Information Processing of Product Related Attributes, Consumer Perceptions, and Buyer Preferences: Analysis of Cosmetic Products

Recently, the fashion, medical biotech cosmetics, is growing in Taiwan. Not only national firms have kept propagating the medical ingredients via advertisements to prove their quality and effects, but also local firms initiate to build their own brands and to develop novel ingredients in medical biotech cosmetic market.

Because the medical ingredients may have great impact to cosmetic market in the future, this article focuses on “medical ingredients” and has two related researches. First, we make the perceptual map by Multidimensional Scaling to understand the influence of consumer perception by offering additional information, ingredients and effects, under different brand familiarity and ingredient understanding. Second, we use Conjoint Analysis to know consumer preference and the best product combination about the country of origin, channel, ingredient, and price.

Results of this study show that offering additional information will affect consumer perception and change brand positions as well as competitive relationship. For high familiar brand, consumers’ perceptual differences are lower under offering different information load. In four cosmetic product attributes, consumers put the most emphasis on channel. The best product combination comprises Japan country of origin, the extract of germ, the channel of department store, and lower selling price.

Based on the research results, we have some marketing suggestions provided for domestic firms. First, domestic firms can use more familiar medical ingredients to enhance product value and to gain competitive advantage, because consumer will infer these ingredients are additional value provided by firms. Moreover, if domestic firms want to shape their brands into high-class brand images, they should try to sell their products through department stores, avoid mentioning the local brand, and attempt to propagate the medical ingredients and effects in order to enhance the product value and brand image.