2023 Beauty Brand Footprint

Kantar Worldpanel released the latest trend report of beauty market. The report focuses on the early sign of recovery in the beauty market after the COVID-impacted 3-year long slowdown, and name Local Beauty Rising as one of the drivers.

It looks into the evolution of Guochao trend, reflecting Chinese brands’ effort to expand their presence in the market previously dominated by foreign mega-brands.

It looks into:

1) What are key consumer trends driving the beauty market recovery,

2) How Chinese brands are quickly adapting to these trends and gaining influence in the market,

3) What are the implication of Local Beauty Rising to foreign and/or more premium brands.

China Beauty Brand Footprint was also published by Kantar Worldpanel, ranking the best performing beauty brands in two dimensions: Most-Chosen Brands in growth and Fastest-Growing Brands. The rankings were generated by using the CRP metrics (Consumer Reach Point), which is a consumer index that combines the number of buyers each brand obtained in one year with the average number of times that the brand was purchased by each buyer.

China Beauty Market Brand Ranking presented a clear picture of consumers' actual choice, and helped brands decode potential growth opportunities in this challenging market.

1.  Most-Chosen Brands

Kantar Worldpanel selected the most-chosen brands based on the size in CRP. Dominance of many Chinese, and more affordable brands continued in the Skincare market, and more of them entered the Top 10 list in the Makeup market, otherwise driven by international mega-brands.

In Skincare, consumers' demand for high-efficacy products remained resilient even during the overall market slowdown last year; cream products such as Proya’s Red Ruby leveraged “Essence-added” communication and expanded its brand competitiveness initially driven through Serum. 

In Makeup, makeup specialized brands drove expansion of Blusher, Contour, and Setting Spray to better address increasingly more sophisticated consumer demand.

China beauty market’s most-chosen brands' competitiveness further enhanced as:

1) Brand and product accessibility improved through omni-channel activations, 

2) Target-specific new product launches continued to further upgrade brand image and consumer advocacy,

3) Portfolio drive with Core segments in Skincare and Plus segments in Makeup.

2.  Fastest-Growing Brands

Despite of the overall market slowdown in 2022, there were still many brands bringing new momentum to beauty market.

Local Beauty Rising trend was particularly clear as 8 and 9 out of 10 fastest-growing brands in skincare and makeup, respectively, were Chinese brands. 

Their success was foremost driven by innovation of new consumer needs and formats; 

Winona continued to expand on its equity as a Sensitivity Skincare leader, HBN and Quadha drove new serum format and ingredient innovations, and Proya cascaded its success in serum to cream launches.

Makeup competition became more about small wins; consumers use different makeup steps not only to create a more “perfect” look but as a way to express themselves and get immersed in the ritual in itself as well. 

While need for segments like Makeup Base, Liquid Foundation, and Lipstick, remained big, fastest growing brands devoted to building strong and fashionable brand personality by designing creative makeup look.

Timage with contour and porcelain skin effect in face makeup, Into You with 6V lip makeup, and Florette with easy applicator activation in eye makeup. 

Recovering beauty market brings new development opportunities to both existing/ dominant brands and new/ niche brands of all nationalities.

Kantar Worldpanel identifies the following three factors to best capture these opportunities to achieve vibrant growth, Kantar Worldpanel identified three key factors:

• Expertise building anchored on a leading product in the chosen field

• Right content and product tailored to a clearly-defined target consumer group

Memorable and trend-leading image to resonate the evolving consumer needs