Abstract

The caselet, Kohl’s Tie-Up with Estée Lauder: Influencing Customer Perceptions, gives an overview of the advantages that Kohl’s and Estée Lauder derived by entering to an alliance. For Kohl’s, display of the up-market Estée Lauder cosmetic brand helped in improving the Kohl’s brand image. The display also helped Kohl’s to fill a gap in its product lines. For Estée Lauder, the deal brought in increased sales.

Learning Objectives

The case is structured to achieve the following Learning Objectives:

• The role of an alliance in influencing consumer perceptions about a company’s product offerings
• How a company manages an alliance
• and How alliances can be used as a strategy to eliminate gaps in the product lines offered by a company

Keywords

Kohl's Corporation (Kohl's), Estée Lauder, Target, Wal-Mart, Procter & Gamble, BeautyBank, Brand Differentiation, Prestige Cosmetics, Mass Distribution and Mass market cosmetics