Following the news that Sephora is opening its first UK store in Westfield White City on Wednesday 8th March 2023, after its previous exit from UK physical locations in 2005: Sofie Willmott, lead analyst at GlobalData, offers her view: “Sephora may have only announced the opening of a solitary store in the UK, but the potential threat to the incumbent beauty retail leaders is significant. GlobalData’s UK consumer survey shows that one third of UK shoppers aware of Sephora, would switch to the global beauty retailer for their health & beauty purchases with the main retailers they would turn away from being Superdrug and Boots.*”
This data is taken from GlobalData’s survey of 2,000 nationally representative UK consumers conducted in early November 2022. The above question was only asked to those that said they would stop shopping at the retailers they usually buy health & beauty products from, to shop at Sephora.
“However, the specialists are well prepared for Sephora’s re-entry to the UK market – market leader Boots has introduced beauty halls and upped its game with contemporary, in-demand brands and Superdrug has focused on low prices and the services it offers to satisfy its young shopper base. Sephora will need to continue to highlight its exclusive ranges and make events, like those taking place around the launch, a permanent fixture if it is to drive repeat visits and steal shoppers from the UK stalwarts in the long term.
“Sephora has chosen a challenging time to return to the UK with very little available shopper spend available for non-essential items and 65.4% of shoppers changing or intending to change their beauty shopping habits in response to rising prices**. In addition, Sephora’s younger shoppers are more likely to be altering the way they shop – 77.1% of 16-34s have changed or expect to change the way they shop for beauty products versus 60.2% of those aged 35 and over, with the most popular strategy being to buy fewer items or buy less often**.
“Furthermore, the third most popular word used to describe the LVMH-owned beauty retailer was ‘expensive’, behind ‘high quality’ and ‘modern’ with 40-50% of Sephora-aware consumers choosing one of these three words versus just 17% that selected ‘reasonably priced’*. Boots and Superdrug have worked hard to communicate entry-priced ranges, price freezes and member prices via loyalty schemes over the past year and Sephora will need to provide value for money to secure its position in the UK health & beauty market.”
*GlobalData’s UK monthly survey of 2,000 nationally representative consumers conducted in November 2022.
** GlobalData’s UK monthly survey of 2,000 nationally representative consumers conducted in February 2023.
