Beauty and Personal Care Ecommerce Market Research Report

US Shoppers Consumer Research

Key Findings

• Gen Z ranks speed above price and selection. 19.44% of Gen Z name getting the product quickly as what matters most, ahead of both price and selection. A slow delivery promise costs you this group before your price ever does.
• Discounts move high earners least. Only 33.33% of shoppers with a household income above $100k say deals, promotions or sales sway them, which means a promotional calendar aimed at this segment is buying volume you would have had anyway. Our affluent shoppers dismiss price release covers this finding on its own.
• Affluent shoppers subscribe no more than anyone else. High earners sign up for subscription or auto-shipping at 11.11%, the same rate as the general population. The segment most able to afford a subscription is not being sold one that fits.
• The Midwest wants convenience without a subscription. 60.71% of Midwestern shoppers value saving time while 10.71% use subscription or auto-shipping. Convenience in that region has to come from stock, pickup and delivery speed rather than a recurring plan.
• In-store buyers still shop your site first. 23.58% of shoppers who buy mostly in stores say the ability to research and compare online matters to them, which makes your product pages part of a purchase your ecommerce numbers never record.
• Same-day beats savings for high earners. Shoppers above $100k put having the item the same day (66.67%) ahead of deals and promotions. Availability is the lever that works on them.
• Online buyers still want a person to ask. 40.00% of shoppers who buy mostly online say they value comparing items in person and getting advice from store staff, which is an argument for putting real guidance into the site rather than more product photos.
• Gen Z loyalty runs partly on local ownership. 11.11% of Gen Z shoppers name local ownership as a reason they stay with a brand, a driver no discount replicates.

How we ran the survey

2 Visions fielded this beauty ecommerce market research nationally from February to April 2024 with 2,259 American participants, spread across four generations and distributed across US regions in line with census data. Every number on this page comes from that survey and from no other source.

The margin of error is 5.93% at a 95% confidence level. Read the fielding dates as part of the data. These are 2024 shopper attitudes; the market section below covers what has moved since.

What 2,259 US beauty shoppers told us

Gen Z buys personal care and beauty products in stores more than any other generation. 52.78% of them prefer buying in person, the highest share in the survey and the opposite of how most beauty brands plan their Gen Z spend.

That finding is one of several that cut against the standard assumptions. Shoppers above $100k a year are the least interested in your discounts and the most interested in having the product today. Millennials, usually treated as the ready buyers, are the most cautious group on the page.

The sections below run through what shoppers said about channel, returns, discovery and loyalty, with the decision each number changes stated next to it. The market section that follows sets those 2024 answers against current beauty ecommerce market trends. Our clothing and accessories report and our home decor and home goods report run the same survey against two other categories.

Where the US beauty ecommerce market stands right now

Beauty is still growing online and it is growing slower than it was. McKinsey’s State of Beauty 2025 puts annual industry growth at about 5% through 2030, down from the 7% a year the sector ran between 2022 and 2024, with the market reaching $590 billion by 2030. A plan built on the 2022 growth rate will miss its number by a wide margin.

Online is the channel taking share while that happens. McKinsey has ecommerce at 26% of global beauty sales in 2024 and heading toward roughly a third by 2030, the largest share of any single channel. Specialty retailers and mono-brand stores hold their position over the same period while department stores and drugstores lose ground.

The money behind that shift is large and still compounding. Statista sizes the global beauty and personal care ecommerce market at about $257 billion in 2025 and projects $338 billion by 2029, with the United States the largest single market at roughly $37 billion in personal care ecommerce.

Category growth is also outrunning ecommerce as a whole. Digital Commerce 360 has health and beauty up 11% among the top online retailers in 2025 against 7.7% growth for US web sales overall. Beauty is one of the categories pulling the average up.

That is also why beauty ecommerce customer acquisition costs keep climbing here. A category growing faster than the market attracts more entrants and more bidders on the same keywords and the same audiences, which is what makes how much to spend on marketing a harder question in beauty than in most categories.

