“Beauty marketers embraced new technology and ingredients to elevate the bar on beauty care performance, bringing professional-quality care into the home without the professional price tag,” the editor of the report, Susan Viamari, told CosmeticsDesign.com USA.
Examples of such products identified in the report include the Healthy Look hair color from L’Oreal Paris, a single do-it-yourself product that offers consumers multiple benefits, and Sally Hansen’s Complete Salon Manicure, which is designed to bring professional quality results at an affordable price.
Sales of facial products strong
‘Times & Trends: CPG 2010 Year in Review: Out of Turmoil Rises Opportunity,’ revealed that in the US consumer packaged goods market, beauty and personal care unit sales grew 0.8% in 2010 compared to growth of 1.2% in the CPG industry as a whole, and dollar sales increased 2.2% compared to 1.6% for the industry as a whole.
While sales of facial anti-aging products, facial cleansers and acne treatments remained strong, sales of body anti-aging products declined, which Viamari attributed to consumers being more discerning about product purchases.
“A prolonged period of economic difficulty has driven consumers to be very selective about spending,” she said. “Non-essential purchases have been greatly reduced, and sometimes completely eliminated. Facial anti-aging, facial cleansers and acne treatments all target something very visible—the face. As such, consumers are less inclined to sacrifice in this area.”
Beauty sales in drug store channel suffered
In drug stores, a staple retail channel beauty and personal care, units sales grew only 0.4% for the year, lagging average industry growth of 0.8%, which Symphony IRI attributes to drug stores focusing heavily on building their food and beverage offerings.
“Retailers are expanding assortment and aggressively pricing and promoting food and beverage offerings,” explained Viamari. “While these efforts have been successful in driving share across food and beverage categories, performance across beauty and personal care did suffer some,” she said.
Importance of digital marketing
With the growth of the Internet and the boom in smartphones (sales of smartphones increased 82% in the US in 2010), beauty marketers are being urged to complement traditional online and print marketing with social network and smart phone communication strategies in order to grow sales.
“In terms of online advertising, we have observed that, for beauty brands, behaviorally targeted online advertising across niche content delivers a positive return on investment with an increase in both number of occasions and dollars (10-20 per cent increase)” said Symphony IRI’s executive vice president of digital media solutions, Srishti Gupta.