This report examines the beauty and personal care retailing market across Europe, focusing mainly on the Big 5 economies: the UK, France, Germany, Italy and Spain.

The data in its entirety is contained in the five-country report, which gives a full overview of beauty retailing in these markets. The Executive Summary – Europe – The Market section also includes market data for the rest of Europe’s leading economies and the leading retailers table is pan-European.

Single country reports are available for the UK, France, Germany, Italy and Spain.

The report combines analysis of the market, 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 the five major economies. 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.

The consumer research focuses on beauty and personal care purchases, including beauty accessories and electrical appliances.

For the purposes of this report, Mintel has used the following definitions:

Consumer spending: the total amount spent by households (including VAT) 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 of beauty and personal care products.

Our coverage of the five major markets includes proprietary Mintel consumer research. We ask what beauty and personal care products were bought, where they were bought and about some attitudes to buying such goods.

The results of our consumer surveys can be found in the relevant sections of the individual country reports as well as in Executive Summary – Europe - The Consumer and in the Databook.

The UK report also includes further consumer research.

Our Executive Summary – Europe - The Market section includes data on consumer spending on personal care goods and services in total, for 26 countries.

Consumer spending data is quoted including VAT. Data is sourced from national statistics offices and Eurostat, the European Commission’s statistics office.

Retail sales data is adapted from national statistics data for specialised retailers of “Pharmaceutical, Medical, Cosmetic & Toilet goods”. In the UK, this data excludes NHS income from dispensing prescriptions.

All retail sales data is quoted excluding VAT.

UK: Crown copyright material is reproduced with the permission of the Controller of HMSO and the Queen’s Printer for Scotland.

Financial definitions used are:

• Sales: Turnover as reported by the company, excluding VAT

• Operating profits: the return made on trading. This is the profit after depreciation, but before finance charges, tax, amortisation and any exceptional items, such as property profits or impairment charges

• Pre-tax profits: Profit after all charges, including exceptional charges but before tax

• Operating margin: operating profits as a percentage of sales

• Pre-tax margin: pre-tax profits as a percentage of sales.