The retail end of the market tells you who you are bidding against. Digital Commerce 360 projects Walgreens at $10.38 billion in online sales for 2025 and Ulta Beauty at $2.53 billion, while Statista puts Sephora above $3 billion in 2024 ecommerce net sales. Those three set the delivery, returns and assortment expectations your customer arrives with.

Two of our 2024 findings look different against newer data. Return expectations have tightened: the NRF’s October 2025 returns research reports 82% of consumers now treat free returns as a major purchase consideration, up from 76% a year earlier, with 19.3% of online sales coming back and 71% of shoppers saying a bad return experience would keep them from buying again.

Read our return-policy numbers below as a floor rather than a current benchmark. The direction of every one of them has moved toward the shopper since April 2024.

Social discovery has moved the other way from what a beauty brand might expect. eMarketer’s June 2025 path-to-purchase survey found 38.6% of US beauty buyers had discovered a product through social media, well short of a majority. Our 2024 finding that friends and family outrank every paid channel still holds up against that.

AI assistants are the newest discovery route and still the smallest. eMarketer’s June 2026 research put general-purpose AI tool use among beauty consumers at 35.1%, which measures overall use, not discovery. Actual product discovery through an AI tool stood at just 6.3% as of mid-2025, against 20.3% through search engines.

Read that as a research channel rather than a discovery channel for now. The practical move is to make sure an assistant can read your ingredient lists, sizes and return terms off your product pages. Those are what it quotes when a shopper asks it to compare you.

If your category growth has stalled and you cannot tell whether that is the market or your own execution, a read on your growth against the category is usually the fastest way to separate the two.

In-Store vs Online

Beauty shoppers do not sort cleanly into an online group and a store group. Roughly half of them buy both ways. The segments a brand usually treats as digital-first are the ones most attached to the shelf.

The thirteen findings below cover who is buying, where they buy, why they pick each channel and what they believe each channel does better. These habits track the wider move toward omnichannel shopping across retail. They matter most to in-store retailers selling online.

Gen Z bought less often than any other generation in the past two years

• Gen Z is the least likely to have bought at all. 80.56% of Gen Z reported a personal care or beauty purchase in the past two years, the lowest of any generation.
• Income barely changes whether someone buys. Over 93% of participants in every income bracket made a purchase.
• Women buy at a higher rate than men. 96.46% of female participants made a purchase against 88.46% of male participants.
• Homeowners buy more than renters. Homeowners reported a 96.61% purchase rate against 90% for renters.
• The South buys most. The South showed the highest purchase rate at 97.53%.

With Gen Z the problem is getting them into the category at all. Which of your channels they then use is a second-order question. The sections below show that their answer to it is often the store.

Who is buying and who is buying gifts

• High earners buy for two reasons at once. 59% of those with a household income at or above $100k bought personal care and beauty products for themselves and as gifts.
• Gen Z splits about evenly between self and gifting. 44.83% of Gen Z buy for both personal use and gifting.
• Most purchases are for the buyer. 59.18% overall buy these products for themselves.
• Men buy for both uses more than expected. 30% of male participants bought for themselves and as gifts.
• The Northeast gifts more. 8.57% of Northeast shoppers buy only as gifts, the highest regional share.

Gifting is a secondary use in every segment. A site built around gift sets will underserve the majority who are buying for themselves. Keep gifting as a seasonal overlay rather than the default merchandising frame.

Gen X is readier to buy than Millennials

• Gen X is the most open to buying. 96.97% of Gen X say they are open to a purchase, the highest of any generation.
• The Northeast is the most cautious region. Openness there is 81.58%, the lowest in the survey.
• Homeowners are readier than renters. 92% of homeowners are open to buying.
• Millennials are more cautious than their reputation. Their openness sits at 86.81%.
• The South is ready to buy. 96.30% say they are open to an upcoming purchase.

If your acquisition spend is weighted toward Millennials because they index as digital buyers, this finding argues for moving some of it to Gen X. Gen X is ten points more willing and is usually cheaper to reach.

