Introduction
With the massive growth of the New Zealand hair care industry, many companies have opened to maximize sales and reach out to the readily available customer base. One of such companies is Vivo Hair Salon, one of the fast-growing hair salons in New Zealand, showcased by its 85 salons across New Zealand. Vivo Hair Salon & Skin Clinic (2022) notes that the Kiwi owned and operated salon chain offers free shipping for all hair and skincare products across New Zealand. The salon also focuses on providing high-quality services that meet the needs of all its customers. This is one of the reasons that the salon has attained success and captured the attention of many New Zealanders. Carroll & Cropp (2021) articulates that in addition to its e-commerce websites for product sales, Vivo Salon also offers very attractive hair treatment packages accessible to customers at an affordable price. This report conducts a buying behaviour and a segmentation, targeting and positioning (STP) analysis of Vivo Hair Salons.
Buying Behavior Analysis
As defined by Ghosal, Prasad & Gupta (2022), buyer behaviour entails the decisions and acts undertaken by people to buy products or services either for personal or group use. Consumer buying behavior is often influenced by information gathered either on social media sites or even by enquiring from other peers. It’s a necessary task for organizations to understand why and how customers decide to purchase particular products or services. This plays a major role in ensuring that companies improve their business models to enable them to acquire more customers and thus a stronger brand image. Wong (2019) highlights the importance of understanding a consumer’s buying behavior in that it leads to more knowledge of the factors that influence the customer’s decision-making process. With such an understanding, the companies can tailor their products and services to meet the customer’s psychological, social, and cultural needs.
While understanding the consumer’s buyer behavior, companies should also understand and employ conscious consumerism to influence consumers’ decisions. According to Ghosal, Prasad & Gupta (2022), conscious consumerism entails a consumer behavior of seeking to ensure that their buying decisions have a more positive impact on the environment. This means that a consumer’s buying decision is based on the knowledge that the firm they purchase from is conscious of its footprint on the environment. As part of its ethical considerations of the environment, Vivo Hair Salons integrates ideal packaging whereby it sells products that are enclosed in recyclable materials (Vivo Hair Salon & Skin Clinic, 2022). More so, as part of their ethical considerations, Vivo Hair Salon ensured that during the Covid-19 pandemic, its employees were all accorded their full wages and therefore did not suffer financial pressures that affected other hairdressers (Carroll & Cropp, 2021). By integrating socially responsible strategies into its processes, Vivo Hair Salon is able to influence the behavior of consumers who only relate to brands that have social, political and moral values that align with their own.
Segmentation
Market segmentation is conducted to group customers according to distinctive and common characteristics, enabling a company to develop relevant and engaging campaigns in accordance with segments (Schlegelmilch, 2022). To group their customers, companies mainly rely on the following variables; demographics, geographical, behavioral and psychographic variables. The segmentation variables are important as they ensure that the company focuses its message and offerings more effectively. Ideally, Paruchuri (2019) highlights that understanding the segmentation variables may allow a business to discover new opportunities that entail offering unique benefits that had not been provided by other companies in the industry there before. This ensures that a company’s advertising, marketing, and sales efforts are optimized, thus acquiring hoped-for results.
As part of its demographic segmentation, Vivo Hair Salon focuses on age segmentation, which seeks to serve women aged between 25-40. In addition to this, Vivo Hair Salon has a secondary demographic segment that entails women aged 25-65 (Vivo Hair Salon & Skin Clinic, 2022). Although the salon also serves men, this is not one of its significant segments and therefore not much emphasis is placed on them. The Salon further focuses on customers in the middle- and upper-class segment across New Zealand, as showcased by its 85 salons distributed across the country. With the broad age range that Vivo focuses on, the salon serves ladies ranging from young adults who are at the threshold of their careers to seasoned professionals who are financially stable.
