Internal competition, uncertainty, and ever-changing trends… This is a true portrayal of the beauty industry’s development in the past two years. New technologies, new products, and new sectors emerge endlessly, with numerous domestic brands rising unexpectedly, while many others fail to withstand the storm.
The rapidly changing market also means that companies must always grasp the trends of consumer behavior. So, in the current market environment, how can beauty companies break the market cycle and create one product miracle after another?
Consumers are the one who decide what beauty market need
Philip Kotler, often referred to as the “father of modern marketing,” once believed that before deciding on any of the “4 Ps” (Product, Price, Place, Promotion), all excellent marketing plans must begin with an “R” (Research), which refers to research and insights.
When it comes to the beauty industry, consumer demands are equally at the core of marketing and sometimes play a decisive role in shaping the beauty market. What kind of beauty products are needed in the market is ultimately determined by the consumers.
To give a simple example, in recent years in the beauty industry, the “ingredient enthusiasts” and the “efficacy enthusiasts” undoubtedly represent a highly influential group of consumers. The openness and transparency of social media have helped them rise rapidly and popularized concepts such as “customized skincare,” “ingredients,” and “efficacy,” which have deeply resonated with people. This has also led to the industry-wide trend of “skincare without efficacy is no skincare.” This trend is a reflection of consumer-driven market demand.
At the same time, it also means that for brands and manufacturers, before conducting product development, they must have deep consumer insights. The product development process should revolve around the “user-centric” approach, creating products that genuinely meet user needs.
So, how can the research and development side quickly identify the current cutting-edge gaps in consumer demand? In addition to user surveys, the vast amount of dynamic data available on online platforms, especially social media platforms, undoubtedly serve as a natural research database for brands and manufacturers. These platforms also provide an essential window for dialogue between them and consumers.
For example, when CHAILEEDO, using the research tools of the Jiuqian Mid-platform, searches for “sensitive skin,” it is evident that apart from the target audience, product efficacy, user experience, formulation, and texture, which have always been areas of consumer focus, there is also a demand gap for advanced functions such as anti-aging, skin whitening, and oil control for sensitive skin.
Furthermore, CHAILEEDO has also noticed that the immediate effects of product usage have become a focal point for individuals with sensitive skin when using skincare products. This provides a new breakthrough point for product development and brand marketing.
In fact, the initial group of “efficacy enthusiasts” and “ingredient enthusiasts” largely emerged from Key Opinion Leaders (KOLs) and Key Opinion Consumers (KOCs) on social media platforms. While sharing their skincare and beauty experiences, they gradually disseminated the concepts of ingredients and formulations to the broader consumer base. In turn, these consumers also provide feedback on their usage experiences to the KOLs. The opinions and feedback expressed by many consumers, often unintentionally, may become the next trend in brand marketing.
In essence, as the market environment becomes more competitive and consumer demands become more diverse, it is crucial to learn how to engage in dialogue with consumers and identify new opportunities from the perspective of consumer needs.
From Element Analysis to Future Prediction
Of course, consumer demands are merely an accelerator for the development trends in the beauty market. The gradual transformation of diverse individual demands into large-scale market demands requires a lengthy process. Companies need to seize opportunities, anticipate trends, and enter the market in advance.
Firstly, in order for companies to surpass their peers in market trend analysis, they need to make accurate analyses and judgments of the current market from a macro perspective. For example, what new technologies are emerging in raw materials? What new skincare formulas are being introduced on social media platforms? What are the latest trends in makeup colors? What are the characteristics of anti-aging products that consumers recognize?
The essence of these questions lies in grasping consumer needs in specific scenarios and addressing their pain points in order to incubate products that cater to their specific demands.
Taking the emerging cosmetics of post-medical aesthetic repair as an example, when CHAILEEDO uses the research tools of the Jiuqian Mid-platform to search for “medical aesthetic repair,” it is discovered that in addition to basic needs such as soothing, moisturizing, and brightening the skin, there is also a growing demand for anti-aging, whitening, oil control, and acne treatment.
In addition, by tracing the origin of original posts through the Jiuqian Mid-platform, CHAILEEDO also discovers that consumers not only expect to improve their skin condition through medical aesthetic methods but also desire products that can provide soothing effects and continue to deliver anti-aging, whitening, and other benefits during the recovery period that requires special care after the procedure.
