2025 GLOBAL TRENDS: Beauty and Personal Care
- Adriana Motta
- Feb 5
- 8 min read
Updated: Mar 13
Starting to explore 2025, the beauty and personal care industry finds itself at an interesting turning point. The days of one-size-fits-all fixes and hollow sustainability claims are long gone. More informed, more demanding, and more conscious than ever before today's beauty consumer is.
Quick Look:
The Beauty and Personal Care industry unveil major shifts in consumer behaviour and attitudes, giving brands a roadmap to stay ahead of a rapidly evolving market.
The holistic approach to well-being implies the working together of mental, emotional, and physical well-being. Personalisation affects loyal consumer relationships through custom-made products. Conscious consumers are reshaping industry standards for purposeful, data-driven innovation and require ethical sourcing, sustainability, and transparency.
A flexible focus encourages growth from shifts in consumer mindset, revealing new opportunities for product innovation and more significant interaction across the beauty and personal care space.
With analysis from Mintel's 2025 Global Beauty and Personal Care Trends, our review reveals three key trends altering the market: the rise of knowledge-empowered personalisation, the real turn towards climate-responsive innovation, and the basic re-evaluation of beauty as preventative wellness rather than corrective maintenance.
These changes bring opportunity as well as challenge for the industry brands. Success will go to those who can truly combine these consumer values with delivering on the basic promise of efficacy as the cornerstone of the industry.
"At the intersection of market data and expert insights, we uncover tomorrow’s beauty and personal care trends — ensuring every recommendation we share is both meaningful and actionable.’’ - Adriana Motta
TREND 1: (MY) Knowledge is power
As consumers take ownership of their beauty destinies, we are seeing a tremendous power change. Equipped with unheard-of information access, modern beauty aficionados are starting their own formulations, combining treatments, investigating chemicals, and demanding openness that would have been impossible ten years ago.
Source: Mintel Global Consumer, The Holistic Consumer, March 2024
Why it matters:
The DIY rebirth is about people trusting their judgment over marketing claims, not only about saving money.
The educational materials are starting to be as valuable as the products themselves.
Professional treatments are becoming more popular, therefore eroding the distinction between clinical and retail beauty; biotechnology is shifting from lab curiosity to general expectation.
The Future: Where we're headed
The beauty regime for tomorrow will make today's look basic. Imagine waking up and having your AR glasses scan your skin to find minute variations in hydration levels, then suggesting changes to your daily regime. Driven by next-generation artificial intelligence, your virtual beauty advisor will take into account everything from your sleep quality to pollution levels on your commute path before recommending products created with components drawn from your own biological profile.
According to experts, AI-based beauty devices show a projected growing share between 2024 - 2034. This shift aligns with consumers’ evolving beauty paths, as they’re seeking more immediate, data-driven solutions, particularly in-home or on-the-go devices that can track, diagnose, and tailor treatments.
Global Artificial Intelligence in Beauty and Cosmetics Market Size is valued at $4,430M in 2024 and predicted to reach $27,658M by 2034 at a 20.2% CAGR.
By Service / By Product
Source: Artificial Intelligence (AI) In Beauty and Cosmetics Market Size, Share & Trends Analysis Report By Service/Product, By Region, And Segment Forecasts, 2025-2034.
Strategic Recommendations:
Invest on customer education as opposed to merely product promotion. Instead than just selling, create platforms that empower.
Create technology ecosystems rather than individual products. The finalists will develop connected, learning, and adaptable beauty experiences.
Adopt co-creation with consumers. Make the most of the fact that the distinction between producer and customer will continue to become more hazy.
Develop data capabilities that enable personalisation of information. The beauty brand of the future is not just a formulator but also a technology company.
TREND 2: Turning the tide
The focus of consumer decision-making has shifted from the periphery to the centre: climate consciousness. Customers are calling for genuine action instead of token gestures as the cosmetics industry faces a fundamental confrontation with its environmental impact.
Source: Mintel Global Consumer, The Holistic Consumer, March 2024
Why it matters:
The reason is important: The transition of sustainability from "nice-to-have" to "price of entry" is complete.
Biotechnology is offering solutions that help the earth and work well.
Innovation in packaging is speeding up, and refillable solutions are becoming more widely used.
Global brand management is becoming more difficult due to regional differences in sustainability concerns.
The Future: our path ahead
Sustainability in the beauty and personal care industry will advance beyond small steps. Agricultural waste will be converted into high-performance actives by biopharming. Brands will be forced to switch from optional offsets to required reductions due to carbon rules. Instead of offering static answers, products will dynamically adjust to environmental conditions. Furthermore, closed-loop systems will no longer be the exception but the rule.
Environmental, social and governance-related claims can help boost growth for a variety of brand types.
Share of categories with outsize growth for products with ESG-related claims by brand type, US, %
* ESG: Environmental, social and governance.
NOTE: Among brands, large brands compromise the top 60% of sales, medium brands are the next 20%, small brands are the next 15% and smallest brands are the bottom 5%.
Outsize growth indicates categories in which the growth rate of products with sustainable claims exceeds that of products without sustainable claims.
Source: Nielsen IQ, McKinsey & Co, 2022.
Strategic Recommendations:
Transform sustainability from a risk-reduction strategy to one that spurs innovation. Your R&D agenda should be informed by environmental challenges.
Make an investment in the transparency of your supply chain. The consumer of the future will want to know not just what is in your product, but also how each item got there.
