China Beauty Market Under the New Norm

Kantar Worldpanel (a CTR service in China) released the latest Beauty Brand Footprint

 Shanghai, China (July 21^st) – Today Kantar Worldpanel (a CTR service in China) released the latest beauty market trend report. The report revealed that Covid-19 had significantly affected the personal care and beauty category landscape in the short term.  However, there are both challenges and opportunities facing the market players in the post-pandemic era. Brands need to capture the rising needs under the new norm, utilize diversified touchpoints and channels to reach and convert shoppers in order to unlock the growth.

A 2020 China Beauty Market Brand Footprint was also released by Kantar Worldpanel. It ranks the best performing beauty brands based on two metrics: the most-chosen brands by Chinese consumers and fastest-growing brands in the China market. The rankings were generated by using the CRP (Consumer Reach Point) metric which is an index that combines the number of buyers for a certain brand in one year and the number of times that the brand was chosen by these buyers. The China Beauty Market Brand Ranking tells us Chinese consumers’ real purchase choice to help brands decode brand growth in this challenging market.

1.  Most-Chosen Brands

Pechoin maintained its leadership position in the skincare market for the fourth consecutive year, and it is the only brand that was chosen more than 100 million times over the last year in China. As a local brand with a long history of promoting oriental herbal skin care, Pechoin has also continued to innovate using new technologies and ingredients and actively engaged these changes in their consumer communications. Innovative ideas for new products help drive consumer engagement and create excitement for established brands as was the case for L'Oreal Paris’s “Eye Cream for Face”. Moreover, efforts to maximize omni-channel presence and synergy has helped brands to maximize consumer reach. For example, Perfect Diary, the No.1 makeup brand in terms of consumer reach points, not only maintained its strong growth momentum online, but also increased its offline presence and successfully attracted new buyers.

Kantar Worldpanel summarized three key factors for reaching more consumers and increasing the number of times they choose a brand:

-     Effective Ingredients: Apply advanced technology and utilize trustworthy natural ingredients to enhance product efficacy

-     Product Innovation: Create innovative solutions in response to unmet consumer needs and drive trials

-     Omni-Channel Conversion: Leverage both online and offline channels to maximize touchpoints and enhance the consumer experience

2020 China Beauty Brand Footprint: Top 10 Most-Chosen Brands in Skincare and Makeup

© 2020 CTR Co.Ltd                                                       

Source: Kantar Worldpanel Beauty, 2020            

Skin Care definition: facial care and eye care, exclude hand & body, lip balm                                  Make up definition: face, eye, lip exclude lip balm, nail

2.  Disruptive Brands

Over the last year a score of emerging brands have brought new excitement to the market. Many of these fast-growing brands started with creating star products in one chosen promising segment, becoming the top-of-mind choice in that area. For example, Judydoll attracted young girls with its eye shadow, leading the trend of “playing with colours”; UNO captured male consumers’ attention through its high-quality and value-for-money facial wash and built a professional brand image in the male skincare market. Additionally, it is noteworthy that many of these rising stars were local brands fast adopting unique Chinese features in a very creative fashion. A case in point is Florasis, it launched the “Carved Lipstick” with traditional Chinese craft and used a catching melody called ‘Florasis,’ which represented the voice of oriental. Other brands are also using more creative approaches to drive more traffic: Winona invited both popular celebrities and doctors in their livestream to talk to audiences from different perspectives and Perfect Diary run its private traffic pools on WeChat to communicate with consumers directly.

In the post-Pandemic era, Kantar Worldpanel identified three key factors for brands to win in such a challenging market by looking into the practice of these disruptive brands:

-     Building expertise:  Create high-quality key products with special expertise to quickly boost reputation and sales

-     Differentiating image: Generate unique and creative ideas in product design and communication to deliver new news and a vibrant image

-     Driving Traffic: Ride on the booming trend of livestreaming and generate both public and private traffic to influence consumers.

2020 China Beauty Brand Footprint: Disruptive Growing Beauty Brands 

© 2020 CTR Co.Ltd                Source: Kantar Worldpanel Beauty, 2020

The rank is in alphabetical order