Exploring innovation opportunities in the make-up category
We worked with one of the largest cosmetics and beauty companies in the world to learn from Japan’s semi-permanent market through the eyes of consumers and professionals. The team sought to identify opportunities for future innovations based on understanding trends, user needs, and challenges related to semi-permanent services, processes, results, and maintenance.
Our Work
- Setting the category framework based on market data and trend analysis, considering desk research
- Online diary task to cover the consumer experience over the course of one treatment cycle, i.e., documentation of their semi-permanent make-up status quo before their visit, half-way through to the next visit, and one day before the visit; collection of images + pain points + current solution/approach to the pain point for each stage
- Ethnography-style beauty salon and clinic visits to observe semi-permanent make-up treatment
- Interviews with the stylist/eyelist/esthetician and the customer
- Stop & Think workshop with the client team to share initial findings among different client teams and departments
The Outcome
- Understanding of key customer needs, expectations around the professional treatment and habits
- Understanding of common B2B techniques, tools/products and what is working and not working
- Identifying innovation territories in the make-up category
- Creation of an insights video for the R&D team
– Client Voice