Millennial Beauty Market Research

Millennials are the generation of people born between 1982-2000.

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.

Millennial Beauty Products

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”. 

In the morning in the shower, Millennials may use:

• shampoos, conditioners, soaps and body washes 

…and out of the shower, they can use these products:

• oral hygiene products including teeth whitening, tartar controlling toothpaste, specially designed toothbrushes, water picks, mouth washes and fresheners
• nail care products (and services)
• razors, blades, other shaving and body grooming devices
• products to apply such gels, creams, lotions, powders and skin care products
• look good/appearance enhancers include makeup and cosmetics
• smell good products such as deodorants, fragrances
• ingestion of health-related vitamins, supplements, and food, including fiber or probiotics.

During the day and at night…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.
• Bed and pillow manufacturers promote ways that people can improve their “beauty rest”.

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.

How can Market Research help?

Although lumped together as millennials, by no means do the 18 year olds act like the 36 year olds. Just think about anyone who is twice your age!

Because of such differences within this market segment, and even more so compared to other, older segments, it is important to develop an action plan to study and evaluate the ways in which beauty products are perceived, evaluated, purchased and used by them.

• Trends can be monitored via secondary research and analysis of social media traffic.
• To better understand the attitudes and behaviors of millennials toward beauty products, by age and gender, surveys and interviews can be conducted by phone or online.
• In stores and in focus group facilities, physical products can be shown, touched and smelled to further gain reactions.

Consumers can be asked a number of probing questions about their current and potential purchases. Below are some examples during the purchase decision process:

• what kind of content is sought during the search/compare phase?
• how important are different media channels in creating awareness, selection, and buying of beauty products?
• who are the opinion leaders, models, stars or other spokespersons?
• what is the synergy between retail stores and digital information, videos and pictures?
• what are their attitudes toward specialty stores such as Sephora and Ulta?
• how important is packaging and display?
• What is the role of brands and designer names?
• how sensitive are they to price?
• to what extent is all-natural or organic important?

The Importance of Technology

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.

• how often do they shop in retail stores versus online or on mobile devices?
• what apps do they use to see how they would look with different color hair and hairstyles, eye and face makeup, and lipstick options?
• do they virtually “try on” clothing, eyeglasses and related products?

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.

Millennial Beauty Market Opportunities

It is noteworthy that millennial’s spending power will increase over the next few years as their incomes rise. So while they may not currently spend as much as their older counterparts, it is important to establish your brands and products as early in your customers’ lives as possible.

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.

So make sure you understand and fulfill the needs of the millennials to stay competitive and succeed in this market.

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.

About 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 & Idea Generation
• Product Testing & Validation
• Strategy Research

Our methods include Co-Creation, Focus Groups, In-Home Usage Tests (IHUTs), Online Insight Communities, and Competitive Analysis.