Developing a Marketing Communications Strategy for a New Private Brand in the Beauty Industry (on the Example of the Smart Import LLC)

The trend towards online shopping over the last 4 years has taken the e-commerce market in Russia to a whole new level - in 2022, the country became the world leader in e-commerce growth. Today, with increasing competition and the rapid pace of ecommerce market development, many major players have started to take strategic steps to strengthen their market positions. In the fight for consumers, marketplaces have started to design and launch their own brands and develop them as real unique brands, with unique positioning and product features, in order to stand out in the eyes of customers and differentiate themselves from competitors by occupying a certain market category. Recently, one such promising industry is the beauty sector. After the exit of international companies, the market has vacated by 14%, with the growth rate in online channels increasing aggressively every year. In 2023, the category volume in ecommerce will reach 25% of the total market. Despite the prospect and new opportunities for the development of PL in this area, the question of how to develop a new brand to meet the unmet needs of the audience and a true successor to the favorite beauty brands of Russian female customers arises acutely. This paper summarizes the scientific literature on the role of own brands in the strategic development of companies, analyzes effective tools for promoting PL as a brand on the basis of foreign and Russian cases, studies and systematizes new trends and trends of consumer behavior in the beauty industry on the basis of content analysis. A series of interviews and quantitative surveys with the target audience are conducted to understand the true motives that influence the decision to try a new beauty product. The key result of the work is the proposed recommendations for adapting the communication strategy of the marketplace to promote a new PL-brand in the market of decorative cosmetics under the new challenges of the Russian market.