Report shows attitudes trending towards eco-friendly beauty products

PORT WASHINGTON, N.Y. Retailers looking to bolster sales in the beauty aisle are wise to stock their shelves with eco-beauty products, suggests a new report by The NPD Group.

According to the report, titled “Natural-Organic Trends in Beauty 2008,” the market research company found that at least 2-out-of-3 beauty product users are interested in some form of eco-beauty products. Eco-beauty products can be defined as either being natural, organic, green/eco-friendly or socially conscious/responsible beauty products.

“Whether the consumer demand is driven by the desire to save the planet, concerns about product safety or potential health risks, or just being on ‘on-trend,’ being part of the current environmental movement makes good business sense,” said Karen Grant, vice president and senior global beauty industry analyst.

Natural beauty products are the most developed of these categories with about two-thirds of women who use beauty saying they have used natural beauty products. That is at least twice as many women who said they have used organic (32 percent) or green/eco-friendly (26 percent) products.

Socially conscious/responsible beauty products are second in popularity in terms of usage, with nearly 4-out-of-10 women stating they have used these products.

While green/eco-friendly beauty products have been used by the least number of beauty product users, they did rank second in interest among beauty mavens. Based on this finding, green/eco-friendly have the greatest opportunity to expand from interest to usage, as does organic, according to NPD.