Introduction
Marketing incorporates an integral function for any organisation to position its brand and create consumer awareness (Baker, 2016). A marketing plan allows communicating with the target customer set and aims at meeting customer satisfaction through accomplishment of Bioderma objectives. In the current analysis, a marketing plan for Bioderma has been developed for its existing products in Singapore. Singapore offers one of the leading markets for cosmetics in Asia. With high population and increasing income propensity, the market offers an ideal location for various offshore brands (Chernev, 2018). Rising diverse population provides a socially beneficial factor for Bioderma, as the Company will have diverse segments to offers its products. Bioderma thus, faces competition from local as well as from foreign brands in Singapore. Some of the foreign brands that are present in the country are Korean brand Dreamage, Sephora, Glossier, the honey combers, Marie France and so on. Some local brands include Faux Fayc, INGA by 27A, 13rushes, Zahara, DrGL, Reflections Organics and so on. Industry analysis of the make-up and skincare products brands in Singapore reveals presence of tremendous competition amongst the participants in the market. The current marketing proposal includes a detailed product and pricing analysis, along with competitor analysis to arrive at a suitable marketing plan for the products of Bioderma.
3. Company & Competitor Analysis
3.1 Company Analysis[t1]
Bioderma Laboratories is French pharmaceutical brand, specializing in medical and dermatological hair, scalp and skin products. The headquarters of Bioderma is located in Aix en Provence, France and was founded by Jean-Noel Thorel. Bioderma employs approximately 1000 employees. Bioderma specializes in biometrology lab and development of skincare research and development. Some of its products include ABCDerm, Atoderm, and Photoderm. Bioderma offers at various locations in the world including Asia, Middle East, Europe, Africa and America. The brand is well-known in the locations that it offers its products and has high acceptance amongst its customers (Bagozzi, Rosa, Celly & Coronel, 2018). In Singapore Bioderma has a stable market share, a marketing strategy will aim at increasing the market penetration in Singapore. In the current marketing plan analysis Bioderma’s products in Singapore has been taken into consideration and developed. [t2]
Bioderma is one of the most well positioned brands in Singapore. Amongst the several foreign brands available in Singapore, Bioderma is one of the leading. However, recent surge in local cosmetic and beauty product companies have led to deteriorating position for Bioderma in the market. Therefore, taking into consideration the tremendous market potential in Singapore, Bioderma needs to conduct extensive marketing activities for its various products. As Bioderma’s position in Singapore’s market has deteriorated considerably, the brand needs to consider extensive marketing activities for re-positioning of its brand. The below depicted position map is prepared according to market share data found in online sources.
Figure 5: Positioning Map of Bioderma
Source: Author
The beauty and skincare market in Singapore is dominated by foreign brands from France, America, Japan, and Korea. These foreign brands had been since long one of the favorite brands in the country, until recently there has been a surge in home grown cosmetic and make-up brands (Calder, Malthouse & Maslowska, 2016). Rising diverse population provides a socially beneficial factor for Bioderma, as the Company will have diverse segments to offers its products. Singapore is a democratic country, which is politically stable. Bureaucratic influences are minimum in the country and offers conducive platform for businesses to set up their operations. Presence of tremendous market opportunities in Singapore, has led to setting up of local stores and online shops to meet the unique needs of the multi-ethnic population. Economically Singapore is a stable country with Singapore Dollar as its currency and low rate of inflation. The economic factors of the country are conducive for business to expand and set up their operations there. A detailed understanding of the competition forces affecting Bioderma can be understood by means of external analysis- PESTLE and industry based analysis or Porter’s 5 forces of competition. Internal analysis of Bioderma is conducted by means of SWOT analysis. As the external analysis for Bioderma has already been undertaken earlier, a more detailed SWOT is undertaken here. Presence of intense competition amongst the industry participants includes local brands as well as foreign brands. Moreover, the attractiveness in the market aims at attracting new companies. Factors for setting up business in Singapore are conducive hence more indigenous businesses are being set up in the country. The buyers in the market have plenty amount of choices of skincare and cosmetics brands to select from. Supplier’s aims at having stale relationship with large multinationals such as Bioderma, hence Bioderma experiences minimum threats from its suppliers. There is low to medium threat that is experienced from substitute products, as consumers in Singapore are extremely conscious of the brand that they select for skincare usages.
