Online beauty market in Germany has still great potential

Always more frequently online, books, technology, food and other products be purchased in 

Germany for years. Compared to drugstore and cosmetic products played only a relatively minor role in the E Commerce as well as perfumery products for a long time. This if not is quite a market with sales potential in millions, even billions of dollars (11 billion total revenues in 2011 with pure luxury products 5.6 announced euro). But also there are special at the online beauty market to observe, that distinguish it from other online markets. Perfume and cosmetics the personal advice and try out on the ground for many clients are essential, no matter, whether it is a cream or a nail polish to a new fragrance, the color of a Lippenstiftes. When purchasing online cosmetics, these possibilities are virtually impossible which represents a considerable constraint from the perspective of customers. However, it is quite possible "to try out the book before you buy", as more and more publishers allow at least partially online to browse the books sold by them over the Internet and to get an idea of the structure and content of the book in online bookstores.

Against this background, the online beauty market initially primarily not as a real competition developed to trading in retail stores, but rather as a complement. A few years ago, studies in the United States came to the result that customers of cosmetics suppliers online especially buy, what they must already know and as a result no longer try. Gifts represent a certain exception also like online purchased. The habits of European customers will vary on this point very little from the Americans, because the need to try out new products first of all should be well internationally quite identical. The customer habits according to large retailers such as, for example, Douglas in their online stores offered initially only a product range significantly reduced compared to their shops, which focused on particularly often and like to purchased products. This is a clear difference, for example, to booksellers or technology vendors who offer online often much more products as they could keep stock on the ground in the shops.

Despite these differences to other fast-growing market segments, there is still great potential in the online trade in cosmetic products. So one showed present beauty channel a few months ago from one online and on TV conducted investigation that trust to the Internet have a growing number of women in the age group 35 to 50 years in beauty issues. This reflected not only in the more frequent use of beauty blogs or cosmetics Web sites against, but also in the patterns. Approximately 55 percent of those online bought cosmetics. This concerns increasingly niche and growth segments in addition to the "classical" cosmetics suppliers such as, for example, the natural cosmetics industry. Reasons for the growing popularity of E-commerce in this segment are likely to be mainly the significant time savings, the ability to price and the convenient, time- and location-independent ordering. In particular the latter aspect will become likely to in the future still strongly with the proliferation of smartphones and corresponding apps.