Beauty still booming despite consumer cutbacks, social media beauty spend rises says Barclays

Social media is becoming ever more important for direct retail of beauty products, and beauty in general continues to boom with the ‘lipstick effect’ still key, a new Barclays Consumer Spend report has shown.

And its data shows that health & beauty “has consistently outperformed broader non-essential spending since the start of 2023”.

In fact, “health & beauty has been the highest-performing category in an otherwise challenging retail sector since August 2023,” Barclays said. 

This August, consumer spending on health & beauty was up 7.3% year-on-year – the highest level since January 2023 (10.2%), compared to retail as a whole, which was up 0.1%, and non-essential spending, which was up 0.7% overall.

That’s good news for the beauty industry. But the bad news for the fashion sector is that “in a bid to prioritise spending more on health & beauty, 23% say they have been cutting back on clothing and accessories purchases, which is supported by Barclays transaction data showing clothing was down 1.7% last month”.

It added that a potential reason for health & beauty outperforming broader non-essential spending is that, “while these purchases are technically regarded as non-essential, recent Barclays Consumer Spend research data shows that nearly half (46%) of consumers say they consider them as “essential” – a category which typically includes priority purchases such as groceries and childcare”.

The most resilient products over the past three years – those where consumers say they’ve either increased or not changed their spending – include haircare (66%), bodycare (62%) and fragrances (54%).

As for social media beauty spend, Barclays said that demand for fragrance dupes via social channels remains strong as Britons look to save money without compromising on quality.

Also, alternative “high-quality, affordable beauty products” are on the rise as Beauty Pie memberships continue to grow even through rising living costs.

As mentioned, dupes are proving popular with 32% of consumers saying that they’re buying them due to the rising cost of living. Fragrances have emerged as the most sought-after health & beauty dupes, with 28% of dupe-buyers admitting to spending on imitation scents. Make-up and beauty products are also popular with 24% and 21% of shoppers opting for these. But 18% still prefer to spend money on the original product rather than a dupe.

Barclays said that the number of shoppers buying fragrances on social media overall has grown from 12% to 17% – the largest increase of any health and beauty product. Similarly, there’s also a growing demand for beauty and skincare products (24% to 27%), and haircare (14% to 16%).

Meanwhile, since January alone, the number of consumers watching de-influencing videos to find out which products aren’t worth buying has climbed sharply (from 11% to 17%).

And 22% say they discover new beauty trends via social media, so it’s no surprise that beauty and skincare are among the most popular products, with 27% saying they’ve bought these products on social media.

But a plus for physical stores is that in-store spending remains a vital part of the shopping experience. Some 56% of shoppers, say they prefer to buy health & beauty products that they’ve never used before in-store. Consumers are however more comfortable making repeat purchases online (24%), than they are first-time purchases (18%).