SWOT Analysis
The internal analysis of Bioderma can be best analysed by means of SWOT (Strength, Weakness, Opportunity and Threat analysis. SWOT analysis can allow devising of a better marketing plan. It can allow overcoming of the threats by conversion of strengths in appropriate areas. It can overcome its weaknesses and convert them into opportunities for Bioderma. The current SWOT has been developed for market in Singapore only, as included below;
Table 1: Bioderma SWOT Analysis
| Strength Extensive R& DWell-established brand namePresence of financial resources | Weakness In-depth knowledge of Singapore market dynamics absentCultural and language barrier between France and Singapore |
| Opportunity Increasing diverse population in SingaporeRising propensity to purchase cosmetic and beauty branded products Increase in income amongst population in Singapore | Threat Large number of local beauty and cosmetic companies presentRising stringent laws and regulations in Singapore |
Source: Author
4. Marketing Objectives & Strategy Formulation –STP
Analysing market capability in Singapore and industry based competition reveals presence of tremendous potential for Bioderma. The company has to aim at marketing its product so that it is able to establish its brand name in the market. Some of the marketing objectives of the Company are;
- To increase brand recognition in Singapore by online retailing
- To include newer marketing concept to attract targeted customer segment by personalization experience
- To achieve marketing goals over a period of 1 to 2 years’ time period by means of social media
In consideration with the above stated objectives, a marketing strategy has to be devised that aims at accomplishing the objectives. Developing a marketing plan for the purpose of meeting the stated objectives can be conducted through by analysis for Bioderma.
Figure 3: Marketing STP
Source: Author
4.1 Segmentation based Strategy
Analysing the marketing segment of Singapore demographically, behaviorally, geographically and psychologically reveals the need for the following strategy.
Figure 4: Segmentation of Market for Bioderma
Source: Author
Demographic Strategy: Demographically Singapore has a diverse population; Bioderma needs to market its various products simultaneously. Moreover, presence of different age group in the population provides opportunity to Bioderma to present various products in the Singapore market. However, due to the higher price category of the products of Bioderma, it will need to remain confined to the middle-upper and upper class category for its products. Bioderma needs to continue catering to the same demographic segment that it earlier used to cater to. Each of its product categories is well placed within the demographic segment.
Geographic Strategy: Singapore is a city with intense population. There is no suburb location in the country; hence Bioderma needs to make available its products at most retail outlets across the city. Bioderma needs to expand its current distribution of products to include tie-ups with retail distributors. It needs to make it products easily assessable in suburban locations as well.
Behaviour Strategy: Analysing the behavioral segmentation reveals beauty consciousness amongst the population in Singapore. Hence, Bioderma need to devise its marketing campaign aiming at enhancing the beauty of the population. Bioderma needs to position its beauty and skincare products by advertising with Singapore models so that locals can relate to the products. The marketing needs to include extensive advertising strategy for Singapore.
Psychological Strategy: The psychological segmentation reveals that most women are attracted to foreign brands for their beauty related products. Hence, Bioderma can market its products as French Company, which conducts R&D activity for Singapore population. Bioderma can be advertised as the most accepted brand in Singapore. The social media marketing strategy need to be interactive, which attends to customer queries, so that the psychological segment can be better targeted.
4.2 Targeting
The targeted market segment reveals potentiality in growth of the current market segment. There is present tremendous potentiality amongst each target segment to expand in the coming years. With ever increasing migrant population in Singapore, there is a vast opportunity to extend varied products to customers. The target customer segment for Bioderma consists of women in the age group 18 years to 65 years of age. These women belong to upper-middle and upper class.
Moreover, the rising service class and entrepreneurs in Singapore reveals increasing propensity to spend amongst customers. Growing income levels in developing Asian countries is a conducive factor that offers opportunity to Bioderma to expand its marketing proposition. The marketing activities of Bioderma need to encompass traditional as well as contemporary methods of marketing. The brand in order to develop a sizable market share needs to accommodate a social media marketing strategy which includes Facebook, Instagram and Twitter promotions (McDonald & Wilson, 2016). Bioderma will also need to accommodate social media blog posting with regular website updation so as to maintain connect with its customers. It will need to make tie-up with leading ecommerce platforms such as Amazon so as to expand its market share further. A detailed Gantt chart for the various marketing strategy is incorporated into Appendix 1 along with a detailed budget for the same.
