product pricing. From our research, it was clear that the major market of this perfume were the youth both ladies and gents and women.Since the ladies are always fashionable, stylishand classy, the perfume will certainly have a higher price. This would be the pricing strategy of Armani Queen’s Scent body shower in Qatar markets; otherwise a different pricing strategy would be developed in foreign markets depending on the consumers’needs the foreign markets (Peter, Olson & Grunert, 1999).

Promotion strategy

Since we’ve known the market to be the youthful ladies and women, and ladies love one-on-one communication, our firm would therefore use social network product promotion strategy so as to get the maximum number of ladies. These social promotional networks would include Facebook adverts, blog spots and various websites. The research showed that youths both gents and ladies spend averagely one or two hours daily visiting these social sites and chances are high that they will check on our product when they meet it in any of the websites. Additionally, ladies are television addicts, television advertisements would thus be a good marketer in reminding them of the new product which they need to try out.

With this, Armani Queen’s Scent would make good sales in Qatar market. Its name would induce ladiesto try it out. The quality would earn our firm consumer loyalty after the first trial. The unique scent and the POD message would occupy consumers’ mind thus earning it repeated purchases.