NEW YORK—The market for ethnic-specific health and beauty care products experienced steady growth with retails sales increasing to $3 billion during the period 2005 to 2009, according to Ethnic Hair, Beauty and Cosmetics Products in the U.S., 7th Edition by market research publisher Packaged Facts.
Packaged Facts asserts there is now less advantage for ethnic health and beauty care marketers—particularly for smaller and midrange players—to restrict themselves to niche-positioning, and more advantage in the multicultural approach. “In 2010, there is a strong trend to position beauty products multi-culturally. That is, not only to the three principal minorities consisting of Hispanics, African Americans and Asians, but also to Arabs, Native Americans, South Asians and others,” said Don Montuori, publisher of Packaged Facts. “A strength of using the term ‘multicultural’ is products carrying the label can be marketed to everybody, including Caucasians.”
The ability to market multicultural health and beauty care products to Caucasians, in addition to consumers of other ethnic backgrounds, is important to marketers based in the U.S. who increasingly seek lucrative international involvements. The term “ethnic” does not have the same meaning in most of the rest of the world, where billions of people have skin tones that befit the use of ethnic products popular in America and where Whites are the minority. Even in the U.S., which is home to more than 100 million persons of color, the term is expected to become antiquated in the coming decades, as the ethnic nation expands to become the majority sometime around 2042.
Ethnic Hair, Beauty and Cosmetics Products in the U.S., 7th Edition continues the series of Packaged Facts’ reports on the retail marketplace for ethnic HBC (health and beauty care) products, as well as analysis of sales drivers. The report includes sales estimates for ethnic-specific hair relaxers, styling products, facial makeup, moisturizers, fade creams and other products. Most importantly, the report anchors ethnic HBC in the broader general-market HBC and societal contexts, as well as in the rapidly transforming retail scene.