About This Project
To understand what truly drives product performance in online beauty retail, I conducted a catalog audit of 8,494 active SKUs across 304 brand portfolios on Sephora. Rather than looking at marketing claims, this project dives into the quantitative relationships between channel distribution, category pricing psychology, and customer engagement.
Core Insights
- The Online Discovery Gap: Products sold exclusively online suffer from a massive review bottleneck, not because customers dislike them, but because shoppers hesitate to buy color and skincare without physical swatching or in-store sampling.
- Pricing Psychology: What works for perfume backfires for skincare. Higher price points enhance prestige appeal in Fragrance but reduce customer engagement in Skincare.
- Targeted Discounting: Catalog markdowns aren’t random clearance events; 30% of all site discounts are concentrated in Sephora-Exclusive Makeup.
The final deck translates these data findings into an executive commercial playbook, offering actionable strategies for brand managers to optimize sample fulfillment, align channel posture, and protect profit margins.
Data Sourced via Kaggle (Sephora Products & Skincare Reviews Dataset).
Annie Kong 