Foreo UFO Smart Mask Treatment: A Technologically Advanced Beauty Device

Features of Foreo UFO Smart Mask Treatment

Question

Discuss about the Critical Analysis of Foreo UFO Mask  for LED Lights.

Forego UFO is newly launched beauty product that works as a device of facial treatment at the time of 90 minutes. It has features of hyper-fusion therapy along with the features of LED light therapy in order to make the skin smoother as well as brighter ("UFO Smart Mask Treatment", 2018). The blue, green and red colored LED lights have been used in the product for the purpose of facial treatment. The main process of the facial treatment of the product is heating, vibrating and cooling to give a radiant and softer effect to the skin. The product due to having the advantage of its short size is easy to carry ("UFO Smart Mask Treatment", 2018). FOREO UFO is provided with USB port in order to charge it. The six environments have significant impact on the product have been discussed below:

Economic impact: While discussing the economic factors, it deserves mention that the continuous competition among the beauty product brands acted as the driving force behind this innovative device.

Technological impact: The product has made extensive use of technology to make facial treatment easy and convenient without peeling the skin. The device takes only 90 seconds to clean up to surface as well as it gives a treatment to the skin ("UFO Smart Mask Treatment", 2018).  All the more, the product can be controlled by a mobile application.

Demographic impact: Keeping the demographic aspect in mind, Foreo UFO has rightly combined technology and beauty care in order to give a completely new dimension to the beauty products as per the customer requirement in the region (Grady, & Orttung, 2013).

Socio cultural impact: The demand of skincare and beauty products is comparatively high. The natives use different gadgets for the purpose of skincare. It can be said that the culture played a significant role behind the innovation of the product.

Political impact: The study states that the political environment of the country is in advantageous for doing business, especially, for any innovative product development (Nielsen, 2013).

Ecological impact: From the ecological perspective, the product is in certain disadvantageous position. The power consumption and usage of LED lights in the device can have adverse effect on environment (Nielsen, 2013).

The market of Australian beauty products is estimated to grow up to $7.76 billion by 2020. It is the only industry that was not affected by the market ups and down (Nielsen, 2013). The reason behind this is the continuous as well as growing use of beauty products by women. In addition to that, increasing usage of beauty products of men another reason for which the industry of beauty products was able to pull a large amount of profit from the market despite market run-down. There are certain factors, which impact in the growth of the cosmetic and beauty market of Australia. For instance, the customers' inclination in order to look good plays a major role in the cosmetics market growth.

Environmental Impact of Foreo UFO Smart Mask Treatment

While the entire cosmetic industry focuses on continuous research in order to manufacture innovative products, Foreo UFO introduced a completely different beauty device in the market (Nielsen, 2013). The company has invented the product keeping the market trend in mind. Unlike other beauty and facial treatments, Foreo UFO provides a quick treatment by using technologies. As per the current  trend of the beauty industry, a lot of devices are present in the market with different offerings. However, Foreo UFO offers a unique process which can be availed anytime regardless of place.

A lot of time and money are consumed in skin care treatment like spa , whereas UFO addressee this point reducing the time (Grady & Orttung, 2013). Those skincare treatments demand the customers to visit skin care centers. Therefore, the customers are required investment money every time they parlors. However, FOREO UFO requires only one-time investment, which can be availed any time, at anywhere. Thus it can be said that as the product is newly launched it yet to reach a remarkable position in the market (Kotare & Helsen, 2014).

The Foreo UFO has similar kind of products in the beauty and skincare industry (Kotler, 2015). In order to distinguish the product from other similar products, few innovative marketing strategies were adopted. The marketing strategies included the product Foreo UFO has adopted both traditional and modern marketing strategy (Venkatraman et al., 2015). An event was organized in order to launch the product. The event largely promoted the product while applying direct communication strategy with its customers. The product launch event was highly successful. The product has achieved a large number of feedbacks in a very short time span (Grady & Orttung, 2013).

Meanwhile, the company has adopted modern marketing strategies like social media marketing. as social media marketing is the most useful medium to reach out to more customers, different promotional contents including videos were published over social networking sites such as Facebook, Twitter and so on (Kotabe & Helsen, 2014). The purpose of the using social media sites for marketing was to attract the users as well as to allow them to give feedback and post queries. As observed, the promotional content of the product was published on the social networking sites; it received appraisals from the customers (Hays, Page & Buhalis, 2013). In addition to the positive feedback, it also received critics opinion about the product which was of great importance as to it helped the company to identify all the disputes before the launch of the product.

Current State of Australian Beauty Market

A well-known marketing consultancy was hired for the purpose of marketing of the product (Kotabe & Helsen, 2014). The consultancy invited different media including newspapers and broadcast media channels. Different websites which publish reviews and promotional contents for a newly launched product were also consulted in order to promote the product.