Half of shoppers use both channels and the affluent use both most

• Hybrid shopping is the majority habit. Over 49% of shoppers buy both online and in-store.
• Gen Z leans to the store. Gen Z has the highest in-store preference of any generation at 52.78%.
• High earners use both channels most. 55.56% of those above $100k buy online and in-store.
• Women lean hybrid more than men. Female shoppers are more likely than male shoppers to buy through both channels.
• Millennials are the most flexible generation. They buy both online and in-store at a higher rate than any other generation.

Plan for one customer who shops two ways rather than two customer types. That changes what you measure. A store visit that follows a site session shows up in your ecommerce reporting as a bounce.

Where each group actually completes the purchase

• Households above $100k buy the most online. They make 43.06% of their personal care and beauty purchases online, the highest of any income segment.
• Gen Z buys online less than its reputation suggests. 39.31% of Gen Z purchases happen online.
• Renters buy in stores. Renters make 68.10% of their purchases in-store, the highest of any housing segment.
• The Northeast is the most online region. 41.08% of Northeast purchases are made online.
• Men and women differ only slightly. Female shoppers make 36.07% of purchases online and male shoppers 38.88%.

Even the most digital segment in this survey still completes most of its purchases somewhere else. Any forecast that assumes an online-only path for the affluent shopper is overstating the channel by more than half.

A store can carry too many options and the Midwest says so loudest

• The Midwest wants a tighter assortment. 71% of Midwest participants believe a store can offer too many personal care and beauty options, the highest regional share.
• Affluent shoppers want the wider selection. 61.11% of shoppers above $100k say they appreciate a wider range of options.
• Men are readier than women to call it too much. 52.88% of men think there can be too many options against 46.02% of women.
• Homeowners agree more than renters. 54.24% of homeowners see excessive options against 50.00% of renters.
• The West wants breadth. Only 30.95% of Western shoppers feel there are too many options, the lowest in the survey.

Assortment is a regional decision here rather than a single national one. The same catalog reads as choice on one coast and as noise in the middle of the country. That is an argument for regional merchandising rules over one sitewide filter.

Almost everyone can reach a store within 30 minutes

• Baby Boomers all have access. Every Baby Boomer in the sample can reach personal care and beauty products within 30 minutes.
• Gen Z is the least certain. 5.56% of Gen Z are unsure whether they have access within 30 minutes, the highest uncertainty in the survey.
• High earners report the most difficulty. 11.11% of consumers above $100k report trouble reaching products within 30 minutes.
• Renters have a harder time. 10.00% of renters report difficulty getting to products nearby.
• The South is the best served. 96.30% of Southern shoppers confirm access within 30 minutes.

Physical availability is not the constraint on this category for almost anyone. Delivery speed here competes with a 30-minute drive. A two-day promise is not a convenience advantage against that.

Satisfaction with local options is high and renters are the exception

• Baby Boomers are the happiest with what is nearby. 87.50% are content with their local personal care and beauty options.
• Gen X complains most. 3.23% of Gen X express dissatisfaction with their local options, the highest share.
• Renters are the least satisfied group. 6.98% of renters are unhappy with their local shopping options.
• Millennials find local options adequate rather than good. 20.24% say their local options are just okay.
• The South has the most room to improve. 75.64% of Southern shoppers are fully satisfied, the lowest regional satisfaction score.

Renters are the segment a DTC brand can win on availability alone. They buy in stores at the highest rate and they are the least happy with the stores they have.

Five different reasons people buy online, one per group

• Saving time leads for Boomers most of all. Baby Boomers put time and convenience first at 75%, the highest share in the survey.
• Price matters most at the bottom of the income range. Shoppers at or below $50k show the highest price sensitivity online at 69.44%.
• Gen Z wants it fast. 19.44% of Gen Z name speed of delivery, more than any other generation.
• High earners come for the range. 50.00% of those above $100k name selection as their reason to buy online.
• Younger shoppers come to compare. 25.00% of Gen Z and 39.56% of Millennials cite researching and comparing products.

There is no single online value proposition that covers this category. Your site has to carry a speed message, a price message, a selection message and a comparison tool, and which one leads should change with the segment the traffic came from.

