Consumers more concerned with function than traditional categories
According to Diagonal Reports, who carried out the study, this will have implications for the whole beauty world, from formulators to retailers.
The reason for this is apparently because the industry and consumers are out of sync as consumers always focus on the outcome that a beauty product can achieve whereas formulators less concerned with the ‘wrapping’ – the category classification, the technology, the channel, the segment.
“Dissatisfaction with the usefulness of traditional product categories goes back a long time. Our research archives show that even in the late 1990's consumers in the USA and Europe were increasingly focused on the function of hair and skin care products,” says Diagonal Reports.
“That could not have developed into a popular movement without the internet and social media which facilitated and accelerated this trend globally.”
Lexicon
Nowadays, consumers talk to each other in a different language and this means that this classification is outside the control of the industry which still conceptualizes in terms of legacy categories.
Therefore, cosmetics companies need to make sure they tap into the consumers’ needs as the rewards are great.
According to the market researcher, companies successfully enter the market by focusing on buyers' problems, and this has seen small players now account in aggregate for a significant share of sales as they are strategically positioned for future market expansion.
“The common market entry point is the uncommercialised and unbranded products / regimes which exist in the consumer- but not the industry – lexicon,” says Diagonal.
“This new beauty taxonomy may seem a tad complicated because it is a bottom -up exercise. But for many years we have been compiling intelligence on consumers' beauty regimes and practices worldwide which did not otherwise fit in.”
An example of a product or regime that was ignored due to it existing outside of the beauty lexicon is massage.
It revolutionised skin care and represents a new mass treatment category - still largely unconsolidated. Massage was ignored and cold-shouldered for years because of the widespread (industry) observance of the square pegs and round holes rule.
