It wasn’t until living in Seoul that I began to take notice of the first floor of department stores; it’s always cosmetics with nearly no exceptions. If me and Jenny were going to the Shinsaegae to look for say, a jacket, the first floor was always tacked on as a given stop. I would wait as she chatted with the make-up girl and couldn’t help but take note of my surroundings. I first started to notice how consistently busy the cosmetics department is; no matter when we went it was always bustling with a constant flow of people. Then the design of the actual floor itself started to make sense. The open layout serves multiple purposes as it allows customers to easily scan the entire floor and locate their brands and not be relegated to just one store. It encourages them to freely move from kiosk to kiosk thus increasing their chances to frequent a handful of booths and make multiple purchases. In fact, the Korea Times recently ran a story about how customers who make more than one purchase in cosmetics account for over 70 percent of overall department store sales. Fascinating. Is it the design of the floor that is aiding this phenomena? (We’d need to see the actual data for how much cosmetics account for overall sales) Or is it just that female consumers who are already in the store to buy something else view a make-up purchase as a small yet ultimately necessary purchase somewhere down the line and since they’re already there, “Why not?” Sort of like the impulse items at grocery store check-out lines. The difference is that cosmetics can be outrageously expensive at times. I’ve often been amazed at how easily my girlfriend can drop over 100 bucks on facial creams and not bat an eye, but when it comes to other similarly disposable purchases she tightens the purse strings. What is it that makes cosmetics such a cash cow?
Global Goulash 