As predictions begin to roll in for the future of beauty retail, the question still remains for a lot of brands: Do consumers prefer brick-and-mortar or online retail?
To better address this polarizing inquiry, Photoslurp and Zinklar partnered to create a report focused on the cosmetics ecommerce industry. The two companies conducted a study, "2019 eCommerce Cosmetics trends: How European Women Purchase Cosmetics Online," which surveyed female consumers in the United Kingdom, Germany, Spain, France and Italy. The collected data is meant to decipher what motivates, inspires and encourages beauty consumers to purchase cosmetics online.
How European Women Purchase Cosmetics Online
- Have customers bought cosmetics online in the last 12 months?
- In the last 12 months, 73.9% of respondents have bought cosmetics online. According to the study, products are generally not bought weekly or daily but over the span of months and on a rolling basis.
2. How often do customers buy cosmetics online?
- The U.K., France and Italy have the highest numbers of female consumers who have shopped online for cosmetics in the past 12 months, with 85.3%, 83.3% and 83%, respectively.
- Compared to Spain and Germany who only have 60.3% and 57.3%, respectively.
3. How often do customers say they buy cosmetics online?
- Of all respondents who have bought cosmetics in the last 12 months, 31.5% buy cosmetics every few months. Compared to 3.2% who buy a few times a week.
4. Where do customers purchase cosmetics online?
- Amazon is the most popular online space to shop for cosmetics products online.
5. What products are customers interested in purchasing?
- Lipstick is purchased most online with 59.1%, followed by face masks with 57.4%.
6. Which of these product attributes do customers think are the most crucial to have a good experience when buying cosmetics online?
- On average, respondents think that the most important product feature that helped their purchase was a sensitive skin product with 30.4%.
- Cruelty-free was a close second with 30.1%.
- The least important product feature was vegan or vegetarian with 6.9%.
7. What inspires a customer to purchase cosmetics online?
- The majority of respondents in all countries place importance on featured discounts, promotions and free delivery or shipping.
8. How important are customer reviews?
- The younger the age, the more customers tend to read reviews.
- Only 4.8% of all respondents claim to never read any customer reviews online.
For the full report, please visit hi.photoslurp.com.