Furthermore, insight into competitor information is also crucial. For example, in which areas of fundamental research are leading companies investing? What new effective products have emerged in the anti-aging track? What are the differences between emerging brands and market feedback? These are the pieces of information that observers need to grasp.
Using the benchmarking function of the Jiuqian Mid-platform, CHAILEEDO has examined the competitive situation of a domestic brand and a foreign brand. The analysis results show that the domestic brand has a clear advantage in terms of price and product promotions, and its social media evaluations of packaging design are superior to those of the foreign brand. However, it slightly falls behind in terms of efficacy and user experience. Additionally, by re-analyzing the comments under the original posts through the Jiuqian Mid-platform, CHAILEEDO has also discovered some different feedback, such as slight negative evaluations of the domestic brand’s service attitude and return and exchange policies.
It is worth mentioning that not only overall brand feedback, but also the performance of various popular flagship products, is a key factor in determining brand reputation. This is also a critical aspect of competitor insight. According to data from the Jiuqian Mid-platform, the three highest cumulative sales products from January to November 2023 are the Refa Collagen Stick Essence, Pola Red B.A Cream, and Estée Lauder Advanced Night Repair. What makes them unique? What are the reasons for their success? Insights can be gleaned from market feedback.
Taking the Kefumei Collagen Stick Essence as an example, CHAILEEDO discovered through the Jiuqian Mid-platform that its most important reasons for consumer recognition are immediate effects and skin feel. By retracing user comments, CHAILEEDO found that consumers’ recognition of skin feel stems primarily from the product’s non-greasy and fast-absorbing nature, in addition to its moisturizing properties.
Both Proya and Estée Lauder’s flagship products have the commonality of accurately targeting the most popular anti-aging sector at present, supplemented by excellent formulations and marketing. This naturally places them among the top-selling products.
In fact, such best-selling rankings in the current market are not uncommon. However, these rankings often merely scratch the surface, and observers only know what is selling well without understanding why. But in reality, this is the most important aspect for brands, and the Jiuqian Mid-platform undoubtedly becomes an important tool for understanding the “why.”
For companies, the significance of conducting these market insights is to maintain market sensitivity at all times, reduce trial and error costs, and enable them to adapt quickly in a rapidly changing market. Only then can they achieve long-term success in the market.
Find a Truly Intelligent Solution
When companies truly recognize the importance of user and market insights for brand development and product launches, another challenge looms before them: manual information gathering is often time-consuming and prone to omissions. Even after collecting the information, it requires effort to distinguish between junk and useful information. The time-consuming and labor-intensive process renders social media analysis reports, which are purchased at a high price, ineffective in responding to ever-changing consumer trends. A highly functional intelligent analysis tool is in high demand.
However, from the current perspective, the existing tools in the market more or less have some issues. Either the data sources are insufficiently covered, or they can only provide shallow data by matching related keywords. Deep mining and dynamic analysis still require companies to perform on their own, lacking the ability for direct intelligent judgment.
Furthermore, many existing tools struggle to differentiate between marketing propaganda and authentic consumer feedback, often leading to misinterpretation of consumer sentiment and actual responses, thereby impacting the company’s final decision-making.
Nevertheless, as mentioned earlier, platforms like Jiuqian Mid-platform have already made technological breakthroughs in this area. On one hand, the Jiuqian Mid-platform’s search function can almost cover mainstream social media platforms and e-commerce platforms. It utilizes a powerful analysis system to comprehensively read social media information and articles, understand the context, and extract key points and emotions. On the other hand, it can conduct multi-brand benchmarking, aggregate viewpoints, and trace original posts based on the personalized needs of brands.
In simple terms, with this tool, companies can optimize various aspects of their online discussions, including product benchmarking audience, efficacy positioning, product packaging, and marketing techniques. They can also analyze and extract information related to popular skincare formulas, effective ingredients, and cutting-edge technologies, allowing them to find relevant data feedback and identify breakthrough points in a timely manner.
Meanwhile, through comparative analysis of competitor information, companies can intuitively understand the strengths and weaknesses of their brand compared to others, enabling targeted adjustments in product development, packaging, marketing focus, and other aspects.
When a beauty company can grasp in real-time the emotional trends of consumers towards all products, formulations, and efficacy in the market, it indicates that they have already won the first step. And when they can be the first to spot market trends, accurately identify consumer pain points and demand gaps, they have won the second step in market competition. Under this premise, by continuously improving research and development capabilities and building strong product competitiveness, they can establish a solid foothold in the ever-changing beauty market.