Targeting analysis
After market segmentation is conducted, businesses have to identify the best opportunities that would benefit them. Schlegelmilch (2022) defines targeting as the strategy through which companies tailor their marketing endeavors to reach consumers who are within smaller segments. In this sense, targeting mainly defines a segment based on its unique characteristics and meets the segment’s needs. As part of their targeting strategies, companies rely on four primary strategies: the undifferentiated, concentrated, differentiated, and customized strategies. Targeting is important as it allows companies to use consumer data gained during segmentation to optimize the customer journey and create relevant campaigns that engage with the customer segment. Vivo Hair Salon mainly employs a differentiated target strategy to meet the needs of its customer segments. Vivo Hair Salon & Skin Clinic (2022) notes that the company has two target groups, namely primary and secondary, comprised of 25-40 years and 25-65 years, respectively. Vivo Hair Salon has garnered a strong market presence in New Zealand through such targeting strategies, making it hard for other salons to displace it.
Positioning
As part of marketing strategies, positioning enables companies to optimize data about target customer segments to position its product and service offerings in a unique stand (Paruchuri, 2019). Companies also position their products in the minds of consumers in a manner that helps them show the traits that make their products and services stand out from products offered by competitors. Schlegelmilch (2022) noted that the two major competitors that Vivo Hair Salon competes against are Pretty Kitties Body Sugaring and Obsession Salon & Spa. To position itself in the minds of consumers, Vivo Hair Salon presents itself as a provider of services for the young and ageing contemporary woman who value transparency and quality. Despite its positioning strategy, Vivo has not well-positioned itself well in consumer minds. Ideally, it’s more notable that the company is more geared toward dedicating its resources to educating its employees on the importance of customer connectivity (Wilkins, 2019). This would be the most ideal strategy for the company to differentiate itself from the identified competitors. The positioning of Vivo Hair Salon compared to its two competitors is presented below.
Figure 1: Perceptual map comparing the positioning of Vivo as compared to Pretty Kitties Body Sugaring and Obsession Salon & Spa.
Conclusion
Vivo Hair Salon is one of New Zealand’s rapidly growing salons. A buyer behavior analysis showcases that Vivo is a salon chain that integrates conscious consumerism by packaging products using recyclable containers. However, the company fails to present any endeavor to be a philanthropic organization. As part of its segmentation, Vivo focuses on demographic and psychological variables. Vivo focuses on young and ageing women consumers in the middle or upper classes. As part of its targeting strategy, Vivo employs a differentiated strategy whereby it offers products to cover its two target markets; primary and secondary. Ideally, in terms of its positioning, Vivo leads its competitors. However, its positioning fails to place it well in the mind of the consumers.
Recommendations
• As part of integrating conscious consumerism into its activities, Vivo needs to integrate more philanthropic activities. Rather than focusing only on educating its stylist, the salon can also educate its customers on the best hair and skincare products. In addition to being a philanthropic move, this would present Vivo as a consumer-oriented company thereby gaining more intensive brand awareness than its current position.
• Vivo needs to re-engineer its positioning statement. Rather than presenting itself as a company that best delivers quality and transparency, it should position itself as a company that dedicates its resources to educating its employees on being well versed with customers. This would strongly position it in their minds as they are assured of quality services offered by the already skilled hairdressers.
References
Carroll, M., & Cropp, A. (2021). Covid-19: Warning of ‘black market’ as hairdressers tempted to break rules. Stuff. https://www.stuff.co.nz/business/industries/126867009/covid19-warning-of-black-market-as-hairdressers-tempted-to-break-rules
Ghosal, I., Prasad, B., & Gupta, B. (2022). Restructuring the Green Consumerism Through e-commerce Portals: A Behavioural Congruence During Post-Covid-19. In Future of Work and Business in Covid-19 Era (pp. 89-99). Springer, Singapore.
Paruchuri, H. (2019). Market segmentation, targeting, and positioning using machine learning. Asian Journal of Applied Science and Engineering, 8, 7-14.
Schlegelmilch, B. B. (2022). Segmenting targeting and positioning in global markets. In Global marketing strategy (pp. 129-159). Springer, Cham.
Vivo Hair Salon & Skin Clinic, V. (2022). https://www.linkedin.com/company/vivo-hair-&-beauty/about/.
Wilkins, S. (2019). The positioning and competitive strategies of higher education institutions in the United Arab Emirates. International Journal of Educational Management, 34(1), 139-153.
Wong, K. (2019, October 1). How to be a more conscious consumer, even if you’re on a budget. The New York Times. https://www.nytimes.com/2019/10/01/smarter-living/sustainabile-shopping-conscious-consumer.html/
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