Younger consumers see more than Vitamin E for skin health – Coconut oil interest surprisingly robust

What:
A recent ITC (Ingredient Transparency Center) survey of US and UK consumers asked respondents what healthy ingredients they used (topically or ingested) for skin health.

So what:
Results differed remarkably by gender and geography, although vitamin E did beat out coconut oil in both countries. The youngest set of consumers, those 18-24 differed strongly by country, with essentially a 3-way tie in the US between vitamin E, coconut oil and collagen, while in the UK, coconut oil edged out vitamin E, the only age group for which it did so. Hyaluronic acid came next in both countries, with biotin cracking the top 5, after collagen in the US while it barely ranked (4%) in the UK.

Older consumers (55 and over) favored vitamin E strongly, with over 80% of US consumers in that age bracket citing it, versus only 44% of those same consumers citing coconut oil.

ITC Insights USUK NutriBeauty 2021 Survey

Now what:
It is clear that younger consumers strongly recognize the skin health benefits of different ingredients, including coconut oil, especially in the US, with collagen popular as well. The results for collagen were somewhat surprising – many would have expected it to rank higher given its recent and current popularity and there is no skewing by age in the UK. There are unmet market opportunities with both targeting younger demographics. Future research will split the topical and ingestible perceptions.