Immediate need is what pulls people into the store

• Same-day need drives store visits. 62.50% of Baby Boomers name needing the item that day as a reason to shop in person.
• Gen X wants to compare in person. 39.39% of Gen X value comparing items physically.
• Local support matters in the Midwest. 16.07% of Midwest shoppers name supporting local businesses.
• The South is the most price-driven in store. 40.74% cite in-store price advantages.
• Gen Z enjoys browsing most. 44.44% of Gen Z say they enjoy browsing stores, the highest of any generation.

The store is winning on immediacy and on enjoyment, which are two different competitors. Same-day delivery answers the first one; nothing in a standard ecommerce build answers the second.

Who believes online carries more choice

• High earners see online as the wider aisle. 77.78% of shoppers above $100k say online offers more options.
• Gen Z is split down the middle. 50% find more options in stores and 50% online.
• The Midwest leans to the shelf. 41.07% of Midwest shoppers believe stores offer more options, the highest regional share.
• Renters see more choice in stores. 42.00% of renters against 30.51% of homeowners.
• Online holds the overall perception advantage. Most segments believe online carries the broader range.

Selection is the argument that works on the affluent shopper and does nothing for Gen Z. If your paid creative leads with range across every audience, half of that spend is making a case the viewer already rejects.

Online wins on price perception across almost every segment

• Mid-income shoppers are the most convinced. 71.74% of the $50k to $100k segment believe online offers better prices.
• High earners agree. 66.67% of shoppers above $100k lean online for price.
• Gen Z is close to even. Gen Z tilts slightly toward online on price, with the narrowest margin of any group.
• The Midwest is the most balanced region. 62.50% say online against 37.50% in-store.
• Millennials lean hardest of the generations. 65.93% believe online prices are better.

Shoppers already assume your site is the cheaper place to buy. That assumption is doing the discounting work for you, which is one reason a promotion aimed at high earners returns so little.

In-store still wins on perceived quality, by a narrow margin

• Gen Z trusts the shelf on quality. 63.89% of Gen Z believe higher quality options are found in stores.
• High earners trust the site. 61.11% of shoppers above $100k believe higher quality options are online.
• Men lean in-store. 58.65% of male shoppers see stores as offering higher quality.
• The Midwest leans in-store. 55.36% of Midwest shoppers say stores carry the better options.
• The overall split is close. 54.65% favor in-store on quality against 45.35% online.

Quality perception is the one place where the store still beats the site outright. The gap is small enough to close with ingredient detail, real product photography and a returns promise.

Warranty and Return Policies

Return policy is a purchase condition in this category, not an after-sales detail. A quarter of Millennials say it decides the sale outright. The window most shoppers expect is a fixed number rather than a range.

Return policy moves the sale for Millennials and male shoppers

• Millennials weigh it most. 25.27% of Millennials say a return policy definitely influences their choice.
• Male shoppers are close behind. 24.04% of male participants say it definitely influences the purchase.
• Gen Z is influenced but not decided. 38.89% of Gen Z say a return policy somewhat influences their decision, the highest share of any age group.
• High earners often skip the check. 27.78% of shoppers above $100k do not check the return policy before buying.
• The Midwest checks least. 23.21% of Midwest shoppers do not read return policies before buying, the highest regional share.

Put the policy on the product page rather than in the footer, because for a quarter of two large segments it is part of the decision they are making on that screen. The groups that skip the check are assuming your terms are good. That is a harder problem if they are not.

Thirty days is the floor for most shoppers and Gen Z is looser

• A 30-day window is the standard expectation. 75% of Midwest shoppers require at least 30 days, the highest regional share.
• High earners expect it too. 71.43% of shoppers above $100k require at least 30 days.
• Gen Z accepts less. 45% of Gen Z name 30 days as their minimum, a lower bar than other groups set.
• Men want longer. 32.61% of male shoppers require at least 60 days.
• Gen Z is open to something different. 5% of Gen Z chose an unconventional return duration.

Thirty days is the price of entry here. Going past 60 days only earns you something with male shoppers, which makes a longer window a segment decision rather than a sitewide one.

