Integrated Marketing Communications

Integrated Marketing is the coordination of a variety of promotional vehicles (e.g., print/broadcast advertising, public relations, direct marketing, in-store promotions) and multiple stages in a promotional campaign to ensure that the marketing message is consistently received by the greatest possible number of people in the target market.

Sephora is very successful when it comes to intergrated marketing. To survive in any company or business, you must have effective Promotion (Communication by marketers that informs, persuades, and reminds potential buyers of a product in order to influence an opinion or elicit a response.)




Promotional Strategy - Is a plan for the optimal use of the elements of promotion: Advertising, Public Relations, Personal Selling, and Sales Promotion. Sephora expertises in all these elements.




With Advertising, you can find Sephora advertisments on billboards, the internet, magazines etc...




With Public Relations, Sephora's team keeps a good image of Sephora. When you here about Sephora you do not here any negativity. The reason being is because Sephora's Public Relation team stays on top of their image.




With Sales Promotion, Sephora promotes new products, coupons and sales. You can actually print out sephora coupons online and sign up for alot of offers tht help you save money.




Competitor advantage is the set of unique features of a company and its products that are percieved by the target market as significant and superior to the competition. The features include High Product Quality, Rapid delivery, low prices, Excellent Service, or a Feature not offered by the Competition.




Since Sephora is indeed a cosmetic company they have a lot of competition. Like any company they see competition is a way to advance a head. Instead of copying what other companies do, they take other companies mistakes and make them wonderful ideas. For example, lets say it takes two days to recieve a Revlon product that was ordered online, Sephora will make it that if you order their product online it will only take a day to recieve. Or another good example and Fact is low prices thats Sephora offers. Both Sephora and Mac offer a Hello Kitty line. The major difference between the two lines is the price. Sephora offers Hello Kitty Lip Gloss for $16, while MAC (one of Sephora's many competitors) offers Hello Kitty Lip Gloss for $27.49... A HUGE difference in price and a major factor when it comes where a person will shop.

Not only does Sephora stores expand Sephora products, they also help expand other products as well. In Sephora stores you can find SEPHORA brand products but in Sephora stores you can also find brands like Stila, Smashbox, Lorac, and Lancome. With that being said Sephora's integrated marketing communication strategy is great because you can now look at Sephora stores as a place that holds a cosmetic army because the brands that Sephora stores offer work together to make Sephora a great place to shop and find what you are looking for.

Product Concepts

Sephora sells a variety of different product. After reading up on different types of products, i've come to the conclusion that Sephora specializes in Shopping products, specialty products and unsought products.

Shopping products - A product usually more expensive than a convience product and is found in fewer stores.
Now when it comes to cosmetics,you can find them in a lot of places, pharmacies,discount stores,beauty supply stores and etc...but when buying a sephora product the stores you can buy them at decreases.When buying a sephora product one must go to a sephora ,macys or bloomingdales.

Speciality products- When consumers search extensively for a particular item and are very reluctant to accept subsititues.
Now sephora offers a lot of products, now to focus on sephora lip glosses, sephora offers a variety of different types of glosses and shades. I feel sephora offers speciality products through experience. The last time I was in sephora a lady was looking for a certain lip gloss from sephora that was made for people with dry lips, sephora didn't have it and the lady's friend suggested going to a different cosmetic store and the lady said no that she would either order the product online or come back tomorrow.

Unsought products- A product unknown to the potential buyer or a known product that the buyer does not actively seek.

Sephora always offers new products but sometimes the product isn't known by everybody. Being that i am a loyal costumer of sephora i recieve emails about new products weeks in advanced but if you aren't a loyal costumer you wont know about certain products until they get advertised.