"7 out of 10 Clients are loyal to the Stylist NOT your Salon"
In 2007, Style Account commissioned Sheffield Hallam University MSc Students to undertake an in depth study into people's experience of hair salons.
A representative sample of 107 consumers provided key insights which may be interesting to Salon Owners and Stylists alike.
The research highlighted a number of key factors:
LIMITED LOYALTY TO SALON
The majority of respondents (50%) of participants visited a salon more often than every 10 weeks.
This figure Mintel’s research, which suggests that there are approximately 210 million adult haircuts per year.
The vast majority of respondents (24%) have been attending their current salon for approximately 1 – 2 years, this suggests that some consumers change their salon on a bi-annual basis and therefore highlights the need for salons’ to enhance customer loyalty.
A large proportion of the respondents (73%) attend the same salon every time and 19 % vary between a few.
It appears from the results that only a small number of consumers are loyal to their hair salon. However, as suggested earlier the loyalty only tends to last for approximately 1-2 years.
The Style Account would assist in enabling salons to create a competitive advantage, which could increase consumer loyalty.
LOYALTY TO STYLIST
Throughout the primary research conducting it was established that...
"...consumers are loyal to stylists rather than salons with 72% of respondents who always attend the same salon also always ask for the same stylist..."
If a Stylist moved to a different Salon, so too did many customers.
This suggests that hair salons would benefit from creating a competitive advantage through technology and relationship marketing.
Consumers are more loyal stylists than they are to hair
salons, suggesting that a salon could work harder to build customer loyalty through the Style Account.
On average respondents in the research stated that they would travel for between 11 and 20 minutes to this salon.
Therefore, Style Account would offer exclusivity within this distance to enable salons to use the system to gain a competitive advantage within their area.
A large proportion of respondents (70%) feel valued by their hair salon suggesting that clients tend to want to build a relationship with their hair salon.
" ..Females appear to feel less valued by their hair salon than males with 35% of females not feeling valued compared to 13% of males..."
This suggests that females expect more from salons and therefore would be more likely to be attracted to the Style Account.
A large number of consumers like salons because it provides relaxation, pampering and ‘me time’ but the main positive attraction to hair salons was about the end result as it was seen as a commodity.
It would therefore be beneficial to the industry on the whole if the experience was made more pleasurable.
CONSISTENCY & GET WHAT PAY FOR…
Some respondents felt that a salon was good if they were able to achieve the required result. This highlights the focus on stylists rather than hair salons and also emphasises the added value of the imagery involved in the Style Account.
Chit-chat and forced conversation was another negative aspect mentioned about hair salons and the Style Account would detract from this as it would provide both distractions for the consumer and conversation points.
Author: Charlene Leak MSc, Chartered Marketer.
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T: 0845 643 0114