Week 9~ Sale Promotion and Personal Selling

 L’Oreal’s sale promotion strategy for the past several years has been to position its products a cut above the best of the drug-store cosmetic brands like Revlon and Max Factor. At $8, a tube of L'Oreal lipstick might cost a little more than a comparable Revlon product, significantly more than Cover Girl or Maybelline, astronomically more than budget brands like Artmatic, but still far less than the department-store lipsticks and direct-marketing brands like Mary Kay.

Most L'Oreal makeup products aren't bubble-wrapped on cardboard like Artmatic and Wet & Wild - both serviceable products. L'Oreal displays are elegant. So are its spokesmodels -- not merely beautiful but ultra-classy celebrities like Meredith Baxter, Cybill Shepherd, and Melanie Griffith, who get up close and personal with their sister-viewers, confiding that, yes, L'Oreal DOES cost a little more ... "but I'm worth it."

The price difference between L'Oreal and its nearest competitors is actually either nonexistent or too small to deter consumers from paying extra for hair-color products that won't go orange or turn their hair to straw. And for those frugal Friedas who will buy the least expensive product, there's always Maybelline. That's just fine with L'Oreal, which owns both brands.