Where Consumers Shop for Beauty and Personal Care

Key Findings

Robust BPC performance driven by premium

Positive performance of BPC is increasingly being driven by the premium segment, which advanced 4% in 2017, driven by the growing consumer appetite for premium brands as they are increasingly looking for high-quality products and tailored experiences.

Store-based retail reigning, but losing ground to non-store retail

The share of store-based retailing remains high within BPC, accounting for 81% of global value sales. However, internet retailing emerges as the fastest growing channel. The new breed of direct-to-consumer beauty brands that operate online only are contributing to the rise of internet retailing.

Health and beauty specialist retailers betting on experiential shopping and voice

As consumers demand experiences, specialist retailers are increasingly transforming transactional retail into an experiential journey employing various technology advances such as AR and VR. Voice technology is expected to be the next frontier facilitating personalisation and engagement with consumers.

Direct selling the largest non-store channel, but not for long

Direct selling remains the largest non-store retail channel, but internet retailing is expected to overtake starting from 2019. BPC has been ripe for disruption by online as players are developing apps to facilitate m-commerce, expanding e-commerce landscape as social platforms become a popular sales channel and widely adopting AR technologies to enhance online shopping.

Technology-enabled online beauty

Personalisation initiatives enable consumers to make even better purchasing decisions online than in a store. Apps and online platforms have been developed to advise consumers both via trusted computerised algorithms and virtual communities, bloggers and vloggers to choose the products best-suited for them.