Ch. 4 - The Marketing Environment

Shea Moisture's marketing team understand that several basic demographic patterns are influencing marketing mixes. They're also aware that conscious consumers are looking to buy ethical, useful, but not too pricey. This is why Shea Moisture proudly produces fair-trade, natural products for reasonable prices- and market them to anyone and everyone. As mentioned in a previous post, Shea Moisture gained competitive advantage by staying true to their family brand of providing organic ingredients and making sure to keep to aim their products at multiple demographics.

 

Knowing the history of Shea Moisture, from being founded in Sierra Leone, to starting sales in Harlem, New York, one may agree that Shea Moisture's target market is adult black women, who'd like to maintain their natural hair with quality, rich ingredients and oils. But Shea Moisture makes it known that although they are proud to reach a specific demographic that many other brands tend to neglect, they're looking for a broader market. 

On twitter, the company shared:

"As a certified minority-owned business, we are so proud of our heritage, our community and how far we’ve come — from a village market in Sierra Leone, to the streets of Harlem, to retailers throughout the U.S. With your support, we’ve been able to bring change, diversity and variety to retail.

We hope you continue to join us in celebrating how the versatility of our products can help people everywhere.”

Shea Moisture sells beauty products for women with straight, curly, kinky, and even wavy hair. Through this, they are also able to reach a multi-cultural market by catering to women with all kinds of hair textures and needs. They also market products for men, and babies. They sell products like facial cleansers, bar soap, shampoo, shaving cream, moisturizers, and more- meeting people's diverse needs. 

Recently, Shea Moisture has been able to reach different demographics by having their products featured on different sites, blogs, and events- that each have their own target audience.