Face Value
Relevance Over Routine: Why a Consumer-First Strategy Wins in the Beauty Moments that Matter
The rise of Beauty Spaces and the fall of rigid routines
Hybrid products for hybrid lives
Retail realities
Prestige under pressure — smart value beats status
Winners in the race for relevance
Function over form
Food for thought
Beauty routines are losing their shape. The once-reliable sequences of morning moisturising, evening masks and weekend glamour routines are giving way to something more fragmented. Consumers still care, and they still spend, but they are using different products, taking fewer steps and expecting more versatility. They are building beauty into their lives as needed, not as prescribed.
More broadly, the beauty sector — at least at first glance — looks healthy. Other than China, spend is rising across key markets: Brazil is up 16.8%, India 12.7, France 8.9, Britain 7.7. But much of that growth is price-led. Volume is flat in many places, and in Europe, personal care usage is falling. In Brazil, shoppers are buying, but not using more. The product mix is shifting too — away from full regimens and towards formats that work on the go, in between, or on their own.
China is a more serious signal. Once a beauty product growth engine, it’s now in decline, with spend down 4% and volume down 1% year on year. Local, lower-cost brands are gaining ground fast as consumers prioritise utility and price over prestige and routine.
As macroeconomic headwinds build, brands face both a slowdown in global growth forecasts and pressure to prove their value. The United States government’s sweeping tariffs on imported beauty products are expected to disrupt global supply chains, raise consumer prices, and challenge long-standing brand loyalties. France, South Korea and Germany — which together account for nearly a third of global beauty exports — now face intensifying pressure to defend both market share and margin. The effects will be felt well beyond these markets.
In Europe and Latin America, growth in personal care and beauty is being driven largely by price increases. Elsewhere, inflation also plays a role, but the shift is more behavioural, with consumers increasingly turning to mass-market brands and value-led alternatives.
Clear shifts in behaviour are emerging. People are moving away from fixed beauty rituals — the morning routine, the evening regimen, the predictable, category-led purchase. These traditional anchors are becoming less relevant. In their place, we’re seeing more situational usage moments shaped by context and purpose, not by schedule. Moments like “Refresh Reset,” “Work Mode,” “Evening Exhale,” and “Sweat & Reset” reflect how beauty is actually used throughout the day. We call these real-world occasions Beauty Spaces.
This behavioural shift is matched by changing brand dynamics. Across all markets we reviewed, from Brazil to France, more than half of consumers say they won’t return to the same brand next year. Familiar signals like prestige, provenance, or category no longer carry the same weight. What matters now is whether the product fits the moment and delivers a result that feels worthwhile. Consistency is becoming less about habit and more about relevance.
The bellwether of beauty, face care, is perhaps the clearest early casualty. Spending is down 2.8 % (2023 vs 2024) across the markets we analysed, a sign that even staple categories are vulnerable if they no longer fit how people actually live.
To compete in this climate, we identified evidence that brands need to focus less on category logic and more on purchase occasion. What is the consumer trying to achieve? Where in their day or week does that need show up? And what does the product help them do, feel or become?
That’s where this report begins. It sets out to make sense of that shift in when, why and how people are using products. We call those usage moments “Beauty Spaces”.
And we know the concept works. This shift toward context-led behaviour is well established in other categories. In food and drink, our Appetite for Growth report has mapped how consumption is shaped by what people need in specific situations — whether that’s energy, comfort, convenience or pleasure. These "Demand Moments" provide a framework for understanding why products are chosen and how they fit into everyday life.
The same principle applies in beauty. Beauty Spaces operate as the beauty product usage equivalent, helping brands connect product choices to the real-life conditions that drive them. Understanding them is the key to staying relevant as habits change, routines break down, and growth moves from category to context.
What are Beauty Spaces?
Beauty Spaces are the real moments in people’s lives when beauty products are used, not when they’re bought, or talked about, or planned, but when they’re actually part of someone’s day.
Examples of a Beauty Space:
Getting ready for a meeting (Work Mode)
Resetting after a run (Sweat & Reset)
Unwinding before bed (Evening Exhale)
Meeting friends for brunch (Brunch Beauty)
These moments are identified by tracking how products are actually used. They combine time of day, life context, and intent to give a more accurate view of the role beauty plays.
We’ve mapped when and why people use beauty and personal care products — across weekdays, weekends and different times of day — to create nine distinct Beauty Spaces that show the specific occasions each category fits.
Beauty Spaces help us see behaviour more clearly. They show that skincare, haircare, makeup, and fragrance don’t exist in isolation. They show how people combine them to feel refreshed, ready, calm, and confident.
For brands and retailers, this creates a map based on meaning, not category. A map built around the consumer’s daily rhythm, and where products can meet them.