High earners want returns free and the Midwest will accept final sale

• Free returns with company-paid shipping is the top preference. 75% of the segment above $100k prefer it.
• High earners are the most insistent. Shoppers above $100k show the strongest preference for no-cost returns of any income group.
• Gen Z will pay a restocking fee. 16.67% of Gen Z accept a restocking fee if the company covers return shipping.
• The Midwest tolerates final sale. 23.08% of Midwest shoppers accept no returns at all, the highest regional share.
• Male shoppers vary most. 16.00% of men accept all sales final. More of them than of any other segment will also pay return shipping themselves.

Free returns cost you most with the segment that expects them hardest. If the math does not work sitewide, the regional and generational spread here tells you where a paid-return test will do the least damage.

Discovery Channels

Friends and family outrank every paid channel in this survey. They lead hardest among the shoppers with the most money to spend. Social platforms matter too, most of all to one generation.

Friends and family outrank every paid channel, hardest above $100k

• Word of mouth leads for high earners. 77.78% of households above $100k name friends and family as a discovery source.
• Gen X relies on it too. 60.61% of Gen X learn about new products from friends and family.
• Ads still work on Boomers. 62.50% of Baby Boomers name ads as a discovery channel.
• YouTube carries the middle income band. 45.65% of the $50k to $100k segment discover products there.
• Millennials browse to discover. 39.56% of Millennials and 45.68% of Southern shoppers find products by browsing online stores.

The channel that reaches your most valuable customer is one you cannot buy. What you can do is make the product worth recommending and give people the language to recommend it, which is what the DTC branding practices that hold up over time have in common.

Half of Gen Z finds new products on TikTok

• TikTok is the Gen Z discovery channel. 50% of Gen Z use it to find new personal care and beauty products.
• No other generation comes close. The platform’s discovery share falls away sharply outside Gen Z.
• Video carries the middle of the income range. YouTube is the strongest video discovery channel in the $50k to $100k band at 45.65%.
• Ads are uneven. Advertising works as a discovery channel for some segments and barely registers for others, which is what makes a flat media plan expensive.

Social discovery is a Gen Z strategy in this category rather than a general one. eMarketer put social discovery for US beauty buyers overall at 38.6% in 2025, which is close to where our survey put it: a minority route for every group except the youngest.

Loyalty Factors

Price is the top loyalty driver in almost every segment. The exceptions are the interesting part. Gen Z stays for convenience and the shopping experience; the West stays for customer service.

Price leads every segment and it leads the affluent most

• Price is the leading loyalty driver. The highest share sits in the group above $100k at 77.78%.
• High earners also want the range. 55.56% of shoppers above $100k name selection as a loyalty factor, the strongest preference of any group.
• Local ownership matters to the middle. 15.22% of the $50k to $100k bracket value local ownership, more than any other income group.

The same shoppers who ignore your promotions still name price as the reason they stay. Read that as a statement about your everyday price position rather than about discounting. Our discount and promotions report covers how price incentives and loyalty interact across categories.

Gen Z stays for convenience and the shopping experience

• Convenience leads for Gen Z. 47.22% name convenience as a loyalty driver, the highest of any generation.
• Experience is close behind. 33.33% of Gen Z name the shopping experience itself.
• The West wants service. 30.95% of Western shoppers name customer service as a loyalty factor.

Retention spend aimed at Gen Z buys more when it goes into speed, fit and the feel of the buying experience than when it goes into a loyalty discount. If your repeat rate is flat and your promotional calendar is full, an outside read on your retention mix is usually worth more than another offer.

What a beauty or wellness brand does with this

Start by comparing your own buyer mix against the splits above rather than against the category average. The survey’s segments behave differently enough that the same tactic helps one and does nothing for another.

Two findings change a plan more than the rest. Gen Z prefers the store at 52.78%. A Gen Z acquisition plan built on digital channels alone is working against its own audience.

