I’ve been thinking a lot these days about recently acquired consumer spending habits, how many of them will stick beyond the immediate crisis, and most of all, what sort of psychological impact this will have on young consumers as they age? Will the teenagers of today begin to demonstrate the lifelong relationship with money similar to people of my grandmother’s generation? Will they also stockpile food and other necessities in the basement? (My family would refer to this as the “grocery store” as in “go downstairs and see if we’ve got any toothpaste in the grocery store.”)
According to the Los Angeles Times, a couple of the nation’s largest drugstore retailers are hoping to capitalize on changing spending patterns by offering separate, more upscale environments for their customers to peruse for their beauty needs. They figure once women are ready to spend again on this part of their self-care regiment, many are unlikely to walk back into the department store for triple-digit priced creams.
Will the next generation of beauty buyers be forever wary of department store beauty counters after experiencing comparable environments within CVS and Walgreen’s? (And don’t forget the Boots aisle within Target!)
The nation’s largest drugstore chains are making over their beauty departments as the recession cuts into household budgets.
CVS Caremark Corp. is rolling out spa-like beauty boutiques attached to its drugstores, including one in Mission Viejo. More are planned for former Longs Drugs stores in California, which were bought by CVS last year.
And Walgreen Co. is redesigning beauty departments in select locations, most dramatically at its new store in New York’s Times Square.
Their aim isn’t to sell hope in a jar. But CVS and Walgreens are trying to sell cost-conscious shoppers on the notion that drugstores can give them a beauty boost for far less money than their department-store counterparts.
“We’re starting to see people talk about the need to splurge a little,” said Wendy Liebmann, president of WSL Strategic Retail, a consumer behavior research firm in New York. “But they’re not going back into the high-end stores to do this. There is no doubt we will do more shopping, but the places we do it will be quite different for some time.”
Women began to cut back on buying cosmetics when money started getting tight last year, according to WSL. They are spending less by using what they already have, paring their beauty routine to rely on fewer products, or trading down to less-expensive brands, the firm said.
Born Curious 
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