Cosmetic Promos Promise Gifts, Savings
G ift With Purchase . . . Gift With Minimum Purchase . . . Purchase With Purchase . . .
Cosmetics promotions come in a head-spinning array of options. But are they such a deal?
Maybe yes. Maybe no.
Free gifts with purchases are good bets for shoppers who have specific items on their lists. A woman who requests Paloma Picasso’s fragrance for Christmas, for example, would probably appreciate the four-piece gift offered at Robinson’s with any $40 purchase. Since the customer is buying it anyway, why not get the freebie?
Free gifts can also help stretch shopping dollars. Who hasn’t foisted one on an unsuspecting friend--disguised as a real present? (Candidates for this shopping strategy include the free cubic zirconia earrings and necklace offered with Passion cologne, or the quartz watch that comes with Xerus fragrance.)
Paula Begoun, author of “Don’t Go to the Cosmetics Counter Without Me,” says: “The free gift is not bad--if you are buying something you might normally.
“But the purchase with purchase,” she cautions, “can be costly.”
In a typical “purchase with purchase,” the customer who buys one item may buy something else in the line ostensibly at a savings.
This season, for example, Princess Marcella Borghese is offering its musical jewelry case filled with products for $40 with any $25 purchase. The full-size items in the case are valued by Borghese at $440.
Begoun is skeptical of such promotions.
“You are actually paying for something that somehow seems free,” she says. “You may pay $30 for something supposedly worth $230-- nobody is going to give you $200.”
Consumers are seeing more of the “purchase with purchase” promotions to compensate for the costs of such promotions.
Susan Babinsky, business manager of Kline & Company, cosmetic industry analysts in Fairfield, N.J., terms promotions that offer free or price-reduced items the cost of doing business, one that “hopefully” attracts new customers or tempts old ones to try new products.
Like any other advertisement, Babinsky says, cosmetics promotions must conform to Federal Trade Commission guidelines.
“We offer guidelines so businesses can operate in what we call a safe harbor,” says Sue Fravens, acting regional director of the agency’s L.A. office. “We are not in a position to value all products, and unless something is a blatant fraud, that kind of thing is difficult to determine.” No complaints about cosmetic promotion values have been filed here in the last three years, Fravens adds.
Cosmetics companies determine a gift item’s value by using the per-ounce price of the mother item, according to Babinsky. Fravens says consumers can best determine a gift item’s value at the counter by comparing sizes and prices.
In some cases--particularly in the men’s fragrance gift market--holiday giveaways have no connection to the lines. Xerus is not a watchmaker, nor is Halston known for highball glasses.
Babinsky says such offerings miss the point.
“There is no direct value back to the products--an umbrella does not encourage anyone to buy Aramis later, even if it encourages an on-the-spot purchase,” she says.
But during the holiday shopping frenzy, that might be all a company wants.
