Spending on health and beauty like makeup and fragrance is soaring despite tightening budgets across the UK, suggest new figures.
While rising living costs have seen consumers cutting back and retail sales as a whole up 0.1% year-on-year in August, spending on health and beauty was up 7.3% – significantly higher than non-essential spending overall, which was up 0.7%, according to Barclays.
While a quarter of shoppers (23%) have reined in spending on clothes and accessories, with Barclays noting a downturn of 1.7% last month, 46% of consumers now view their health and beauty haul as “essential”, putting it on par with necessities like groceries and childcare.
The most resilient products over the past three years – those where consumers say they have either increased or not changed their spending – are pharmaceuticals (68%), hair care (66%), body care (62%) and fragrances (54%). Analysis reveals that people aged between 18 and 27 are leading this trend, ramping up their spend on such products by 17.5% over the previous year – more than twice the increase recorded among those aged 44 to 59 (6.5%) and triple the increment of those between 60 and 78-years-old (4.7%).
Budget constraints are driving almost a third of buyers (32%) to buy “dupes” – affordable copies of more expensive products. Fragrances are the top health and beauty knock-off, with 28% of those who purchase cheaper versions confessing to splurging on imitation scents. Since January alone, the number of consumers viewing “de-influencing” videos to discover which products aren’t worth the investment has risen from 11% to 17%.
Karen Johnson, Barclays’ Head of Retail, commented: “Despite rising living costs and subdued growth across the rest of the retail sector, the UK’s beauty spending highlights a growing emphasis on self-care. It’s encouraging to see that overall beauty spending has been in growth year-on-year, with August showing the highest level of growth in the past 18 months.
“Our data shows that social media has proven to play a key role in influencing online purchases, a further demonstration of the rising commercial importance of these platforms.”
Opinium conducted a survey of 2,000 UK adults between July 9-12 and again between August 6-9.
