Marketing For A Different Standard Of Beauty (Part II)
China’s cosmetic industry is currently maintaining annual sales revenue in excess of RMB 50 billion. This ranks China second place in Asia, and eighth place overall. Since 2001, the cosmetic industry has been in synch with China’s GDP figures growing at a rate of roughly 10 percent each year.
What types of cosmetics are people buying? How much are they paying for these products?
Take a look at the following chart:
Two important observations to make note of are:
1. Prices: The average Chinese college graduate working a full time white collar position may make between 3-4000RMB per month. Given housing, food and other monthly fixed expenses (not to mention many urban young professionals tend to send portions of their salary to parents living in other parts of the country), cosmetics purchases represent a significant portion of their income. Granted, not everyone is buying the 1850 RMB Dior Prestige, but even a couple bottles of 115 RMB L’Oreal Hydrafresh will take a toll on one’s budget.
2. Products: The vast majority of the products are for moisturizing and whitening purposes. The author of this article believes the prevalence of whitening products in China is because Chinese consumers want “to assert their belonging to an urban middle or upper class.†White skin is not about displaying ones level of society at this point in China’s development. As I mentioned in my last post, white skin has become a standard characteristic of the Chinese concept of beauty. White skin is an attribute that women (and many men) strive for, because that is the skin tone that is considered most attractive. This is the same reason why thousands of people in other countries are willing to spend enormous sums of money to go to tanning salons.
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