Yahoo eyes online cosmetic market [GALLERY]

A milestone was achieved at Armani/Aqua yesterday when Yahoo Hong Kong conducted its very first online-voting awards – Yahoo Shine Awards, paying tribute to the most popular makeup and skin care brands voted by internet users.Top contenders including LANEIGE, shu uemura, SK-II were the biggest winners among 130 participants, taking home “Brand of the Year” awards.In a Yahoo research “Beauty Whitepaper” jointly conducted with TNS, 27% of female respondents purchase facial skin-care and cosmetic products online, 65% of which have plans to increase spend on facial skin-care products online.“Apart from purchase behaviour, our search trend data also shows that more and more cosmetic shoppers conduct their research online. As both search behaviour and buying behaviour for beauty products are shifting from offline to online channels, we believe this is the right timing to introduce this awards,” said Tania Lau, marketing director of Yahoo Hong Kong.Moreover, of the 100,000 online voters, nearly 20% were men. Also, around 30% of online search for words such as “pimple”, “whitening”, “skin-pigment regulation” and “beauty” were carried out by men, mirroring the upward trend in men's skin care.In response to the growing online cosmetic market, the search engine giant is set to revamp the displays and also the content of its beauty platform Yahoo Style early next year, which has a monthly viewership of 21% (comScore Media Metrix Aug 2013).[gallery ids="21891,21888,21897,21890,21889,21893,21894,21895,21896"]