Survey Shows How Beauty Retail Sales Affected in Different Countries

With retail being more important than ever in spas, this survey from Synovate shows how different countries' consumers are responding to the economic crunch when it comes to buying beauty products, providing helpful information on how to prop up retail sales.

An international survey of buying habits suggests the economic downturn will not take a large bite out of the global cosmetics market but revealed very different attitudes across countries. Market research firm Synovate asked 11,500 people in more than a dozen countries about their spending plans and found that most consumers would not be cutting their cosmetics expenditure.

Global results of survey

When it came to looking after their looks, 41% of respondents said they were spending the same amount on cosmetics as they did before the downturn began, while only 27% said they were cutting down. Two-thirds of consumers were also planning to use the same brands as they were before the financial crisis hit.

Different countries, different attitudes

However, comparing countries revealed different attitudes towards the economic situation.

The countries with the most established cosmetics markets, such as France, the United States and the United Kingdom, were often the most pessimistic. For example, of those surveyed in the United Kingdom, 41% said they were spending less on beauty products while only 2% were upping their expenditure.

Countries that were more optimistic about their spending were either less affected by the financial crisis, like Denmark, or used to high levels of sales growth in recent years, such as Romania and Russia. In Russia, only 7% of respondents said they were reducing beauty spending compared with 24% who said they were stocking up on more cosmetic products. Again, in Denmark 7% said they were spending less while a strong majority of 59% revealed that their cosmetics expenditure remained the same.

CosmeticsDesign-Europe.com, January 14, 2009

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