Beauty brands slow to capitalise on online opportunities
Beauty brands in the UK are not capitalising on the opportunities of e-commerce and digital platforms. A new report by L2 Think Tank has shown that despite the robust growth of online retail sales in the UK market, the beauty market is still behind other sectors in retail sales and digital marketing.
According to the report, 41% of UK internet users have researched a beauty product online before buying it in store, while 57% have researched a beauty product before making their purchase through e-commerce. However despite this high percentage, online 60% of prestige beauty companies take out Google advertising against searches of their products, and only 64% have a mobile optimised UK website, compared to 75% in the US.
However, the online beauty market did grow 21% between 2012 and 2013 to £734million, according to Mintel, showing that while this market is slower it is catching up. The retail channel taking the biggest share of the market is amazon.co.uk, with 26%, followed by Boots.com with 16%. Direct sales from brands themselves account for only 10% of the market.