5. Marketing Strategy Formulation – Branding & Internal Branding
The marketing strategy for developing and expanding the market share for Bioderma (Philip et al., 2017). Bioderma needs to adopt appropriate branding strategy such that it is able to position itself as a distinct brand amongst competitors in the market. The attribute of Bioderma that will assist position Bioderma as a distinct brand is it efforts in Research and Development activity. The marketing plan needs to encompass and highlight the element of R&D for Bioderma such that it is able to position itself as a separate identity in the Singapore market. Most brands present in the market are not so focused on R&D activities; this will help Bioderma to identify as a brand apart in the market. R&D activities for the Company are focused on devising skincare products for the Asian population. Bioderma has specific products for each target section of the population it caters to. In its advertising and marketing efforts Bioderma has to highlight R&D efforts that it undertakes for Singapore markets.
Bioderma has already adopted the process of internal branding for its various products (Tuominen, Hirvonen, Reijonen & Laukkanen, 2016). For the marketing of its products in an extensive manner it will need to further stretch this customers to include employees, clients and customers to work as brand ambassadors for Bioderma. The Company can let employees at various stores apply products of Bioderma, customers to test products. This would act as a brand endorsement strategy for Bioderma and assist in its market expansion. With ready acceptance of products of Bioderma amongst employees and customers, there will be increasing brand penetration in the market.
6. Product Management
Bioderma needs to accommodate product management by dealing with planning, forecasting, production and marketing of products of Bioderma (Homburg, Jozić & Kuehnl, 2017). The product manager in Bioderma has to analyse the market segment in Singapore and then devise plans for sales of products. Bioderma needs to categorize its products according to BCG matrix. Categorization of products according to BCG matrix can be undertaken by analysing market share and market growth. Star category products are those with higher market share and growth prospects. Bioderma needs to concentrate of these products, such as ABCDerm, Atoderm, and Photoderm. Products which are Question marks and Dogs needs to be rejected, these include products with lower market share. While Question Marks provide opportunity for growth, it often requires investments hence cannot yield immediate results. Cash cows should remain in the marketing of products and it generates returns for Bioderma. Thus, marketing of products needs to focus on Stars and Cash cows need to be focused on.
Figure 1: BCG Matrix
Depending upon sale and revenue generated for particular product category, Bioderma can expand its set of existing products or conducting marketing on existing products. Bioderma sells several skincare products in Singapore and generates maximum profitability from them. Products that are offered to customers and on which marketing needs to be conducted includes, Atoderm, Zero-Shine and Sensibio H2O (these include Cash Cows, hence generate stale cash inflows for Bioderma) (Bioderma, 2018). Though these products have significant market share yet the company needs to focus on marketing of these products as they are highly liked by customers in Singapore.
7. Pricing Management
Bioderma undertakes premium pricing strategy for its various products (Gummesson, 2017). As Bioderma offers high value, world class products, hence its prices its products accordingly. The highly branded value of the product is differentiated in the market hence Bioderma will charge premium prices for its product category. As for example Bioderma Sensibio H2O products sells at SIN$39.90, which can hint at its premium pricing strategy. Moreover, the premium pricing is charged for the research and development of unique products to match skin types of customers. Below is a snapshot for various products of Bioderma included for the Singapore market, obtained from online sources.
Figure 2: Premium Pricing for Products of Bioderma
8. Distribution Management
In order to undertake its current
marketing activities further, the Company will need to undertake distribution
strategy based on ecommerce business model (McDONALD, 2016). The supply chain of Bioderma needs
to ensure adequate supply
of its products with Amazon and other retailers such that customers can
purchase products of the Company easily. Bioderema can make tie-up with Amazon to offer its
products at lower prices as available in the market. Bioderma might aim
at increasing currently present distribution channels present as well.
9. Integrated Marketing Communication Management
Bioderma will need to accommodate an integrated communication management such that all its communications is linked together (Andrews & Shimp, 2017). In order to devise an integrated marketing communication plan, all elements of promotional mix. The aim of such integrated communication is to be able to connect internal organisation to external customers and other external stakeholders. An integrated communication management for Bioderma needs to include several elements. It needs to have Advertising, sales promotion, events and experiences, public relations, personal selling, word of mouth marketing, interactive marketing and direct marketing. Combining all these activities together will ensure greater brand recognition and development of a brand identity for Bioderma. Bioderma will include regular advertising, PR, direct marketing, personal selling and sales promotion on regular basis in the Sinagpore market. This will allow expanding its market share in Singapore.
