Male Grooming Ripe for New Approach

March 20, 2009

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Nearly two thirds (65.7%) of men in the US say they do not notice new personal care and grooming products that come onto the market, compared with 28.2% who keep an eye out for them, and a mere 6.1% who actively monitor them, according to an in-depth research report from Datamonitor. The Male Grooming Trends: Profiting in 2009 and Beyond study, which offers a detailed look at both the male and female personal-care sectors across 15 countries across Europe, Asia-Pacific, South America and the US, finds that men in India (30.6%) and Brazil (20.5%) pay the most attention to new products, while men in the Netherlands (72.4%) and Sweden (77%) pay the least.

In contrast, only 36.7% of women in the US do not notice new grooming products, 47.6% keep an eye out for them, and 15.7% actively monitor them. Price Has Most Influence When men do pay attention to personal care products, price has the most influence on what they choose, the research found. More than half of men surveyed feel that price had either a high or very high influence on their selection of products. This was a substantially higher response rate than for any other factor, although habit/preferred brand and ease of use also ranked as fairly important influencing factors among men. These findings suggest that many men will simply stick with what they know, without even bothering to check out alternative products in the marketplace, Datamonitor said. Women Dominate Spending Across most countries featured in the report, the split of populations is roughly equal by gender, but women continue to dominate spending in the