How does cosmetics use differ depending on skin concerns and outlook on beauty? An examination of women’s cosmetics usage from a skin care pattern perspective

The outbreak of covid-19 has had a sizable impact on how consumers shop for cosmetics. As we have reported in “Changes in How Women Shop for Cosmetics in the Covid Crisis”, makeup cosmetics haven’t been the only category strongly impacted by restrictions on going out or life with masks – basic cosmetics have too. There have however been increases in purchase amounts on special care etc. such as serum and nutrient cream/packs among the young and seniors in particular, including a movement to engage in skincare more influenced by consumers spending more time at home exactly two years ago.

This article focuses on how women currently engage in skin care, and how basic cosmetics are being used based on the signs that they are engaging in greater care observed in our previous survey.

Basic cosmetic market trends

Let’s first examine cosmetics market trends over the past four years. On comparison of the scales of the cosmetics market over the past four years estimated using INTAGE consumer panel data SLI, the market dropped significantly to 1,221.9 billion yen (88% from the previous year) in 2020, the advent of the covid crisis, remaining steady in 2021 and 2022, still not returning to pre-covid levels (Fig. 1).

Fig. 1

Upon focusing on the basic cosmetics market by purchase amounts and purchase rates per category, while basic care items like lotion and emulsion do not return to pre-covid spending, special care items like serum and nutritional cream are virtually on par with pre covid, or have greater spends than pre covid (Fig. 2).Considering that annual purchase rates for all categories have returned to pre covid levels other than cleanser, consumers can be said tend to have shifted to spending more money on more specialized care than pre covid.

Fig. 2

Skin concerns and how they are dealt with using basic cosmetics

Now that we have identified how basic cosmetics are being purchased recently, let’s examine how basic cosmetics are being used through the results of a cosmetics usage survey conducted in August 2022 (with responses from 308 20~59y.o. women who use 4+ categories of basic cosmetics).

Firstly, in order to ascertain how basic cosmetics are being used, let’s take a look at each category for:
How many people use it = usage rate, and
The extent to which they use different items for different purposes = user rates of 2+ items
(Fig. 3). Here, “use/usage” refers to items respondents gave as “items they usually use” (items they have in on their cosmetic cabinet/cosmetics case that they consciously use).

Fig. 3

The basic care items “cleanser”, “face wash”, and “Lotion” have usage rates of over 90%, with “emulsion” rating in the 70s to 80s. “Cleanser”, “face wash”, and “lotion” had higher user rates of 2+ items the older the age. The special care items “cream” and “serum” have usage rates of around 50%, along with “starter serum” and “point serum/point cream” at around 20%, with usage rates for all of them increasing the older the age. “Point serum/point cream” in particular rated higher on user rate of 2+ items the older the age.
Due in part to the increase in skin trouble and concerns with age, women appear to place more effort into caring for their skin with age, such as using different basic care items for different purposes, or incorporating several special care items.

So, is it true that the more “skin concerns” women have, the greater their use of basic cosmetics is? We next took a look at the relationship between number of “skin concerns” and how basic cosmetics are used.

We first had respondents choose items that applied to them from 26 varieties of skin concerns, and categorized them into “degree of skin concerns” in line with the number they chose. On examination of each category’s usage rate and user rate of 2+ items, the 3 special care item categories “cream”, “serum”, and “point serum/point cream” clearly tend to rate more highly on usage rate and user rate of 2+ items the more concerns women have (Fig. 4).

Fig. 4

Conversely, “emulsion” decreases on usage rate and user rate of 2+ items the more skin concerns women have, and appears to be an item that tends to be skipped through the adoption of “cream”, “serum”, and “point serum/point cream” as care for concerns.

While special care items are used more the more skin concerns women have, what specific concerns do the women who often use them have? Diagram 5 depicts the top five highest rating skin concerns by usage rate and user rate of 2+ items for each category.

Fig. 5

Usage rates tend to be high for pinpoint, specific concerns such as “freckles”, “sagging”, “blemishes”, “fine lines/wrinkles”, and “nasolabial folds”, while on user rates of 2+ items, overall feelings one’s skin is unwell/concerns such as “cosmetics don’t go on well”, “cosmetics come off easily”, “skin reddens”, and “unbalanced skin due to seasons/stress” rate highest. While many people use special care items to alleviate concerns in a pinpoint way, it can be surmised that women who use multiple products for different purposes are highly skin care conscious and want to improve the overall condition of their skin.

Beauty outlooks and skin care patterns

We have examined the relationship between basic cosmetics usage rates, numbers of items used, and skin concerns to this point. Basic cosmetics are used of a morning and night on a daily basis. So how does the way they are used at both times differ depending on their concerns and outlooks on beauty? We examined their detailed basic cosmetics usage patterns of a morning and night to identify differences in concerns and outlooks on beauty.

