Ifop Asia recently partnered with SELF (悦己), the well-known women lifestyle magazine, on the edition of the White Paper 2014 which was released in its December issue. The magazine wanted to gather insightful knowledge about the Chinese beauty consumers and asked us to investigate Chinese women’s needs on anti-aging, whitening, foundation as well as their perception, acceptance and usage towards the latest products, new concepts, and new trends in the beauty universe.
Some of the key findings in the White Paper are:
- 2 in 3 Chinese women are looking for a whiter skin and 80% of them expect skincare products to fulfill their need of whitening. Skin whitening is an eternal topic for Chinese women, not only due to the local traditional sense of beauty, but also in relation to skin problems such as dullness, pigmentation as well as dark circles caused by aging, and increasingly because of pollution.
- A huge 3 in 4 consumers feel the need for anti-aging, and most of them think skincare can efficiently act against skin aging. Consumers have now started to consider anti-aging products in their mid-20s, unlike before when they used to start using post 30’s.
- The beauty retail landscape in China is fast evolving with 4 in 5 Chinese women also purchasing online, especially from B2C online channels, for example T-mall, followed by brand official websites. They now spend nearly half of their average beauty budget online.
- In terms of tier evolution, we observe increasing affluence levels in lower tiers (Tier 3) is fueling acceptance and usage of more and more beauty products. Consumers in these cities are developing more sophisticated routines and opening up to more premium brands.
- With increasing maturity of the Chinese beauty market, we observe higher interest towards beauty tools such as pore cleaners, steam facial machine, electric brush, etc. This acceptance of beauty tools is likely to increase in the future with the growing affluence level of consumers.
Much more information on emerging local brands, the purchase decision journey, etc. can be found in the SELF Beauty White Paper 2014 available for download from the “Documents” link below this article.
Written by Chunxiao HUO
