On 29th September 2018, Illuminate was invited to speak at Beautypreneur Talk event held by Credens Consulting. In this event, we presented our study on over 200 young female across Indonesia to understand their behaviour and motivations about beauty products.
The wave of Korean pop culture has definitely shaped the landscape of beauty concept in Indonesia. Our observation of beauty as pictured in TV shows, music, and movies reveals that since early 2010s, the emergence of East-Asian looking stars is very significant. In the past, the concept of beauty in Indonesia had been dominated by Eurasian looking figures - often dubbed as "Indo" which means a mixed of Indonesian-western descent.
When it comes to spending for lifestyle items, annual spending for beauty products such as skin care, make-up, and going to salon/spa ranks second after spending for eating-out. This spending outranks other lifestyle items such as technology, fashion, traveling, and health.
Indonesians tend to start using beauty products at quite a young age. Almost 50% consumers start using beauty products at the age of 16-19 years old, while 25% start using beauty products at even younger age of 12-15 years old.
When it comes to brand awareness, Indonesian consumers in average are aware of more than 15 different beauty brands. They have ever tried 7-8 different brands in the past which shows that they are willing to try many different brands to find the most suitable product for them.
The channel repertoire is also quite diverse. Indonesian beauty consumers are openly embracing e-commerce, as 60% of them are buying their beauty products in online marketplace such as Lazada, Tokopedia, Shopee, etc. Social Media such as Instagram, Facebook and Line is also an interesting channel as 24% of the consumers are buying their beauty products through this channel. This change in shopping behaviour definitely poses a big challenge for "traditional" beauty retailers such as modern market, pharmacy and department store.
Beauty influencers such as Instagram celebs and Vloggers play a unique role in influencing the consumers. 79% consumers claim that these influencers are important as a source of knowledge on beauty products, and 38% say that they tend to follow the recommendations from these influencers. From our past interviews with various beauty influencers, consumers see them as curators to help them narrow down the choice from various products available in the market. Choosing the wrong beauty product poses a risk to the consumers, therefore these influencers help them to screen out various products in a risk-free way.
Interested in our presentation? Contact us to get the slide deck.