Drug chains entice teen shoppers with high-turn displays and promos - Special Report: Teens
Liz Parks
Drug store chains, hoping to spark front-end sales by attracting a more diverse group of shoppers, are trying vigorously to court teens-- males and females alike.
In addition to expanding their product mixes to include more beauty care and personal grooming products geared to or marketed to teens, many chains also are dedicating permanent endcaps to teen-targeted brands and products.
Chains also are scrutinizing their price points for their promotional and everyday products, trying to create perceived value for teen shoppers. And they are trying to build strong word of mouth so they can get their message through to teens who are not so likely to read their circulars or listen to their radio ads.
Gerald Celente, director of Trends Research Institute, a Rhinebeck, .-based consultancy firm that specializes in understanding and marketing to teens, said drug chains in the past have found it hard to reach teens because there isn't much in their stores that is sexy or fashionable.
By their very nature, Celente said, chains have as their primary target customer an older, female shopper.
The shopping experience that drug chains need to create for these customers is different from the type of shopping experience that teens look for.
Direct, but subtle merchandising
Today, however, many drug chains are dealing with that challenge by merchandising to teens in subtle ways that teens can recognize but with strategies and programs that do not intrude on the shopping experiences of older, more conservative consumers.
CVS, for example, which has a large number of stores located in malls where teenage girls congregate, has, in many stores, dedicated a permanent endcap to promotional teen beauty products.
CVS spokesman Mike DeAngelis said that CVS, with its teen promotional program , is trying "to appeal to teenagers and build loyalty to CVS at a young age that will continue into adulthood."
In mid-February, CVS was using to display Del Lab's new Naturistics promotional pre-packs stocked with items that teens tend to look for--items such as illuminizing gloss that give lips a three dimensional glow and fruit-flavored lip glosses, body shimmers and crystal glitters.
DeAngelis said the display is typically home to cosmetics, hair and nail products, trendy jewelry, room accessories and other items that appeal to teenage girls.
A manager in a CVS store in the Northeast said that the products featured in the program typically had very high sell-throughs, sometimes blowing out the doors in weeks.
Rite Aid also has dedicated a single endcap in some of its high-volume cosmetics doors to teen-oriented products. Spokeswoman Jody Cook said that the teen market "is very important to us. We're always looking for new initiatives in our stores." But, for competitive reasons, Cook declined to provide specific details.
Out on the West Coast, however, a Rite Aid district manager and store manager worked out a program to test a new 26-SKU teen collection from Worldwide Cosmetics called Hotsie Totsie, which currently is making its move from specialty/ department stores to mass retail. Though the product only in one store in the north Hollywood market, WorldWide's vice president of retail sales Mike Eckert noted that a promotion of several pre-packs--just 10 days old when Drug Store News spoke with him in the second week of February--had already achieved 70 percent sell-through.
In Delaware, Happy Harry's has an ongoing teen promotional program called Funky Stuff, which vice president of merchandising Jon Rudden said has worked well.
Drawing a bead on a moving target
By giving prominent display space to in-and-out items that can be expected to sell-through in a few weeks, chains such as CVS, Rite Aid and Happy Harry's are avoiding the risk of over-stocking their basic, everyday planograms with trendy items whose sales usually can not be sustained for long periods.
Indeed, it its extremely important to strike while the iron is hot because what is hip and new to the teen customer changes fast.
"Teens are very important to us," said Rudden. "Everything I read says they have a lot of discretionary income. But every year there's a big difference in them, so they are definitely a moving target."
Happy Harry's carries Bonne Bell in its basic planogram and has promoted Caboodles in the last year, trying to, as Rudden put it, "get the word out to teens that our stores have products that meet their needs."
Colleen Pierce, Bartell Drug's cosmetics coordinator, also noted that teens are fickle, which creates an added challenge for the merchant to identify tomorrow's big trend before it is yesterday's news. "Teens want to be seen as in tune with what's hot and current, not be associated with what was hot last year or six months ago."
As a long-time marketer to teens, Bonne Bell, she said, has done a particularly good job of staying on top of teen taste trends. "They are always updating their shades and their packaging."
WorldWide's Eckert suggested that often it is enough just to be new and different for the teen shopper. "The attention span of teens is geared to shopping a store looking for what's new," he said. "If they see something new, exciting and different that their friends don't have, that's what they want to buy."
