Refillable Beauty - changing consumers habits

Today refillable solutions are complex for everyone. For suppliers and brands it requires a shift in supply-chain, for retailers it needs a shift in logistic and retail space, and we know how scarce space can be, and on the consumer side, it requires an active behaviour to bring back or refill beauty products, which is not an automatism yet in the consumers minds.

It will take years for a workable system to be implemented. Reading Atomic Habits, here are a few nuggets that we think would be beneficial for a brand to understand in order to help consumers change habits and learn a new behaviour overtime.

The author, James Clear, explains the 4 phases to implement new habits for the long run, and I’m sure this can be inspirational for our industry.

1 - Small and easy to implement

Implement small and short actions in a timely manner without changing the full routine. Small actions can have a big impact in the long run. 

=> For example: Implement refill in best selling product (product that your consumer will be more likely to re-purchase), and make it easy with online order or add the refill cartridge and full product next to the regular product. When interviewing “La Crème Libre” in France, they told us that they move to a package in-store with with full pack + 1 refill to ease first purchase and make it easier to understand for consumer, instead of selling everything separately as initially started.

2 - Automate

Make it easy to implement and add into a routine.

=> For example: Create a membership with regular delivery on your beauty product. Izzy fro instance, the america mascara has implemented a refill every 90 days for its consumers entering the membership options.

https://yourizzy.com/collections/all

3 - Hard to miss cues

Building new habits requires hard-to-miss cues and a plan of action meaning an implementation intention. For example, if someone wants to learn guitar, the author recommends putting the guitar in the middle of the room or somewhere the person would pass by everyday in the house, so the guitar would be “in the way”. 

In other words, it means that we can actually tweak the environment and make it easy to form positive habits.

=> For example, in the store, install a small fountain at the entrance or near the payment point, with attractive signs to demonstrate the value of refilling beauty products. In our survey, L’occitane explained that they have put signs everywhere in their stores to ensure that all consumers entering the store would see the refillable option, and they also made the procedure really easy, and trained all their staff about this practice so they would mentioned it to all consumers.

4 - Reward

Humans are motivated by the anticipation of reward, so making habits attractive will help a person stick to them.

=> For example, offer a 20% discount on the refill compared to full product or any other rewards that would be beneficial to your consumers and make it really clear and easy to understand or to accept.

-------------

James Clear, the author of Atomic Habits, goes on to explain that dopamine is a crucial motivator. This feeling of pleasure motivates us to do the beneficial action again and again. He also indicates that we don't actually have to do the pleasurable activity to get the hit of dopamine. The mere anticipation of doing something pleasurable is enough to get the dopamine flowing. In the brain's reward system, desiring something is on par with getting something or something to look forward to.

The author explains that a habit is composed of 4 elements:

• Cue to trigger action
• Craving for a change
• Response = action
• Reward = satisfaction 

A cue is a trigger that gets you to act.  A craving is a desire that the person wants to achieve. A response is the action of the habit itself. A reward is a positive feeling a person gets from completing the habit.

Since refillable beauty implies a complete change of habits, it’s fair to say that it will take time, and maybe using the “Atomic Habit” could be an interesting way to lead the change.

For example as a beauty brand, you could start implementing refills with only one product of your range, and the best seller most probably so it will have more impact. If it’s a bestseller, chances are that consumers are already buying several times. Automate the refill with a subscription for instance, so it is seamless for the consumers. And make it really visible on your website and in any of your points of sale, so the consumers knows which product to get, and make the benefit really clear : discount on repeat purchase, explain the positive impact of the repeat purchase compared to full products, and offer an overall bonus for subscription.

Also we are working in beauty and are selling dreams, so making a product beautiful is a given as well as sustainable.

For instance in the 2023 trends for sustainable beauty we explained that we are moving into “luxury vessels” where we are crafting parent/host packaging that are luxurious and worth keeping or showing-off, as the refill will be inserted in them.  “ As refillable beauty is developing, keepsake packaging is emerging as a trend. Until now packaging was mostly used as a transportation device, and often ended up in the waste bin. It seems that packaging will become more and more luxurious, and worthy of exhibition - like a piece of art -  and sometimes become intelligent and carry smart features.” we wrote in this previous article.