October 28th, 2023, Bhavika Bansal
From Instagram influencers to beauty bloggers, the virtual realm has no shortage of reviews and testimonials about an array of beauty and skincare products. However, do such reviews have substantial viewership among consumers and should they be considered an important part of a brand's overall digital marketing strategy? A recent YouGov Survey: Serviced poll of 17 international markets seeks to answer these questions by exploring how many consumers actually view such social media reviews for makeup and skincare products.
Results from the survey reveal that just one out of five polled consumers say they either do not use social media or don’t watch product reviews (22%), leaving slightly more than three-fifths of respondents who say they watch social media product reviews for one category or another (63%) on platforms like YouTube, Instagram and TikTok.
A closer look at just this category of respondents – those who say they use social media and watch social media product reviews – reveals further nuances.
Food (35%) and clothing (35%) top the list of product categories for which consumers watch product reviews on social media platforms like YouTube, TikTok, Facebook, etc. While an equal share of consumers says the same about home appliances and makeup and skincare products (27% for both), tools (14%) and toys (13%) round out the bottom of the list.
Significantly outpacing the market average (27%), consumers in Indonesia, India and Mexico are the likeliest of all to watch such reviews for this category (43% for all).
Unlike their other APAC neighbors, just a fifth of consumers in Australia (21%) say they watch product reviews for makeup on social media.
Our North American respondents share similarly scattered views. Compared to nearly a quarter of consumers in Canada (23%), less than a fifth of Americans (16%) say they watch such reviews for makeup and skincare products.
Though more than a third of consumers in Spain indicate that they watch social media product reviews for makeup and skincare (35%), this proportion falls substantially among most other European markets. While a fifth of Britons (20%), Swedes (20%), and Danes (19%) watch reviews, only an eighth of consumers in Germany agree (13% - the lowest among all markets).
Coming to the MENA region, three in ten consumers in the UAE (30%) say they have watched a product review for makeup and skincare products on social media.
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Methodology: YouGov Surveys: Serviced provide quick survey results from nationally representative or targeted audiences in multiple markets. The data is based on surveys of adults aged 18+ years in 18 markets with sample sizes varying between 437 and 2,045 for each market. All surveys were conducted online in June 2023. Data from each market uses a nationally representative sample apart from Mexico and India, which use urban representative samples, and Indonesia and Hong Kong, which use online representative samples. Learn more about YouGov Surveys: Serviced.