China is the world's second largest beauty retail market. According to a report released by iResearch Consulting, the value of China's beauty retail market in 2015 and 2020 was RMB 411 billion and RMB 862 billion, respectively, with a five-year compound annual growth rate of 16%, and is expected to grow to RMB 1.6 trillion in 2025, with a five-year compound annual growth rate of 13.4%.

As the industry develops, online channels have become the main battlefield for brands and offline stores are being rapidly upgraded. The importance of a brand's reputation continues to be important for users. Under the circumstances, how to accurately gain insights into user needs for top-tier brands, new prominent brands, e-commerce platforms, and marketing platforms has become a challenge that cannot be ignored.

Meitu Aesthetics Beauty Researcher List recently released its 2021 Meitu Aesthetics User Value Report, which gave precise insights into user needs for beauty from the aspects of cosmetics products and brand marketing as well as consumer-created value and industry trends, as part of its effort in continuously empowering the industry.

Continuously generating professional content and deeply reaching the beauty and cosmetic market

With the rise of the beauty economy, the beauty and skin care market has attracted a lot of attention from consumers. However, there are still challenges for consumers in how to judge the efficacy of ingredients and how to find the most suitable products among so many options. To this end, Meitu's Meitu Aesthetics Beauty Researcher List has built a real cosmetics public test platform based on the authentic evaluation of consumers, providing users with decision-making reference tools for aesthetic consumption.

The data for the platform comes from the user experience accumulated by Meitu over the past ten years, the trial experience of beauty researchers, the professional evaluation of industry experts and institutions, and the real consumption data of tens of thousands of offline beauty collection stores. The beauty researcher is mainly composed of Meitu community influencers and over 30,000 offline beauty shop staff, who will generate professional evaluation content for the platform.

According to the platform's data, there have already been over 2 million products nominated for listing, and the number of product evaluations and trial notes have exceeded 150,000.

Since the evaluation and experience of the Meitu Aesthetic Beauty Research List are based on real user experiences, user trust in it is as high as 90%. Based on the in-depth insights into users who love beauty, the "2021 Meitu Aesthetics User Value Report" also truly reflects real user's beauty preferences.

Female users account for 79% of the Meitu Aesthetics platform users

According to the "2021 Meitu Aesthetics User Value Report", female users accounted for 79% of the users on Meitu Aesthetic, and 70% of users are aged 18-34. Over 80% of the user group have high-frequency skincare habits, with basic skincare products such as toner and lotion being the most commonly used, while 90% of users have a habit of putting on makeup products, of which foundation and lipstick are their must-haves.

90% of users have a habit of putting on makeup products

The report shows that nowadays many users are making themselves beautiful to please themselves rather than others. Among the reasons users buy cosmetics, 60% reported it was to reward themselves; nearly 40% of users spend more than RMB 1,000 a month on beauty products, and 70% of users surveyed chose the "Double Eleven Shopping Festival" as the most important holiday in the second half of the year.

When purchasing beauty products, users value the product's effect the most, followed by word-of-mouth reputation. In terms of brands, domestic beauty brands are gaining more and more favor, with 85% of consumers having confidence in domestic brands.

With the upgrade of the beauty economy and consumption, the ways for users to explore beauty have become more diversified. The report shows that more than 70% of users like buying new products and have a high acceptability rate in regards to beauty consumption. 60% of users have experienced some sort of medical beauty services, and more than half of users are likely to share their experience of using beauty products on social media platforms.

Empowering brand marketing and fully releasing aesthetic energy through public evaluation

With the intelligent upgrading of the industry, intensive technological innovation continues to empower the beauty industry, while expanding online sales and creating customized services have gradually become the trend of new cosmetics retail development. By focusing on the needs of users to become beautiful, Meitu is integrating and empowering the industry chain, trying to provide smart beauty industry solutions and expanding its beauty industry layout on the basis of providing beauty-related services to users.

By co-creating content, Meitu will continue to help users make purchasing decisions that match their individual needs. With the collective efforts of users who love beauty, the Meitu Aesthetics Beauty Research List will continue to empower beauty brands' marketing efforts.

Specifically, it will help beauty brands to polish their marketing key points including user experience, product reputation, and interaction. For user experience: Conduct public evaluations regarding new prominent makeup brands and provide authentic and reliable reviews for users. For product reputation: The platform will select products to be listed based on products with a good reputation and customer trust. 

For interaction: The platform will cooperate with brands to launch offline activities to improve user engagement.

Profoundly polishing key marketing points for brands

In addition, the Meitu Aesthetic Beauty Research List continues to empower beauty brands from the four life cycles, namely foundation, growth, promotion, and peak periods.

In the foundation period, the platform helps brands acquire the first batch of potential users by collecting a large number of product trial reviews. In the growth period, the platform helps brands reach users through sending samples, which can quickly impress users and introduce them to the brand's new products. In the promotion period, the platform provides customized user interaction activities to improve e-commerce conversions. In the peak period, it helps brands launch ads on the key advertising spaces of Meitu's apps. For example, in March this year, Dior Forever 24H Wear High Perfection Foundation was launched. The brand first cooperated with Meitu's "benefits for fans" activity, attracting users to the new product by launching advertising on the key advertising spaces of Meitu's apps and sending samples to users.

Based on its good marketing reputation, the platform has reached cooperation agreements with many brands, such as Armani, Dior, and Lancome, and will continue to help more emerging brands increase their fame and make first-line brands stand out even more.

Meitu will also continue to empower beauty brand's marketing efforts and release the aesthetic power from the public through Meitu Aesthetics Beauty Researcher List and other Meitu channels, hoping to assist in the digitalization of the beauty industry and provide high-quality imaging products and beauty management services for users.