Étude de marché sur la beauté du millénaire

Les Millennials sont la génération de personnes nées entre 1982 et 2000.

The beauty market has grown, and continues to grow significantly because of the behaviors and habits of this age group.  Concern about and care for one’s appearance increased when they made ‘selfies’ a household word and thrust sites such as Instagram into the limelight. Taking pictures of oneself with smartphone cameras and then sharing them on social media is a more common means of communicating than are phone conversations.

Produits de beauté millénaires

Though many are familiar and have been around for decades, many new products have been introduced into the millennial beauty market. These products are applied to every exterior part of one’s body, from hair to eyes to mouth to hands and toes – as well as consumed internally to foster beauty “from the inside out”. 

Le matin sous la douche, les Millennials peuvent utiliser :

• shampooings, revitalisants, savons et nettoyants pour le corps 

…et en dehors de la douche, ils peuvent utiliser ces produits :

• produits d'hygiène buccale, notamment blanchiment des dents, dentifrice contrôlant le tartre, brosses à dents spécialement conçues, cure-eau, bains de bouche et assainisseurs
• produits (et services) de soins des ongles
• rasoirs, lames, autres appareils de rasage et de soins du corps
• produits pour appliquer de tels gels, crèmes, lotions, poudres et produits de soins de la peau
• avoir fière allure/les rehausseurs d'apparence comprennent le maquillage et les cosmétiques
• sentir de bons produits tels que des déodorants, des parfums
• ingestion of health-related vitamins, supplements, and food, including fiber or probiotics.

De jour comme de nuit…Millennials may use fitness, wellness, nutrition, and sleep for good health and beauty. Millennials have seized upon technology as yet another way to control and improve their lives.

• Wearable clothing and devices, along with the number of related apps have grown geometrically in a fairly short period of time. Not only did Apple create a breakthrough with its mobile phone and iTunes, but it also revolutionized the way that consumers could monitor nearly every aspect of their daily activities, from awakening all the way through a night’s sleep.
• Les fabricants de lits et d’oreillers promeuvent des moyens permettant aux gens d’améliorer leur « repos beauté ».

DTC Channel Economics and the Margin Misconception

Direct-to-consumer beauty brands often celebrate higher gross margins without accounting for the full cost of customer acquisition. DTC channel economics in beauty look attractive at the unit level but deteriorate at scale. Customer acquisition cost for a new millennial beauty buyer through paid social now exceeds the first-order gross profit for most brands priced below the prestige tier.

The brands making DTC economics work follow a specific pattern. They use social commerce as a discovery channel, not a transaction channel. Brands like Drunk Elephant built initial awareness through Instagram but drove the majority of volume through Sephora’s retail footprint. The DTC site became a replenishment and bundle engine with lower acquisition cost because the initial conversion happened in a physical retail environment where trial friction is lower.

Trade spend optimization looks different in this model. Instead of funding price promotions on the DTC site, the sharper play is funding in-store sampling programs that reduce the trial barrier, then capturing the replenishment revenue through owned digital channels. The promotional lift from an in-store sampling activation for millennial beauty products consistently outperforms digital coupon campaigns when measured on a full-cycle basis rather than first-purchase attribution alone.

Clean Beauty, Private Label Threat, and Assortment Rationalization

Clean beauty is no longer a niche. It is a shelf strategy. Retailers like Target and Ulta have dedicated clean beauty sections, and the assortment rationalization decisions in those sections follow different rules than the rest of the store. The private label competitive threat in cosmetics is most acute in the clean segment because ingredient transparency reduces the perceived risk of switching from a branded to a store-brand product.

SIS International’s proprietary research in the beauty vertical indicates that millennial consumers evaluate “clean” claims through a hierarchy: they check the ingredient list first, then the certification badge, then the brand narrative. Brands that lead with narrative without substantiating the ingredient story lose credibility faster than brands that make no clean claims at all.

This hierarchy has direct implications for assortment rationalization strategy for the millennial demographic. Retailers rationalizing SKUs in the clean beauty set should evaluate not just velocity but ingredient differentiation. Two products with similar sales velocity but different hero ingredients serve different consumer need states. Cutting one based on category management optimization metrics alone risks losing a segment of the clean-beauty buyer who has no substitute in the remaining assortment.

Comment les études de marché peuvent-elles aider ?

Bien qu’ils soient regroupés sous le nom de millennials, les jeunes de 18 ans n’agissent en aucun cas comme les jeunes de 36 ans. Pensez à tous ceux qui ont deux fois votre âge !

En raison de ces différences au sein de ce segment de marché, et plus encore par rapport à d'autres segments plus anciens, il est important d'élaborer un plan d'action pour étudier et évaluer la manière dont les produits de beauté sont perçus, évalués, achetés et utilisés par ceux-ci.

