Green consumer behavior in the cosmetics market

Abstract

Consumers and producers are becoming more open to the usage of natural cosmetics. This can be seen in them using a variety of natural cosmetic resources and materials. This fact is further supported by the trend of environmental and health awareness. These phenomena can be found within both the producers’ and the consumers’ behavior. Our research supports that green or natural products’ role in the cosmetics industry is getting more and more pronounced. The role of science is to determine the variables suggesting the consumer to change to natural cosmetics. The primary aim of our research is to find out to what extent the characteristics of the consumption of organic foods and natural cosmetics differ. We would like to know what factors influence consumer groups when buying green products. The novelty of the analyses is mainly that consumers were ordered into clusters, based on consuming bio-foodstuffs and preferring natural cosmetics. The cluster analysis has multiple variables, namely: Consumer behavior in light of bio-product, new natural cosmetics brand, or health- and environmental awareness preferences. The data was collected using online questionnaire, exclusively in Hungary during April–May of 2018. 197 participants answered our questions. The results of descriptive statistics and the cluster analysis show that there are consumers who prefer natural cosmetics, whereas some of them buy traditional ones. A third group use both natural and ordinary cosmetics. The results suggest that on the market of cosmetic products, health and environmental awareness will be a significant trend for both producer and consumer behavior, even in the future. However, it will not necessarily follow the trends of the foodstuffs industry, as the health effect spectrum of cosmetics is far shorter. In the future, the palette of natural cosmetics will become much wider. The main reason for this will be the appearance of green cosmetics materials and environmentally friendly production methods (mostly for packaging). The consumers will also have the possibility to choose the ones that suit them the most.