Physical stores
The channel that continues to remain crucial
Offline channels continue to be vitally important to Thailand’s beauty sector: shopper traffic is still eight times higher than online, despite not yet having recovered to pre-COVID levels.
Proximity stores are becoming increasingly popular destinations for beauty shoppers, who are attracted by the convenience of only needing to take a few steps to reach their favourite products. This is a trend that is unique to Thailand, and is being driven by shrinking household sizes, with less storage space, and less need to buy in bulk.
The share of total spend in neighbourhood provision stores such as corner shops and ‘mom and pop’ stores rose from 11% in 2022 to 15% in 2023. This channel is busy exploring new, more modern store models, and is expanding quickly: Took Dee, for instance, has a target to reach 50,000 stores across the country by the end of 2024.
Local branches of national convenience stores (CVS) such as 7-Eleven grew their share from 10% to 14% between 2022 to 2023. 7-Eleven has big ambitions for beauty. The chain is expanding its product range, customer service, and store formats to capture more missions. It plans to offer 700 brands in larger format stores, as well as bigger pack sizes. Beauty brands should re-visit the assortments available in the national CVS channel to ensure they are capturing the full variety of shopping missions.
Buying beauty online is no longer a novelty for Thai consumers – it has become a way of life. Manufacturers must build their online strategies based on an understanding of the evolving needs of their brands’ target segments. At the same time, they need to make sure shoppers can easily access their products in stores, in particular proximity formats, giving them good reasons to pick up beauty products as part of their mission.
