Wendy Franks, general manager of health and beauty at Amazon U.S. Stores, and Lauren Mazzaferro, director of beauty and CPG enterprises at Amazon Ads, dove into the impact of Amazon on the beauty business in a fireside chat with Beauty Inc editor in chief Jenny B. Fine.
“The beauty landscape is fundamentally transforming — and Amazon has shaped this change,” said Franks. “But it’s also been a driver of change. Ten years ago, if you wanted to buy a prestige beauty product, you’d have had to go to a specialty retailer or department store. Now consumers are looking for these products wherever they are online, on their phone or social media. It allows us to serve customers we weren’t able to before and help brands grow incrementally.”
Amazon found that more than 80 percent of beauty shoppers are thinking about buying products multiple times throughout the week. This opens up the space for brands to connect with people in entirely new ways, when they’re streaming, researching products, on their phones or on their couch at the end of the night. Entertainment is also playing a huge factor in the beauty shopper journey.
“Every moment is a point-of-sale opportunity, every content experience is a discoverability opportunity,” said Mazzafero. “The brands that are winning are those that are showing up for those customers where that content is. Its content that’s engaging as well as shoppable — that’s really where we’re seeing brands evolve with the customer.”
Looking at the new beauty playbook, Amazon has invested in premium content and entertainment through Amazon Prime Video’s acquisition of MGM Studios, which has helped drive this. The e-commerce giant is able to integrate brands into popular shows, films and sports events such as ‘The Summer I Turned Pretty,’ ‘Elle,’ the prequel to ‘Legally Blonde’ coming out this summer, and ‘Scarpetta’, the sci-fi thriller starring Nicole Kidman.
“We complement that strategy with live sports — we have Thursday Night Football, NBA, WNBA and the National Women’s Soccer League,” said Mazzafero. “Prime Video is the number-one ad-supported streaming service. This has transformed Amazon from being a place to buy to a place to discover, watch and stay.”
With its vast access to data, Franks shared some of the key beauty insights. One notable trend is the convergence of health and wellness with beauty — “the lines are blurred.” Another trend is the continued success of Korean beauty — “the category has grown three times our average beauty category,” she said, noting Amazon has more than 1,200 K-beauty brands.
The duo also spoke about the recent announcement of Alexa for Shopping, Amazon’s new shopping agent that integrates into the search experience with smart personalization.
“From a consumer point of view, we’re seeing a lot of traction. We’re also seeing the capabilities really increase in the space as well — you can set a price point at which you want to buy a product, search for deals and have the AI actually purchase the product once it reaches that threshold. It’s only just the beginning; we’ll see more customers adopting this and integrating it into their full customer journey,” concluded Franks.