Only 33.33% of shoppers above $100k are moved by a discount. That means the segment with the highest spending power is the one your promotions reach least. With that segment, a stronger brand is the other lever. Our guide to ecommerce branding covers how to build one.

The table below turns the survey’s segment splits into the move each one argues for. Find the row that matches where most of your revenue comes from.

Measure before you change anything. Pull your revenue by generation and by income band, then your repeat rate and your return rate inside each, so you know which of these splits you actually have. Which numbers to track covers the set that matters for a DTC beauty brand at this stage.

Then pick one finding and test it rather than rebuilding the plan around the whole survey. A single well-framed test against your own numbers settles in a quarter what a strategy deck argues about for a year.

2 Visions is an ecommerce strategy consultant in Charleston, South Carolina that works with direct-to-consumer brands doing $5M to $500M in annual DTC revenue, including personal care, beauty and wellness brands. Founder Yates Jarvis works directly with the CEO or CMO rather than routing the engagement through junior staff. The firm runs its own primary consumer research, including the survey on this page, and engagements are built so the client team can run the work without the consultant afterward.

Beauty Ecommerce Market Research Methodology

2 Visions conducted this beauty market research nationally between February and April 2024. The aim was a snapshot of how Americans discover, buy and stay loyal to personal care and beauty products.

Participants were selected on their engagement with ecommerce platforms for buying personal care and beauty items. The study covered 2,259 American participants across Gen Z, Millennials, Gen X and Baby Boomers.

Participants were distributed across US regions in line with recent census data. The gender split within the sample closely mirrors national demographics, which is what makes the regional and gender cuts on this page readable rather than directional.

This study used direct survey methods rather than predictive analytics. That choice let us ask a wide range of questions without presupposing the variables a predictive model would need, which suited the breadth of ground this report covers.

The margin of error is 5.93% at a 95% confidence level. Treat any single cell of a demographic cut with that figure in mind. The direction of a finding is firmer than its second decimal place.

The questionnaire covered recent purchase history, the effect of return policies, and preferences between online and in-store shopping. Every statement of fact in this report is a synthesis of what participants said they do and prefer.

The method exists to give ecommerce leaders something they can act on. A reader should finish the page knowing where their buyers sit, what those buyers expect, and which assumptions in the current plan do not survive the data. It reflects how we run market research across every industry study we publish.

Fair Use

This content is offered for public use so the industry has more shared data to work from. You are welcome to share and distribute it for non-commercial purposes, as long as you attribute it to us with a backlink to this page.

The backlink gives your readers the full methodology and results rather than a number without its context. The same terms apply to our ecommerce market research reports in other categories, including the consumer electronics report.

Report Championed by Nosto

This report was produced in collaboration with Nosto, who supported the initiative to make this research freely available to the ecommerce community. Nosto did not influence, review, or edit any of the report’s data or findings before publication. The research and its conclusions are independent.

About 2 Visions

2 Visions is a boutique ecommerce strategy consultancy founded in 2017 and based in Charleston, South Carolina. We work with direct-to-consumer and B2C brands doing $5M to $500M+ in annual DTC revenue through their own ecommerce channel.

We work across six areas: strategic direction, research insights, growth marketing, customer experience, operational data and analytics, and executive and team development. Founder Yates Jarvis leads every engagement personally, works weekly with the CEO or CMO, and has worked with brands including TGW, Ancient Nutrition, Kay, DIFF Eyewear, Jeep and Spanx.

Every engagement is built to leave the client team able to do the work without us. That is why our research publishes in full rather than as a teaser. A beauty or wellness brand can read this page and act on it without hiring anyone. You can read more about 2 Visions and how we work with brands on our company page.

About Nosto

Nosto is a commerce experience platform that gives brands and retailers tools to increase online revenue through end-to-end commerce experience management.

With experience.AI, Nosto helps brands enrich and activate customer, product and content data in real time across personalization, product discovery, and user-generated content.

Nosto supports more than 1,500 brands, including Kylie Cosmetics, Dermalogica, Belstaff, The Travel Corporation, BYLT Basics, Douglas, MUJI, Flight Center, Lord and Taylor, Vuori and FIGS.