More Australian Women Buying Cosmetics at Pharmacies

Apparel is not the only retail sector to have been affected by the proliferation of international chains setting up store in Australia: local cosmetics retailers have had to accommodate French giant Sephora, which has opened eight stores since its arrival in late 2014. Even so, the real power players are pharmacies, attracting more cosmetics customers than any other kind of store, new data from Roy Morgan Research reveals.

Between 2006 and 2016, the overall proportion of Australian women buying cosmetics in an average six months has remained fairly stable (barely shifting from 51.5% to 50.5% in 10 years). But there have been some noteworthy changes in where they purchase them, with pharmacies (19.1%, up from 15.1%) and—to a much lesser extent—supermarkets and department stores gaining popularity. In contrast, fewer women are now buying cosmetics from discount department stores than they were in 2006.

Prestige cosmetics super-stores such as the aforementioned Sephora and Australia’s own MECCA fall under the ‘Other’ category (although MECCA’s concession stores in Myer would fall under department stores), which has lost some ground in the last decade, from 9.6% to 7.7%.

Who shops where?

In the past six months, some 840,000 Australian women made their last make-up purchase at a Priceline store, making it the country’s most popular pharmacy for cosmetics by far.

Viewing Priceline’s make-up customers through the lens of Roy Morgan’s ground-breaking consumer profiling tool Helix Personas reveals that young women from the cashed-up, socially active Metrotech community are more likely than those from any other Helix community to buy cosmetics from the chain. Metrotech women are also more likely than their counterparts from other Helix communities to purchase make-up from Chemist Warehouse.

Of the supermarkets, Coles is the most popular for cosmetics, with nearly 600,000 Australian women making their last purchase there, just ahead of Woolworths (565,000). While Metrotechs are once again more likely than the other Helix Communities to shop for make-up at Coles, women from the outer-suburban, hard-working Aussie Achievers community are the most likely to buy their cosmetics from Woolworths—and indeed, from supermarkets in general.