Our cosmetics usage survey asked about items used, concerns etc., as well as the items respondents had actually used for 10 mornings and nights with skin care (with 231 valid respondents). After examining the survey’s responses, respondents were categorized into 3 usage patterns = skin care patterns based on how they used items of a morning and night.

On examination of the number of concerns by skin care pattern, the more attentive the care (basic → full), the greater the number of concerns tends to be (Fig. 6).

Fig. 6

Fig. 7 below thus delineates items with a sizable gap in points versus the total in terms of characteristic concerns possessed by each of the skin care patterns.

Fig. 7

While full care of a morning and night users are characterized by overall feelings one’s skin is unwell/concerns such as “Cosmetics don’t go on well”, “Lack of luster”, “Dry/chapped skin”, and “Unbalanced skin due to seasons/stress”, basic care of a morning, full care at night users are characterized by the pinpoint, specific concerns “Fine lines” and “Nasolabial folds”. Basic care of a morning and night users are characterized by sebum-related concerns such as “Blackheads in pores/Dirty keratin plugs”, “Stickiness/Oiliness”, and “Shininess”, and clearly engages in care by limiting the number of items they use rather than adding special care to resolve concerns.
The way they care for the skin differs based not only on the number of their concerns, but the type of concerns and their perceptions of them, with full care of a morning and night users in particular surmised to be highly skin care conscious and aware of their overall skin’s condition.

We conducted analysis on whether outlooks on beauty differ depending on skin care patterns, with clear differences apparent between patterns (Fig. 8).

Fig. 8

Full care of a morning and night users display a clear tendency to be highly conscious of pursuing beauty, spending time and effort on skin care, and actively incorporating new beauty-related information.
Conversely, basic care of a morning, full care at night users are highly beauty conscious, albeit not as much as full care of a morning and night users, and come across as behind the latter in terms of actively pursuing beauty, including being sizably behind them on attributes like “I exercise regularly to maintain my figure” and “I take time to take care of my skin”.
While basic care of a morning and night users are highly conscious of not wanting to spend time and effort on care, they do not differ greatly from other patterns on outlooks like “I want to resolve beauty concerns” and “Making your body beautiful from the inside is important”, so certainly do not have a low level of basic beauty consciousness.

Each pattern has a common desire to want to resolve beauty concerns and to become beautiful, differences in the hurdles to engaging in care can be said to be reflected in skin care patterns.

Insights from skin care patterns

Finally, let’s take a look at each usage pattern’s specific usage behaviors. First up is basic care of a morning, full care at night user, Respondent X.

Respondent X mainly uses Brand B, and engages in care with Brand B lotion and emulsion of a morning and night. She adds cream, serum, point serum/point cream, and masks to her care routine at night. Her daily comments indicate that while she makes do with simple care of a morning due to having work to do, she changes her care slightly at night depending on whether she is going out that day etc.

Let’s next take a look at engages in full skin care of a morning and night user Respondent Y.

Respondent Y engages in thorough care from the morning in line with her plans for the day, and uses different items for different purposes, as well as using some items twice in line with her skin’s condition that day, and the nature of the care she is engaging in at night too. She also uses a variety of brands, and clearly appears to successfully use low to high price brand items well for different purposes in line with the concerns she wants to engage in care for.
Observing consumers through these sorts of skincare diaries is thus likely to highlight surprising ways in which they are used for different purposes.

Final thoughts

This article has focused on how basic cosmetics are used. It is clear basic care items are used for different purposes, and special care items are increasingly used as skin concerns increase. In addition, while differences between skin care patterns were observed based on the extent of hurdles to engaging in care, people who make do with simple care are not necessarily less beauty conscious, and the majority wanted to alleviate their beauty concerns.

Covid-19’s classification as an infectious disease changed this May, and it is now the same as seasonal influenza. As skin concerns become more apparent due to increased opportunities to go out and meet with people unmasked, demand for basic cosmetics, and special care in particular, can be expected to grow. Understanding the emergent types of concerns and usage settings may provide chances to evoke the design to purchase/use cosmetics items. Cosmetics are products that continue to be used for some time after purchase. Identifying how products are used on a daily basis, the sorts of concerns they alleviate, and what sorts of settings they are used in may enable us to obtain hints with which to increase next product purchases, as well as attachment/loyalty to products.

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Research Outline
Research methodology: Preliminary online questionnaire and diary survey
Respondent criteria: 20~59y.o. women nationwide who are users of 4+ basic cosmetics categories
Sample size (valid responses): n=308 [preliminary questionnaire], 231 [diary survey]
Survey period : August 22 ~ 29, 2022 [preliminary questionnaire] September 5 ~ 17, 2022 [Diary survey]

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