earticle

영어

The recent growing Korean cosmetics market has been supported by continuing growth in one cosmetic brand stores derived from specialty cosmetic shops with diverse brand products. The whole cosmetics market has been reformed while those stores are making a new category called 'cosmetics road shops'. As there has been a lack of marketing researches on brand images of cosmetics road shops, the researcher selected 4 representative brands among over 30 cosmetics road shops to analyze changes of target customers and brand images according to changes in their concepts, features and advertising models. The result of this study showed following conclusions. Beginning in 2004, the first cosmetics road shop brand, MISSHA has aimed to be the luxury cosmetic brand, breaking its 'cheap cosmetic' brand image, so the company has used wannabe celebrities such as Kim Hye-soo and Lee Hye-sang as it launched various functional skin care products, which caused changes of its brand image and target customers. MISSHA's forever rival company, THE FACE SHOP from the start has hired Korean Wave celebrities to effectively promote the brand targeted customers from teenagers to 40s and actively supported K-Beauty marketing. ETUDE HOUSE has recently changed its 'princess' brand image by showing characterful models instead of young and dollface models, and the company has attempted to achieve brand differentiation among other road shops. TONYMOLY is looking to go beyond Korea and reach Asian countries while it uses popular Korean Wave celebrities to turn their domestic and foreign fans into customers. It is the objective of the author to continue researches on changes of brands and their different images, as there is much attention towards further studies and changes in cosmetics road shops.