What you need to know
Consumer spending on personal care goods and services in Italy continued to underperform overall household spending in Italy in 2018, growing just 0.9% compared to 1.9% for overall private consumption in the country. Mintel estimates that consumption of beauty and personal care (BPC) products was virtually flat in 2019, barely rising 0.5% to €26.4 billion.
Meanwhile, retail sales through Health & Beauty (H&B) specialists are estimated to have increased just 0.4% to €29.4 billion in 2019, even though retail sales of cosmetics and perfumery continued to grow at a healthy pace, rising 2.9% compared to 2018.
In our consumer research carried out for last year’s report, we saw that Italian consumers are sensitive to price and we believe this continues to be a driver in the country. However, we have seen demand for more sustainable products and packaging coming more to the fore in 2019. We expect these issues to influence how the market develops throughout the course of 2020.
Areas covered in this report
This report examines the beauty and personal care retailing market in Italy. The report combines analysis of the market in Italy, including market sizes and forecasts for consumer spending on beauty and personal care and beauty retailers’ sales, along with our in-depth consumer data which analyses shoppers’ behaviours in Italy. It covers:
Beauty – including makeup and colour cosmetics, nail care, fragrances and skincare
Personal care – including haircare, body care, hair removal and everyday toiletries such as oral hygiene, bathing and deodorants
BPC accessories and electricals – including hair and make-up brushes, hair styling tools, beauty and dental tools.
For our consumer research this year we asked questions about the following topics:
Beauty and personal care products purchased in the last year
Participation in online and in-store shopping for beauty and personal care products in the last year
Which retailers have been used for beauty and personal care shopping in the last year
Agreement with a range of statements relating to shopping for beauty and personal care products.
For the purpose of this report, Mintel has used the following definitions:
Consumer spending: The total amount spent by Italian households (including sales tax) on beauty and personal care goods and services.
Retail sales: total sales of all types of goods and services (excluding VAT) via stores and directly to the consumer in beauty retailers, drugstores and perfumeries. It excludes sales of pharmaceuticals and sales of beauty goods through other types of retailer. It includes online sales of these retailers where the majority of sales are in bricks and mortar outlets.
Beauty specialists, drugstores and perfumeries: this includes chains and independents for which the largest part of sales are in beauty and personal care products.