As part of their innovative marketing strategies, the company produced tutorials of the products in order to make the customers how to use the device (Tuten, & Solomon 2017). The content of the tutorials was very engaging in order to attract the attention of the customers. According to the market trend, it is observed that publishing tutorials are one of the effective ways of marketing strategies (Hays, Page & Buhalis, 2013). The result shows that the marketing strategy in terms of tutorial publishing adopted in order to promote the product was largely successful in attracting the customers’ attention.

Table 1: SWOT Analysis

(Source: Created by Author) 

The product has uniquely combined technology and skin care. It provides a spa level skin care therapy at home without a technician’s help. The device is designed with LED lights of three different colors which are completely new features that other brands do not have. Due to its size, the device can be carried to anywhere. Moreover, it is a rechargeable device which needs no other additional infrastructure to use it. Another feature that makes the device unique from other products is that it consumes less time (Okello, et al., 2014). The device gives a smooth as well as radiant skin in just 90 seconds. The other barrier of masking which was overcome by the device is masking perfection is the perfection

Contrary to the strength, the weakness of the product has also been analyzed through SWOT (Abdi, et al., 2013). The product cannot be used by the all because of its high price. Therefore it can be said that the product has not been launched for the mass. Even the product needs a charger to efficiently function. So, it cannot be said that the concerned product is user-friendly. The plastic of the mask releases red and green rays which may even cause skin cancer. Hence it can be said that the product cannot be used by all customers (Okello, et al., 2014). The application has a sensor which is attached to the phone of the customer and will provide a warning to the customers regarding the application of the Mask.

Marketing Strategies of Foreo UFO Smart Mask Treatment

It has been seen that the women of the society are too much conscious about their skin, as a result, they look for 360 face treatment. The newly launched product can survive in the market for long-term because it provides an overall treatment of the skin (Okello, et al., 2014). On the other hand, it can be said that now the women of the society can get a flawless skin by sitting at their home. The newly launched mask provides skin treatment within 90 seconds. Thus, it can be said that Foreo UFO Mask can survive in the market for a long time. Opportunities are huge for the product, if it modifies its features and excludes the part of LED lights from it as the growing awareness of the skin decease may cause disruption of the sale of the product any time.

The major threat to the product is its usage of LED lights. As per the growing rate of skin cancer, most of the women as well men have started avoiding electronic skin care devices that can cause skin cancer. Among the other threats, the price of the product deserves mention. As compared to similar products that exist in the market, the price of the product is high. Therefore, the device is not affordable for people of all economic strata. The affluent people can only afford to buy it. Apart from similar devices, fairness creams are also available in the market. These fairness creams are less in price than the electronic device (Ayub et al., 2013). 

References

Abdi, A., Ashouri, M., Jamalpour, G., & Sandoosi, S. M. (2013). Overview SWOT analysis method and its application in organizations. Singaporean Journal of Business Economics and Management Studies, 1(12), 69-74.

Armstrong, G., Kotler, P., Harker, M., & Brennan, R. (2015). Marketing: an introduction. Pearson Education.

Ayub, A., Adeel, R., Muhammad, S. A., & Hanan, I. (2013). A conceptual framework on evaluating SWOT analysis as the mediator in strategic marketing planning through marketing intelligence. European Journal of Business and Social Sciences, 2(1), 91-98.

Grady, P., & Orttung, M. (2013). U.S. Patent No. 8,543,470. Washington, DC: U.S. Patent and Trademark Office.

Hays, S., Page, S. J., & Buhalis, D. (2013). Social media as a destination marketing tool: its use by national tourism organisations. Current issues in Tourism, 16(3), 211-239.

Kotabe, M., & Helsen, K. (2014). Global marketing management.

Kotler, P. (2015). Framework for marketing management. Pearson Education India.

Nielsen, H. S. (2013). Recent developments in International Organization for Standardization geometrical product specification standards and strategic plans for future work. Proceedings of the Institution of Mechanical Engineers, Part B: Journal of Engineering Manufacture, 227(5), 643-649.

Okello, C., Pindozzi, S., Faugno, S., & Boccia, L. (2014). Appraising bioenergy alternatives in Uganda using strengths, weaknesses, opportunities and threats (SWOT)-analytical hierarchy process (AHP) and a desirability functions approach. Energies, 7(3), 1171-1192.

Tuten, T. L., & Solomon, M. R. (2017). Social media marketing. Sage.

UFO Smart Mask Treatment. (2018). FOREO. Retrieved 11 April 2018, from https://www.foreo.com/preorder-ufo

Venkatraman, V., Dimoka, A., Pavlou, P. A., Vo, K., Hampton, W., Bollinger, B., ... & Winer, R. S. (2015). Predicting advertising success beyond traditional measures: New insights from neurophysiological methods and market response modeling. Journal of Marketing Research, 52(4), 436-452.