Ricerca di mercato sulla bellezza millenaria

I Millennials sono la generazione di persone nate tra il 1982 e il 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.

Prodotti di bellezza millenari

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”. 

La mattina sotto la doccia i Millennials possono usare:

• shampoo, balsami, saponi e lavaggi per il corpo 

…e fuori dalla doccia possono utilizzare questi prodotti:

• prodotti per l'igiene orale compresi sbiancamento dei denti, dentifricio per il controllo del tartaro, spazzolini da denti appositamente progettati, strumenti per l'acqua, collutori e deodoranti
• prodotti (e servizi) per la cura delle unghie
• rasoi, lamette e altri dispositivi per la rasatura e la cura del corpo
• prodotti per applicare gel, creme, lozioni, polveri e prodotti per la cura della pelle
• avere un bell'aspetto/esaltatori dell'aspetto includono trucco e cosmetici
• annusare buoni prodotti come deodoranti, fragranze
• ingestion of health-related vitamins, supplements, and food, including fiber or probiotics.

Durante il giorno e la notte…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.
• I produttori di letti e cuscini promuovono modi in cui le persone possono migliorare il loro “riposo di bellezza”.

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.

Come possono essere utili le ricerche di mercato?

Anche se considerati millennial, i diciottenni non si comportano affatto come i 36enni. Pensa a chiunque abbia il doppio dei tuoi anni!

A causa di tali differenze all’interno di questo segmento di mercato, e ancor più rispetto ad altri segmenti più vecchi, è importante sviluppare un piano d’azione per studiare e valutare i modi in cui i prodotti di bellezza vengono percepiti, valutati, acquistati e utilizzati.

• Trends can be monitored via secondary research and analysis of social media traffic.
• Per comprendere meglio gli atteggiamenti e i comportamenti dei millennial nei confronti dei prodotti di bellezza, per età e sesso, è possibile condurre sondaggi e interviste telefonicamente o online.
• In stores and in focus group facilities, physical products can be shown, touched and smelled to further gain reactions.

Ai consumatori può essere posta una serie di domande approfondite sui loro acquisti attuali e potenziali. Di seguito sono riportati alcuni esempi ddurante il processo decisionale di acquisto:

• che tipo di contenuto viene cercato durante la fase di ricerca/confronto?
• quanto sono importanti i diversi canali mediatici nella creazione di consapevolezza, selezione e acquisto di prodotti di bellezza?
• chi sono gli opinion leader, le modelle, le star o altri portavoce?
• qual è la sinergia tra negozi al dettaglio e informazioni digitali, video e immagini?
• quali sono i loro atteggiamenti nei confronti dei negozi specializzati come Sephora e Ulta?
• quanto sono importanti il packaging e l'esposizione?
• What is the role of brands and designer names?
• quanto sono sensibili al prezzo?
• fino a che punto è importante il naturale o il biologico?

L'importanza della tecnologia

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.

• quanto spesso fanno acquisti nei negozi al dettaglio invece che online o su dispositivi mobili?
• quali app usano per vedere come starebbero con capelli e acconciature di diversi colori, trucco per occhi e viso e opzioni di rossetto?
• “provano” virtualmente vestiti, occhiali e prodotti affini?

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.

Opportunità del mercato della bellezza millenaria

È interessante notare che il potere di spesa dei millennial aumenterà nei prossimi anni con l’aumento dei loro redditi. Pertanto, anche se al momento potrebbero non spendere tanto quanto i loro colleghi più anziani, è importante affermare i propri marchi e prodotti il più presto possibile nella vita dei clienti.

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.

Assicurati quindi di comprendere e soddisfare le esigenze dei millennial per rimanere competitivi e avere successo in questo mercato.

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.

A proposito del 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:

• Innovazione e generazione di idee
• Test e convalida del prodotto
• Ricerca strategica

I nostri metodi includono co-creazione, focus group, test di utilizzo in casa (IHUT), comunità di insight online e analisi competitiva.