• Trends can be monitored via secondary research and analysis of social media traffic.
• Pour mieux comprendre les attitudes et les comportements des millennials à l’égard des produits de beauté, par âge et par sexe, des enquêtes et entretiens peuvent être menés par téléphone ou en ligne.
• In stores and in focus group facilities, physical products can be shown, touched and smelled to further gain reactions.

Les consommateurs peuvent se voir poser un certain nombre de questions approfondies sur leurs achats actuels et potentiels. Voici quelques exemples dDurant le processus de décision d’achat :

• quel type de contenu est recherché lors de la phase de recherche/comparaison ?
• Quelle est l’importance des différents canaux médiatiques dans la sensibilisation, la sélection et l’achat de produits de beauté ?
• qui sont les leaders d’opinion, les mannequins, les stars ou autres porte-parole ?
• quelle est la synergie entre les magasins de détail et l'information numérique, les vidéos et les images ?
• quelle est leur attitude envers les magasins spécialisés comme Sephora et Ulta ?
• quelle est l’importance de l’emballage et de la présentation ?
• What is the role of brands and designer names?
• dans quelle mesure sont-ils sensibles au prix ?
• dans quelle mesure le naturel ou le biologique est-il important ?

L'importance de la technologie

Using the internet, millennials tend to search for products and compare prices and seek bargains and deals that offer the best value for their money. The Customer Journey is more complex with the rise of new touch-points and evolving expectations.  They look for and share a variety of coupons and offers that are presented to them in their digital-oriented world.

• à quelle fréquence font-ils leurs achats dans les magasins de détail plutôt qu'en ligne ou sur des appareils mobiles ?
• Quelles applications utilisent-ils pour voir à quoi ils ressembleraient avec différentes couleurs de cheveux et de coiffures, de maquillage des yeux et du visage et des options de rouge à lèvres ?
• Est-ce qu'ils « essayent » virtuellement des vêtements, des lunettes et des produits connexes ?

Social Commerce Impact: What the Evidence Shows

TikTok Shop generated over a billion dollars in U.S. beauty GMV in its first full year. The social commerce impact on beauty brands is structural, not cyclical. But the revenue concentration is extreme. A handful of SKUs drive the vast majority of social commerce volume, and those SKUs share common traits: visible before-and-after results, a price point under the impulse threshold, and a formulation simple enough to explain in a short-form video.

Millennial beauty market research that ignores social commerce as a channel now produces incomplete shopper journey maps. The purchase path for a serum discovered on TikTok looks nothing like the path for the same serum discovered through a dermatologist recommendation. Attribution models that collapse these into one funnel misallocate trade spend and overstate the contribution of paid search.

Opportunités du marché de la beauté du millénaire

Il est à noter que le pouvoir d’achat des millennials augmentera au cours des prochaines années à mesure que leurs revenus augmenteront. Ainsi, même s'ils ne dépensent pas autant que leurs homologues plus âgés, il est important d'établir vos marques et vos produits le plus tôt possible dans la vie de vos clients.

Millennials seek the opportunity to discover and try new products, services and alternative offerings. As such, you may have the opportunity to cross sell your product line.

Assurez-vous donc de comprendre et de répondre aux besoins des millennials pour rester compétitif et réussir sur ce marché.

Where Millennial Beauty Market Research Creates the Largest Return

Three areas produce disproportionate value. First, concept-product fit testing before launch, specifically testing not just the product concept but its fit within the target consumer’s existing routine. Second, shelf space allocation informed by ingredient differentiation rather than velocity alone. Third, channel-specific journey mapping that separates social commerce discovery from search-driven and retail-driven paths.

The brands pulling ahead in millennial beauty are not spending more on research. They are asking different questions. Instead of “does she like this product,” they ask “where does this product live in her morning.” Instead of “what is her price sensitivity,” they ask “what would make her replace the product she already owns.” Millennial beauty market research, done at this level of specificity, becomes the basis for portfolio strategy rather than a validation exercise.

The opportunity is large and growing. The generation that redefined beauty purchasing is now entering its peak earning years with established routines, strong opinions, and declining patience for products that do not earn their place in the regimen.

À propos du SIS

SIS Beauty Innovation provides consulting and research solutions for skincare, haircare and nailcare companies.  We provide innovation, product testing, validation, market research services.  SIS International also provides Strategy Research and Consulting with Competitive Analysis, Go To Market and Industry tracking.  Taken together, SIS provides:

• Innovation et génération d'idées
• Tests et validation de produits
• Recherche stratégique

Nos méthodes incluent la co-création, les groupes de discussion, les tests d'utilisation à domicile (IHUT), les communautés d'informations en ligne et l'analyse concurrentielle.