According to Hearst UK: Conducted through the Hearst Insight Panel of 15,000 consumers from across Hearst UK’s multitude of brands, the research tracked audience customer journeys, identified drivers to purchase across the luxury and masstige fragrance category and the role different media play in the fragrance consumption behaviours of Hearst UK audiences.
Unveiled to the beauty industry last week, key findings show that designer brands rather than celebrity endorsements hold sway over consumers and that women tend to spend more money on fragrance gifts when buying for their partner. It also shows that Hearst UK brands provide a powerful platform for beauty advertising, with £1 in every £3 spent on cosmetics in the last month by a woman reading a Hearst title, highlighting the fact that Hearst UK knows women best.
Other key findings include:
• Special promotional mechanics such as scent strips in magazines are a powerful marketing tool.
• £1 in every £4 spent on skincare by women online in the last six months is spent by a woman who has visited a Hearst UK website in the past month.
• The smell of a fragrance is most important to the panellists, regardless of who designed the product.
• A third of respondents would consider buying a celebrity fragrance if they liked the person who designed it.
• Online fragrance ads drove at least half of all respondents to take some form of action
Beauty is a core part of Hearst UK’s business with 1,673 pages written by Hearst editorial beauty experts in the past year – accounting for 1 in 4 of the total beauty pages in the marketplace. These pages, along with 4500 pages of beauty advertising, have been consumed by more than six million women reading Hearst UK titles.
The Hearst Insight Panel was established a year ago to initially unite the expertise of the Good Housekeeping Institute with influential opinions of Good Housekeeping readers. The scheme, Good Housekeeping Reader Recommends, enables readers to test products in their own homes but under the guidance of the strict protocols from Good Housekeeping’s in-house experts. Since then the panel has grown to include 15,000 consumers from across all of Hearst UK’s 20 plus brands, enabling the company to delve into readers’ lifestyles in more detail.
Panellists in the fragrance research were asked to take part in a 15 minutes online survey in March this year with a total of 9500 responding from across a spectrum of all of Hearst UK print and online brands including Sugarscape, Cosmopolitan, ELLE, Red, Harper’s Bazaar and Good Housekeeping. The survey was directed at women with respondents mirroring Hearst UK’s magazine buying audience which reflects the UK female consumer audience.
Hearst UK COO, Anna Jones says: “Consumer insight is a core focus for our business and thislatest piece of research shows how important our brands are in influencing consumer purchasing decisions on fragrance. This research proves that our audiences not only trust our brands, but also thatHearst UK has a deep understanding of British women and what makes them tick.”
Hearst UK Consumer Research & Insight Director, Aida Muirhead says: ““At Hearst UK, the consumer is at the centre of what we do and the Hearst Insight Panel provides us with a direct line of communication to our customers which allows us to keep in up to date with consumers’ trends and attitudes.”
