Personalisation is revolutionising the beauty and cosmetics industry, and the way the beauty industry operates. Beauty personalisation can mean anything from the use of data-driven product recommendations to drive customer sales to the creation of personalised beauty experiences but also to in the manufacturing process: improving speed of product development and offering products that are fully catered.
There are two main forms of beauty personalisation that can be experienced as part of growing trends. Firstly, soft personalisation, which can mean anything from the creation of home-made beauty products to do-it-yourself cosmetics, where products are often created based on the consumer’s self-reflection and expression of their own desires. This can also be considered a more sustainable way of practising beauty. Secondly, there is a more advanced form of beauty personalisation, which uses data and science, thus creating perfectly tailored high-performance beauty products based on beauty personalisation technology and with an eye to creating in-depth recommendations based on the world
And these follow five ways of defining personalised beauty:
1) Bespoke personalisation harkening back to an older, gentler time, but also well and truly a mark of a world where, if you can have everything, why not have something perfect? While not financially viable for everyone, this essentially means the creation of a bespoke formula or fragrance blend based on data collected from an individual customer. Tailored haute couture but for your beauty regime. This is usually produced in a dedicated lab, but there are certain shops where your product can be created on the spot or even through a dedicated machine.
2) Customisation which allows customers to play with existing beauty products, but to alter them, or pick what aspects of the product they want based on their own needs. This could include picking a larger or smaller selection from a number of existing products, having double the amount of, for example, the eyeshadow that the customer uses everyday or, of course, creating a color palette that would not have been designed with the same selection of colours, picking a scent or engraving a bottle with your name (because, starting from the age of about 3, there does seem to be an obsession with emblazoning your name on every item you own - some people, naturally, never grow out of this and fair play to them)
3) DIY/Home made where consumers create their own beauty and skincare products. This can be as simple as mixing together a face mask from avocado, honey and coffee beans (and other items easily bought in your local supermarket) or it might be as complicated as mixing together different coloured powders to create a shade that they like and compressing their blush themselves. There is a growing industry for this and it’s often considered by some as a more eco-friendly and less risky (fewer chemicals) way of consuming beauty products.
4) Personalisation based on individualised product recommendations where beauty personalisation technology is utilised. This can range from the use of data trees to the creation of beauty personalisation programmes utilising machine learning and artificial intelligence. This is combined with human knowledge to help the customer access the very large amount of products already on offer, which can moderately negate the positives of bespoke personalisation and customisation as the consumer can see that everything they actually want is already out there, somewhere. Beauty personalisation allows them to find it and do so quickly and with a user friendly experience.
5) Tailored check-out experience which is offered at the point of sale, often in-store, in beauty salons and online, based on what the customer has already expressed an interest in. This is the online equivalent of in-store gift-wrapping your purchase and adding a couple of samples that, the shop assistant swears, you’ll probably also like.
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