YiSha & Sephora

A Comparison of Two Make-up Stores

Research Objective:Choose two stores in the same field to make a comparison.

Background:Yi Sha: A Chinese makeup Store; Mainly sells Chinese brand makeups;

Research Question:What’s the difference between the two stores and how that affect the customers’ behavior?

Before Go Inside

YISHA:1. Pink. More favorable

to the youth, but not classic;

2. Sales person stand at the gate, looking around, with brochures in their hands;

3. Security-check at the door, which makes customers really uncomfortable.

Sephora:1. Black and white, very

classic;2. Salesmen/women are

not crowded at the gate, but you will get a warm welcome right after entering store. No one follows you in store, but 3 different sales come to me and ask “anything to help”?

3. Security is covered by fancy ADs, hard to tell.

Environment

YiSha:1. Some expensive

brands are put on separate tables at the sides of the room; The rests are put on different lines of shelves at the center of the room.

2. Items hanged on the shelves are very crowded.

3. Cashier is at the end of the shelf. Easy to skip.

Sephora:1. Different styles of

shelves are well-organized, but most customers followed the same way. Different brands on different tables with a distinctive style, easy to tell;

2. I can hardly move my eyes from the colorful nail polish.

Featured Items

Yisha:1. There are no

featured items table/shelf in store;

2. The music is on, keep on saying “xxx are on sale”.

3. Sales are all 20s girls. I heard one of them said: is that toner really helpful?

4. No lights on the shelf.

Sephora:1. Featured item table;

Monthly best-sellers;2. Foreign music! It is

funny that Chinese don’t know what does that mean, but they do buy.

3. Salemen/women, 20-40, each one has a bag with a set of tools;

4. Lights on every detail, eg: mirror, shelves……