Customer experience with Lancôme through different distribution channel

Offline/online analysis

Lancôme commercialize its product in 28 countries in the world in Europe, North and South America, Asia Pacific, Greater China, Africa and Middle East (online only). In some countries you have stores and in other you can only buy online.

In store channels

Concerning the stores, in France, you can find Lancôme products in some cosmetics distributors such as Marionnaud, Sephora, Nocibe… You can also find Lancôme in luxury product distributor as Printemps or Les Galeries Lafayette.

Until now, there was no Lancôme boutique, the first one just opened in the Champ-Elysées in Paris. This choice of location is not insignificant when you know that all the big Maisons are located in the same area.

Since this is the first store, Lancôme made things big. You can have a view of what the boutique looks like in the Lancôme website.

The sore is a real representation of Lancôme, we can see that its brand identity codes are well represented there. The main color used is pink and you can see roses everywhere! At the store entrance, there is a giant screen showing rose petals, which are also suspended from the ceiling. This is the “Joy of now” space.

Perfume are well presented, they are highlighted in a circular spot, surrounded by a magnificent luster.

(Source: Lancôme's website)

Screen are present all over the boutique showing Lancôme’s ambassadors such as Penelope Cruz in videos.

Special things have been created for this store, a robot rose generator is present to allows clients to choose the rose that they want in their packaging, quite impressive! Moreover, Lancôme created some accessories and limited edition of products for this store. A very “Instagramable” place in order to attract younger consumers.

I had the chance to interview a perfume expert form Lancôme who works in this store in order to have some insight about the customer experience given there. As an expert, she told me that her principal mission in the boutique was to advise the clients. The point is to give them the most personalized experience as possible. The customer has a follow-up from the beginning to the end of this in-store visit. The experience is provided around all the services proposed in the store such as diagnostic which are made with the help of digital tools. The goal is to provide a unique experience that the customer will not find in other point of sales. Experts who work there tries to make the client feel special and to make this happen, they are very picky about the questions they ask them and about their product proposition.

To have a vision of what the points of sale in retail distributor stores are, I went to Galeries Lafayette.

So, I observed the point of sale, this one is kind of small, but you can find all the Lancôme’s perfume in there as well as the other product of the brand. Since this is Christmas period, the boxes are particularly highlighted and present in the perfume section but also around the cash register.

A very large image of Zendaya and Idôle was displayed in the point of sales. This one took half of the wall, we can see with that that celebrity endorsement is something really important for the brand and that this is a key element of the merchandising.

A little display stand retains my attention, there was a lot of little boxes in the shapes of a flower bouquet (without a flower), and it turns out that this was the new loyalty program campaign. The client scans a QR code and register to take part of the loyalty program of the brand, and in exchange, the client receives a little box as a gift with some Lancôme products. I did it and I was so happy to have my little gift haha!

Online channels

When it comes to online distribution channels, you can find Lancôme product in some distributor website, basically the same distributors as in real store such as Sephora, Marionnaud etc., but you can also directly go on Lancôme’s website and take advantage of all the brand’s product choice.

I will focus here on Lancôme’s website.

In order to improve the customer experience in this channel, Lancôme have set up some virtual experiences: teleconsultation, exclusive diagnostic care service, custom-made e-consultation and exclusive virtual trial service.

Concerning the teleconsultation, they were the first service proposed by Lancôme. Customer could book a teleconsultation on the phone with a Lancôme’s expert and ask them all the advice that they needed. The point for Lancôme was to allow customers who didn’t lived in Paris and so who hadn’t the chance to go to the Lancôme boutique to benefit from the same experience that client have there, helping them also to deal with the website.

Later, Lancôme provide the diagnostic care service and the custom-made e-consultation which are both made via videoconferences.

I have experienced the e-consultation when I interviewed the perfume expert, and it was really interesting to see how she could give me advice about perfume without being able to make me smell it. The expert asks me a lot of questions about the perfume I usually wear, my desires of the moments, the smell that I like etc. She gave me really personalized advises, suggesting me perfumes and way to wear perfume to experiment according to what I said to her…

I found this customer experience really interesting because even if I haven’t smell the perfume, I have been able to select a few one and have the willingness of testing it!

To conclude, I will say that customer experience with Lancôme really goes through customization with experienced consultant who make sure that the client is satisfied with his final choice. And from what I experienced, it seems to work well!

Written by: De Sousa Manon

References:

https://www.lancome.fr/immersive-address-services/#champs