Personal care: Drivers behind the sector's future success
Push for round-the-clock protection
As personal care chemicals continue to appear frequently in cosmetic products, cosmetic pigments and personal care ingredients, the report highlighted how increasingly these care chemicals are being applied to skin care, hair care and hygiene both at home and in the workplace, to keep up with the evolving marketplace.
Products that provide consumers with both physical protection from ongoing concerns such as pollution and the sun continue, along with the desire for personal care goods that offer functional benefits.
Antimicrobials, conditioning polymers, emollients, hair fixative/styling polymers, rheology control agents, skin lightening/whitening actives, surfactants, and UV absorbers — which serve to provide both physical and functional advantages — are featuring more and more as components in new product developments.
Expanding the beauty regime
Personal hygiene both at home and at work follows the 24-hour beauty trend, which sees consumers looking for care properties that support their routine throughout the day regardless of time or activity. As a result, sales of items that fall within the bath and shower ranges, along with hair care are rising.
There are four key drivers within the personal care industry that are leading the way when it comes to R&D initiatives, formulation understanding and exploration, and product line expansion: booming outdoor activity, changing lifestyle, skin health awareness and an ageing population.
In the upcoming forecast period to 2021, the research indicates that these will continue to dominate new concept ideas and product launches.
As businesses in this sector are centring their efforts on building organic growth strategies, the personal care industry can expect to see new launches and developments that help brands move into these growing segments.
Active ingredients create multi benefits
Active ingredients are also expected to be on the up, with brands striving to create personal care goods that contain multifunctional benefits.
Blemish Balm cream, for example, markets itself as a multifunctional product by claiming to help treat specific worries such as anti-ageing, skin brightening, and sun protection from UVA and UVB rays.
Anti-ageing agents, exfoliators, conditioning agents and UV agents are some of the most prevalent on the market and are commonly used in various facial and body creams, lotions, masks, shampoos, dyes and other formulations to boost marketing and sales efforts.
Alongside this growing demand for optimised functionality within single products, is the urge for sustainability in formulations and the decreased presence of compounds to maximise safety.
Clear communication via product claims must also prioritise transparency to build consumer trust and loyalty.
This request for products to address two or more cosmetics concerns is highly competitive as brands want to answer consumers’ requests with the most innovative and efficient lines.
