02/13/2013 BUA 560 SEPHORA CASE

SEPHORA PLATFORM
1. Assuming that Bornstein gets additional funding, how should she consider allocating across the various digital platforms/categories? Given that the additional funding request must be shifted from traditional marketing, what would you propose to cut and why? Please state your rationale based on their customer base for all decisions.

Before deciding which funding should get cut, we need to check out the analytical metrics of traditional marketing categories which may help to analyze their affectivity, but we don’t have those data, we only have some about social media marketing, not traditional.
Anyway, according to 2010 numbers, when we check the graph we can see that, the …show more content…

And also it is going to be easier than the Facebook to manage user activities (inappropriate comments, spam links etc.)

4. As Sephora moves more into digital and social marketing, which competitors do they need to be most worried about and why?

If Sephora is going to move into digital marketing, it is going to be very costly to set up the affective supply chain system (Warehouses, logistics etc.). And there are some companies which is already in this market
Amazon: It is the biggest online retailer company. Their supply chain management system works perfectly; they have lots of warehouses all around the USA, which means they have an advantage about inventory system and it brings a large variety of products. On the other hand their logistics works also well. For this reason the shipments usually reaches the customer exact time that they are promised.
They also have very useful review and rating section for each product.

ULTA: ULTA is already Sephora’s major competitor, that’s why before taking a step, Sephora should check out what is ULTA doing about it.

5. What should be their overall strategic goal for their digital and social marketing programs? How can they satisfy the CEO's desire to "win" in the digital space?

It is really hard to determine strategic goal for the future for digital and social marketing media because social media is little bit unpredictable, it usually keeps developing by anonymous people so you cannot follow what’s going