1. What are the most popular personal care ingredients in Southeast Asia?
Emollients, surfactants, and conditioning polymers are the most popular ingredients in Southeast Asia.
Among emollients, popular ingredients include natural oils such as shea butter, jojoba oil, and humectants such as glycerine. Among surfactants, betaines have been quite popular.
2. Why are these selected for formulations for product launches?
There is a gradual shift towards natural ingredients in the region as such ingredients have become quite popular in personal care formulations.
Further, price and consumer perception play an important role in the selection of ingredients in Southeast Asia too.
Betaines, shea butter, and jojoba oil have good consumer perception and are competitively priced and as a result, their usage in this market is relatively higher.
3. How do these personal care ingredient choices in Southeast Asia differ from those in the rest of APAC? What is unique about them?
There are some similarities and some differences between Southeast Asia and other markets in the APAC region.
Firstly, glycerine is quite popular in the APAC region as it can be used in a wide variety of skin care applications.
However, for other emollients, there are some differences. For example, in India, almond oil and castor oil are quite popular whereas, in China, popular products include; classic emollients such as isoctyl palmitate and caprylic triglyceride. This is mainly due to local factors that affect the usage of different ingredients.
In China, multinational suppliers, who are importing these ingredients into the country, dominate the market for jojoba oil and shea butter.
As a result, these ingredients are expensive compared to other ingredients leading to lower usage in China. However, it should be noted that both shea butter and jojoba oil are of increasing importance in China.
The second part of this Q&A article will be published on Monday 13th November 2017.