Figure 6: Integrated Marketing Communication Management
Source: Author
10. Implementation & Control
The marketing plan developed for Bioderma needs to accommodate appropriate implementation and control procedure (Garnica & Viveros, 2017). SMART objectives will be aimed at for arriving at marketing plans for Bioderma. SMART is an abbreviated form for specific, measurable, attainable, realistic and time-bound. A detailed SMART initiative for Bioderma is encompassed here. While online marketing and social media promotional strategies might appear to be attractive in nature, due to its low costs, there needs to be adopting an appropriate implementation and control procedures. The marketing plan will aim at developing each step of the plan and then implementing the same consecutively. This implies, with development of a single social media posts, it should be made online; similarly an online marketing tool once approved needs implementation as well. Control procedures can be accommodated once a KPI (Key Performance Indicator) has been developed for each parameter of its new marketing proposition. A targeted KPI score is depicted below, which will be evaluated monthly basis to track progress. A control procedure will be adopted to keep track of the expenses incurred in social media and online marketing activities as well.
| Activities | KPI (Time-line) |
| Developing website informative content | Annually |
| Identifying team for social media and online marketing | 3 member team or outsource to IT Company/ 3 months |
| Identifying & developing trendy social media posts & Online Marketing | 1 month |
| Adding to various beauty conscious groups and responding to conversation | Weekly |
| Creating followers lists on Facebook, Instagram and Twitter | Weekly |
| Creating YouTube videos regarding R&D processes at Bioderma | Monthly |
| Launching marketing campaign | Half-Yearly |
| Offering Discounts | Half-Yearly |
| Email Marketing | Half-Yearly |
11.0 Conclusion
Bioderma is a well-known skincare and cosmetic brand. It can easily achieve a high market share in Singapore due to the presence of several conductive factors. Singapore is technologically advanced nation and recently there had been tremendously increase in ecommerce trade in the country. The country however has stringent legal and jurisdiction that needs to be followed by companies. There are laws and punishments for companies that do not adhere to laws prevailing in the country. As the country is developed recently, there has been an increasing consciousness towards the environment. Hence, Bioderma need to offer products that are environmentally safe to use. The brand needs to focus on market scenario in Singapore and develop products that match consumer requirement for Asians present in Singapore. Through extensive analysis and study of the market segment present in Singapore, Bioderma can develop sizable market share. It can adopt sales and promotional strategy through online marketing channels and through ecommerce websites by making tie-ups in order to expand its brand further. Bioderma need to overcome its only challenge that it faces in Singapore is that of brand recall and brand recognition, through extensive online marketing and social media promotional strategies, Bioderma can easily overcome it.
12. Referencing
Andrews, J.C. and Shimp, T.A., 2017. Advertising, promotion, and other aspects of integrated marketing communications. Nelson Education.
Bagozzi, R.P., Rosa, J.A., Celly, K.S. and Coronel, F., 2018. Marketing-Management. Walter de Gruyter GmbH & Co KG.
Baker, M.J., 2016. What is marketing?. In The Marketing Book(pp. 25-42). Routledge.
Bioderma. 2018. Company Website. Accessed on 12th December 2018 from: https://www.bioderma.sg/
Calder, B.J., Malthouse, E.C. and Maslowska, E., 2016. Brand marketing, big data and social innovation as future research directions for engagement. Journal of Marketing Management, 32(5-6), pp.579-585.
Chernev, A., 2018. Strategic marketing management. Cerebellum Press.
Garnica, C.H. and Viveros, C.A.M., 2017. Fundamentos de marketing . Pearson Educación.
Gummesson, E., 2017. From relationship marketing to total relationship marketing and beyond. Journal of Services Marketing, 31(1), pp.16-19.
Homburg, C., Jozić, D. and Kuehnl, C., 2017. Customer experience management: toward implementing an evolving marketing concept. Journal of the Academy of Marketing Science, 45(3), pp.377-401.
McDonald, M. and Wilson, H., 2016. Marketing Plans: How to prepare them, how to profit from them. John Wiley & Sons.
McDONALD, M.A.L.C.O.L.M., 2016. Strategic marketing planning: theory and practice. In The marketing book (pp. 108-142). Routledge.
Philip.; Keller Kotler (Kevin Lane.; Ang, Swee-Hoon.; Tan, Chin-Tiong.; Leong, Siew Meng), 2017. Marketing management. Pearson.
Tuominen, S., Hirvonen, S., Reijonen, H. and Laukkanen, T., 2016. The internal branding process and financial performance in service companies: An examination of the required steps. Journal of Brand Management, 23(3), pp.306-326.
[t1]This is not competitor analysis but as heading indicates, it includes Company analysis. Please check below for competitor analysis
[t2]Bioderma’s Singapore market