Celente said that teen taste and purchasing trends are "all about peer acceptance. Teens want to wear their hair in the latest style.
They want to wear the makeup that's fashionable at the time. It's a fad-driven market."
That much really hasn't changed about the teen consumer. Today's teens may be walking around with more money to spend than the generations that preceded them into the consumer marketplace, "but teens today are no more or less sophisticated than they were in prior years," Calente added. "It's all marketing that they respond to. Teens are a totally malleable group."
And regardless of how progressive each new generation may declare themselves, as consumers their identities are still largely defined by the purchases they make.
"Everything teens buy helps them create an identity," said Teen magazine beauty director Lauren McCann. "They create themselves through lip gloss, through mascara, through hair care products, through skin care. Beauty care is one way for teens to represent themselves."
Goes beyond basic beauty
As part of their courtship of teens, CVS, Walgreens, Eckerd, Rite Aid, Osco, Say-on and Longs Drug Stores today all promote and carry an assortment of cosmetics marketed primarily to teens, including brands such as Bonne Bell, Caboodles, Naturistics, Jane, as well as more general market brands such as Cover Girl and Wet 'n' Wild that have a strong teen franchise. One cosmetics buyer said that teens recognize these brands as invitations to "shop us."
Usually these brands are merchandised in close proximity to one another in the hope they will generate incremental sales, because teens, as cosmetics buyers often point out, are impulse shoppers."
However, in the last year, retailers also have come to recognize that teens are not only coming into their stores to buy beauty products, but that male and female teens are coming in for basic grooming necessities, as well.
In general, today's teens typically focus on grooming items that either make fashion news, like Gillette's Venus shaving system, or make innovation news like the new chewing gum, Orbit with Crest, that Wrigley currently is introducing in partnership with Procter & Gamble.
"It isn't just beauty products that bring in teens," said Gordon Reilly, senior vice president and merchandise manager at Bartell. "More basic and practical personal care products like razors can also attract teens if the brand is perceived as 'cool,'" he explained. "When Gillette launched its Venus razor, it brought in a lot of teens. Venus became a status symbol for teens--at least in Seattle anyway."
Other items of personal care that have piqued the interest of today's teens are sunless tanning products and teeth-whitening kits.
"Teens are wildly into the tooth-whitening category," said Kelly Reynolds, senior product manager for Rembrandt. The company has seen positive results from the advertising it began to run last year in teen magazines, she noted. "We've learned that teens want to know about these products--it's in the consciousness of young people."
According to Bryan McCleary, a spokesman for P&G's Global Oral Care, teens have emerged recently "as a key new sub-group for teeth-whitening products."
"We're getting editorial mentions in teen publications, and we're advertising the Crest and Crest Whitestrips brand in teen publications," he said.
Keeping prices sharp
Many of the retailers focused on attracting teens stress that it is important to keep price points reasonable when courting teen customers. Today's teens may have more discretionary dollars to spend than the generations that came before them, but they also understand and respond to value, Rudden explained. "Like everyone else, they have to prioritize where and how to spend their money, though money does seem to burn a hole in their pockets," he said.
In North Carolina, Kerr health and beauty aids buyer Eric Guard said that the chain tries "to offer value on the brands teens are likely to buy." This focus on delivering value on items teens tend to purchase, such as skin care, has helped the chain post double-digit increases in that category, Guard explained.
To further court these value-conscious teens, Kerr Drug for the last couple of years has operated its Teen Scene teen discount card program, which gives teens 10 percent off cosmetics every Saturday. According to cosmetics buyer Kristen Heinz, so far, there are about 2,500 active Teen Scene card users, though many more teens signed up for the card. Kerr also makes its Teen Scene mailing list available to vendors if they want to send coupons or samples or new product information
Of course, another key benefit of the program is that it has generated good word of mouth exposure for Kerr- and that is a big win in terms of marketing to a consumer, who doesn't typically respond to traditional forms of marketing communications.
Even though Happy Harry's tends to include teen-oriented products in its circulars and does use some radio to reach teens, Rudden said he's convinced that word of mouth is the best way to reach teens. "Our goal is to [get] them telling their friends about us. We want them to think of us as both a fun place to shop and as a place where they can get value."
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