The Beauty and Personal Care industry is as competitive as it gets in Consumer Packaged Goods (CPG). Brands fight for mindshare and market share. Consumer loyalty is hard to earn and worth the effort to maintain.
‘Beauty’ is more resistant to economic downturns than most discretionary CPG categories. You can credit “the lipstick effect” for that. A theory first stated in 1999 by Professor Juliet Shor, the lipstick effect hypothesizes consumers will indulge in prestige cosmetics during tough economic times because they are “little luxuries” providing an emotional lift when the purchase of higher-priced goods is postponed.
To seek competitive advantage, market leaders in the segment are turning to advanced scientific tools like artificial intelligence and machine learning, to mine their own data and find rich areas of exploration. Such fierce competition and increased use of digital innovation has pushed Beauty and Cosmetics Research and Development (R&D) teams to leverage these advanced tools to discover new and exciting consumer benefits for their products. The need for innovation has remained a hallmark of the industry for decades; the race for finding the ‘next’ level of benefits has never been hotter.
Randall S. Newton is Managing Director of Consilia Vektor, a boutique consulting firm serving the engineering software industry and related technologies. He is a Contributing Editor at Digital Engineering Magazine and AEC Magazine (UK). Mr. Newton has been in the engineering software industry since 1985 as a journalist, business analyst, publisher, programmer, and marketing consultant. His recent research explores the use of blockchain technology for industrial applications, and the rise of new design technologies for additive manufacturing.