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Big Data Plays Critical Role In Personalizing Beauty Industry

Big Data Plays Critical Role In Personalizing Beauty Industry

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Beauty at any age is in the eye of the beholder. Nevertheless, youth and beauty top the global wish list of timeless qualities.

Therefore, it is not surprising that the global beauty industry is a thriving$532 billion business today. Moreover, the U.S. is the world’s biggest market for beauty products, with about 20% market share; China comes second with 13%, and Japan third with 8%. It is, therefore, quite probable that the beauty industry will exceed $800 billion by 2025, as projected.

Then again, the beauty industry, as every other industry, is challenged by the unique perspective of Millennials, and more so, of Gen Zers, who primarily define themselves as being individualistic, and not stereotypical. In defense of this perspective, popular actress Emma Watson, said, “There’s nothing interesting about looking perfect – you lose the point. You want what you’re wearing to say something about you, about who you are.”

This has led the beauty industry to refresh its own perspective of what contemporary women seek to enhance their looks, and adapt their products to fit the exclusive expectations of the younger generations, by personalizing everything from ingredients to packaging. This is especially apparent in the companies ranked as the world’s most valuable cosmetic companies, of which the top five in order of priority are L’Oréal, Gillette, Nivea, Estée Lauder, and Clinique.

In personalizing beauty products, information relating to skincare, dental veneers, makeup and or perfumes, blend gigantic databases, and evaluate billions of formulations saved in compelling algorithms, to create a customized product for someone. Therefore, big data is critical in personalizing products and services. Moreover, 77% of consumers select products that provide apersonalized service, do not mind paying more, and, in addition, recommend it to others.

For instance, L’Oréal’s commitment to research, innovation, and technology led to its setting up atechnology incubator. A multitude of creative business ideas keep flowing from this incubator. 

Likewise, all beauty product manufacturers are challenged by increasingly demanding customers who expect cosmetics that exactly suit their skin type, color and personal preferences. This difficult-to-predict demand requires continuous development of products. And technology is an invaluable tool to achieve this. For instance, the gigantic volume of information generated by L’Oréal, which owns over 40 brands, annually manufactures 7 billion products, daily creates 50 million data points, and annually files 500 patents, is collected and stored in adata lake. The huge volume of information available in the data lake, which is refreshed several times a day, enables scientists and marketers to work together to create several thousand new formulas for the company every year.

Similarly, big data and artificial intelligence (AI) are used to develop alternative or totally new products as demanded by customers. In fact, the beauty industrycreated history by becoming the first commercial entity to gather and protect the power of data on a large scale, and to use analytics to uniquely respond to customer requirements.

For instance, a consumer app named Proven Skincare is able to create unique skincare strategies for individual customers, based on their skin type, through its Skin Genome Project, the most detailed skincare database in existence, and which won the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) Artificial Intelligence Award in 2018. It currently analyzes the efficacy of at least 20,238 skincare ingredients, organize information of over 100,000 products, sift through more than 8 million testimonials from actual customers, and information found in over 4000 scientific publications. This apart, it can also verify humidity levels, the UV index and hardness of water in the area a customer lives. Machine Learning (ML) enables the consideration of incredible amounts of information at dizzying speed to select the best ingredients of any particular customer’s skin.

From another angle, an app called Function of Beauty employs ML algorithms to create customized shampoo and conditioner formulas depending on the type of hair, and required treatments like conditioners, oils or waxes.

On the other hand, U.S. multinational beauty company, Coty, has created an Alexa type feature called Let’s Get Ready, that offers virtual makeovers for customers, with a virtual beauty assistant extending over 2000 makeover combos. When the app is activated, the customer is prompted for details about hair, eye and skin color, how they wish to appear and what kind of event they are going to. Armed with this data, Alexa gives the customer, alternative appearances to choose from.

Thus, the beauty industry is comfortable in making use of AI in the form of Alexa and ML to create customized products.

Furthermore, an AI-powered computer that can analyze a human face is useful to test combinations of products for customers to choose what is best for them. In earlier times, it was almost unthinkable to know how a new beauty product would look like on an individual, short of trying it physically. However, today, the AI systems can check the appearance of a product on a person without physically trying it.

As Philippe Benivay, IS Experimental Data Intelligence at L’Oréal, said, “Data and artificial intelligence allow us to move faster to create cosmetic products that meet the infinite diversity of beauty needs and desires of consumers around the world.”

Thus, it is apparent that AI and ML have the power and capability torevolutionize the global beauty industry.No more are products tested in miniature markets, and gradually introduced to the global market. AL and ML make everything happen together.

Meanwhile, a professor at theDepartment of Electrical Engineering at Korea Advanced Institute of Science and Technology (KAIST) in South Korea, said that ML algorithms further help differentiate good products from the bad, based on customer feedback and skin type.

As Philippe Benivay of L’Oréal, said, “Our vision is to deliver services to our businesses that they have not yet considered.”

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