Cosmetics Industry Benchmark Report

Prepared by:

Noa Shachaff

Head of Consumer Insights & Analytics, Revuze

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Objective

Offer an Industry Benchmark for the US Cosmetics Industry, to be utilized by marketers to understand the average share of incentivized reviews implemented across the different segments in the industry.

The Industry Benchmark will showcase the following:

Share of incentivized reviews overall and across the 10 most discussed segment
Link between incentivized review share and overall sentiment.

Incentivized Reviews | Explanation

An incentivized review is a review that was solicited from the consumer, in return for a free sample, a discount or participation in a sweepstakes

Incentivized reviews can be marked in several different ways; Either with a sentence within the review itself, notifying the reader that this review was a part of a promotion, or as a remark attached to the body of the review.

Cosmetics & Nails US | All E-tailers | % Incentivized Reviews By Segment

Between Jan-2022 and May-2023, 1.36M unique reviews were collected for the Cosmetics & Nails Category, of which 17% (231K) were identified by Revuze as Incentivized.

Lip Liquid & Foundation had the highest share of incentivized reviews (22%, 21%), while False Eyelashes and Nail Kits had the lowest share (12%, 14%).

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Cosmetics & Nails US | All E-tailers | % Incentivized Reviews By Brand

Covergirl and Urban Decay Cosmetics had the highest incentivized reviews rate (21%) among the top 10 most discussed brands.

Beetles Gel Polish and L’Oréal Paris had the lowest incentivized reviews share (1% & 8% respectively) among the top 10 most discussed brands.

Cosmetics & Nails US | Impact Of % Incentivization On Star Ratings

	Amazon had the lowest share of incentivized reviews (11%) and averaged 69% in sentiment and 3.85 star rating. Walmart and Target had the highest shares of incentivized reviews (41% and 36%) and averaged 79%-80% in positive sentiments and 4.17-4.22 in star ratings.

	A shift from 6% incentivized reviews (on Amazon) to 50% incentivized reviews (on Walmart), led to a 15 point lift in sentiment and a 0.5 lift in star ratings for Mascaras.

	A shift from 8% incentivized reviews (on Amazon) to 49% incentivized reviews (on Target), led to a 9 point lift in sentiment and a 0.3 lift in star ratings for Foundations.

Cosmetics & Nails US | Mascaras | Exceptions To The Rule

Incentivized reviews do not guarantee a high sentiment, some brands invest in garnering incentivized reviews, only to end up with a lower star rating compared to brands that garnered none.

Cosmetics & Nails US | Foundation | Exceptions To The Rule

Incentivized reviews do not guarantee a high sentiment, some brands invest in garnering incentivized reviews, only to end up with a lower star rating compared to brands that garnered none.

About Revuze

Revuze is a leader in Generative AI analysis for online reviews, revolutionizing the consumer insights landscape.

With years of experience leveraging LLM training, Revuze unlocks the full potential of insights from verified buyers across multiple ecommerce sources. Our cutting-edge solutions empower businesses to seamlessly integrate review analytics into their marketing and product processes, enabling strategic decision-making. Through high-quality data, insightful predictions, and scalable capabilities across sources and regions, we offer real-time analysis with intuitive features, dynamic dashboards, and comprehensive reports.

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