Emotional Value (Amore Pacific in Soho, NYC)

As you know, emotional value is the economic value or monetary worth of feelings when customers positively experience product and services. Yeah, Amore pacific started to conduct "Experience marketing", establishing a beauty gallery&spa, in Soho, NYC(2003) in order to gain sustainable competitive advantage in the cosmetics market.  Given the fact that Soho is full of luxurious boutique brands, I would say that Amore pacific aims to give satisfying experiences by offering a high quality of facial massage, not to mention products, thereby enhancing its own brand value. To be honest, when I first heard Amore Pacific had announced the plan of launching in America, frankly speaking, I sniffed at it. Their business model was rather different from what I expected. It managed to add some intangible, emotional value that customers would perceive from experiencing in the spa to the actual value, and set up the high price, embedding a luxurious image into customers-to-be. To check whether that is true or not, I did some research through my old-brother living in NYC.

"I had a fabulous facial at Amore Pacific in Soho. The spa is beautiful, very calming. The skin care specialist Lisa is very sweet, knowledgeable and talented at facial massage.The woman at the reception was nice and offered me a cup of refreshing cold green tea.I had an anti-ageing facial with green tea, which exceeded my expectations.The products are top of the line, even though the products is a little bit on pricey side but its worth it. A great experience. I will return! "

Lolita Lempicka2

Amore pacific tried to establish skincare brands like Soon and Lirikos before launching Lolita Lempicka but it ended up with failure in French market.

1. "SOON" - Made in Korea -> The image of the Korea at that time was not good enough to appeal to the western people.

2. "Lirikos" - Amore decided to benchmark a successful case of Shiseido, a Japanese cosmetics company which managed to attract western people by launching new brand "Kenzo" and "ISSEY MIYAKE" adapted to western consumers. Amore Pacific spurred the penetration of French cosmetics market by buying out a former Faberger factory and establishing a French subsidiary, "Pacific Creation"; the outcome was, however, disappointing and different from what it anticipated. Even though it was labelled "Made in France", operation by a majority of Korean managers in French subsidiary produced the first product line(skin care) without full understanding of western culture, resulting in disharmony in the company. 

3. "Lolita Lempicka" - By hiring Insoo John, who studied in France for 10years before joining the Amore pacific and has become the CEO of Pacific creation, it started to execute "Go native" strategy in order to turnaround the company. Although Amore pacific has a majority of shares of Pacific Creation, every business in Europe is left to the discretion of Pacific Creation for the efficiency.Very competent French cosmetic professional people arrived to Pacific Creation to launch Lolita Lempicka perfume under the license contract with a fashion designer, Lolita Lempicka, and it made a huge success.

Lolita Lempicka in France

 Splendid, stunning and attention-grabbing...

 I am trying to take a list of words to describe Lolita Lempicka fragrance in the picture seen above. The fragrance brand is currently ranked 4th in France, so-called the Mecca of beauty products. Interestingly enough, few French consumers know that it was launched in 1990 by Amore Pacific, the biggest cosmetics company based 5,500 miles away in South Korea. 

(For your information, believe or not, I am keeping up-to-date with the cosmetics field thanks to my dad, who used to work for Amore Pacific for 15years and has been running a cosmetics packaging company for 10years or more, in collaboration with Amore Pacific. I also look forward to jumping into the cosmetics field in the near future.)

 Back to the point, Amore Pacific had been through hard time since its first operation in France, thereby learning that Made in Korea, being associated with a product of low quality, attracted only sneers in elegant Parisian boutiques; however, Kyung Bae Suh(my role model...), the CEO of Amore Pacific, was determined to get a foothold in France for the long-term success globally. Conspicuously stamped on a label on the bottle were the words " Made in France".  Smart "Glocal strategy" managed to put itself in the situation where it can compete fairly with French brands, all other things being equal.