Growth potential for global male grooming market

The global male grooming market is continuing to expand, although at a slower rate than often expected, according to a new report from Datamonitor.

It reports the male grooming market relies on products that are viewed as essential, while the indulgent and emotional nature often seen in the women’s personal care industry is rare among men.

“While the more lucrative women’s market is also continuing to grow, the potential of the male market remains enormous and will be important to manufacturers of consumer packaged goods,” said Matthew Taylor, consumer analyst at Datamonitor and author of the report.

The male grooming market needs a different approach in order to succeed than the female market due to differences in attitudes and behaviors that exist across genders, Taylor adds.

The split of populations is roughly equal by gender across most countries featured in the report but women continue to dominate spending in the personal care industry.

According to Datamonitor, price was the biggest influence on men when choosing personal care products.

Over half of all male respondents felt that price had either a high or very high influence on their choice 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.

Many personal care brands targeted at women have been successful in achieving a high level of engagement with their consumer base. However, Datmonitor reports this has not been replicated among men, where the more essential and necessary nature of personal care products has ensured a lower level of engagement.

High-engagement brands will obviously be more successful in achieving a sense of loyalty with consumers and marketers must strive to ensure that men feel a stronger attachment to their male grooming products and brands, it says.

Findings from Datamonitor’s 2008 consumer survey reveal most men do not pay much attention to new products in the field of personal care. Coupled with the low engagement, this suggests many men will simply stick with what they know, without even bothering to check out alternative products in the marketplace.

Over half of all male respondents said that they did not seem to notice new products in cosmetics and toiletries. The equivalent figure for women was much lower at 28.7%, with 22.7% of females saying they actively monitored new products in this category.