According to market researcher Diagonal Reports, the internet, social media, and smartphones are part of a ‘technology revolution’ and this is seeing new beauty and communications solutions develop.
“The traditional beauty industry must compete to protect its market share. How it handles these technology developments will determine whether it will retain its position as the premier provider of beauty, or it relinquishes the crown to others,” says its latest research.
“The challenge is that millions of consumers globally are unsentimental about many elements of the legacy beauty market — the brands, the technologies, the retailers, and the advertising.”
Online world we live in
Nowadays, the world is increasingly online and mobile. You may even be reading this on you mobile device (if not it will definitely be online somehow!). Beauty buyers are no different.
Diagonal says that millions have now migrated to the online, as it is the first source they consult for brand intelligence. It is a retail proxy. It directs buyers towards purchases, and informs about alternative products and brands.
The reason beauty buyers go online is because it is rich in high value information, that is, the solutions that are relevant to their hair and skin care needs and regimes.
The online platform is used to access the lived beauty experiences of real women and girls, or people 'just like me', and this experience is becoming superior to low value beauty information, such as advertisements and paid promotions.
“Technology developments are shaping both new beauty solutions and new relationships between consumers and beauty. The ‘cosmetic’ is no longer THE reference point for beauty,” says Diagonal.
What that means now is that cosmetics brands are thinking outside the box when it comes to new solutions, with scientific skin care as a good example of this.
Scientific skin care sees products and treatments marketed as medical, rather than as cosmetic, and this benefits from the credibility of the science, as well as of alternative (natural) medical traditions from around the world.