Make your sustainability plan local. As regional objectives change, global approaches become more and more inadequate.
Get ready for more strict rules. Potential limitations will become competitive advantages for the brands who anticipate and anticipate compliance.
TREND 3: Think slow, move fast
There's an interesting paradox in the works: beauty is slowing down and life is speeding up. Consumers are gravitating away from the quick fix to the long haul, prioritising whole health over incremental treatments and prevention over Band-Aid.
Source: Mintel Global Consumer, The Holistic Consumer, March 2024
Why it matters:
Since Gen Z is going for prevention, the age curve for serious skincare is dramatically bending younger.
Demand for rituals that provide emotional rewards as well as physical ones is being fueled by "slow living" philosophies; nostalgia has become a powerful force behind purchases, particularly among younger consumers craving authenticity; and complexity fatigue is fueling the market for easy, multi-benefit products that make decision-making easier.
The Future: Where we're headed
The beauty future will increasingly blend the lines between treatment and experience. Do-it-yourself beauty will move beyond pandemic necessity to mindful practice. Regenerative beauty will marry personal wellness with global health. Digital detox vacations will be as important a component of beauty routines as serums and moisturisers. And beauty regimes will not only be judged on physical results but on how they affect mental well-being.
Strategic Recommendations:
Rethink your innovation timeline. Long-term performance will trump short-term pleasure.
Invest in the sense aspects of your products. What a product gets people to feel will be just as important as what it makes them do.
Uncover authentic connections to heritage and tradition. Heritage is powerful differentiation in a cluttered marketplace.
Simplify decision journeys. Simplify consumers' lives by cutting through complexity rather than adding to it.
Charting your course through disruption.
You need a leadership framework that understands the complexity of today’s world. Disruption is no longer a threat but a trigger for innovation and growth. This will give you practical tools to assess the disruptors in the market, adjust your strategy and allocate resources. By creating a culture of foresight and execution you will keep the momentum even in the face of external challenges. This balanced approach will turn potential disruptions into opportunities for differentiation and long term value creation. Here are some of our recommendations:
a) Redesign your consumer experience
Beyond Digital Transformation. The most successful beauty businesses will move beyond shallow digitalisation to create fully integrated experiences that bring the physical and digital together.
Eliminate channel thinking and think about journeys. Your consumers don't divide their online and offline world - neither should you.
Convert passive data collection into active personalisation engines. The data you collect must provide value to the consumer at the moment of collection.
Invest in product-enhancing technologies, not just convenience shopping. AR, AI, and IoT need to improve the product experience, not just how one buys it.
Create communities, not customer bases. The brands that establish connection will win out over those that just facilitate transactions.
b) Build for climate resilience
Moving Beyond Greenwashing. The beauty leaders of tomorrow will embed environmental thinking into every part of their business, creating positive impact not just mitigating negative impact.
Do a full audit of your entire supply chain to identify climate risks. From sourcing ingredients to how consumers dispose of products, find and fix your environmental hot-spots.
Create scenario plans for environmental disruptions. Climate change will impact agricultural yields, water availability and energy costs – be prepared for these changes.
Focus on resource efficiency through innovation. Brands that can deliver great experiences using minimal environmental inputs will win both consumer loyalty and operational resilience.
Partner strategically across your ecosystem. The climate challenge requires collaboration beyond competitive boundaries.
Products that make environmental, social and governance-related claims have achieved disproportionate growth.
Retail sales growth, US, CAGR 2018 - 22, %
* ESG: Environmental, social and governance.
Source: Nielsen IQ, McKinsey & Co, 2022.
c) Harness productivity with technology
Past Automation. Innovative beauty companies will leverage technology to not only save money, but to also redesign fundamentally the way value is produced and provided.
Implement forward-looking supply chain technologies to eliminate waste but deliver maximum availability.
Utilise AI in formulating new innovations, accelerating product development in addressing emerging needs from consumers.
Employ digital twin technology for propelling optimisation of manufacturing processes before physical roll-outs.
Create versatile production capacity that is easily adaptable to changing consumer preferences and market conditions.
d) Seizing new strategic opportunities
Design Ecosystems, Not Products. The best beauty businesses will evolve from product companies to ecosystem designers, creating interconnected experiences that increase switching costs and foster deeper engagement with consumers.
Skincare companies by developing pollution sensors that modify product recommendations based on local pollution and humidity levels.
Haircare companies by creating diagnostic tools that track hair condition over time and recommend customised treatment protocols.
Fragrance companies by creating preference engines that tailor fragrance recommendations on the basis of emotional response and situational factors.
The beauty and personal care industry is poised for transformation. The convergence of empowered consumers, climate imperative, and technology momentum is creating unprecedented challenges and incredible opportunities.
The companies that will thrive in this new world are the ones that can tap into the underlying values of consumers in a genuine manner and also deliver actual efficacy. They will integrate sustainability not as a brand strategy but as a fundamental business philosophy. They will employ technology not merely to sell more but to create genuinely new ways of value.
Most of all, they will realise that beauty's future lies not in the products themselves, but in supporting consumers along the way to their own well-being journeys. The companies and brands that are going to succeed will be rewarded time and again by loyalty above mere transactions.
The question is not whether your company will be disrupted by these forces but whether you'll be the disruptor or the disrupted. The choices you make today will determine your role tomorrow.
