The British spend more per person on health and beauty products than any other EU country, according to findings from Verdict Research in a report, European Health & Beauty Retailers 2008, released in August 2008.
“The British are the biggest spenders in the EU,” Carol Ratcliffe, Retail Analyst at Verdict Research, and co-author of the report, said. "The average UK consumer spends €375 a year on health and beauty products – far more than most of our European neighbours. We spend almost 50 per cent more each year than the Spanish for example, and 43 per cent more than the average European.”
The UK’s high level of spend per head can be attributed to easy access to a wide selection of health & beauty products, a strong consumer appetite for innovative and upmarket items and a shift to more premium, higher priced, product. This high level of spending combines with its large population to make the UK the second biggest market for health and beauty products in Europe, behind only Germany.
New EU member countries, Romania, Estonia and Latvia are the fastest growing markets, while Spain has been the fastest growing of the major EU markets (Germany, UK, France, Italy, Spain, Netherlands). Spanish category expenditure increased by almost a third between 2002 and 2007 – more than twice the rate of any other major market. This has been driven by strong economic growth with Spanish GDP rising 44.0 per cent over the period.
Verdict Research (www.verdict.co.uk) is a leading authority on retailing and is a wholly owned subsidiary of industry analysis company, Datamonitor (www.datamonitor.com).