There are few products that call for quality quite the way that beauty care products do. We not only want something that’s safe and pure, but it also needs to perform as advertised and give us the look that we expected when we bought it. In most cases, government regulation of some kind takes care of the safety and purity side, but in terms of the appearance, it can be very difficult to get meaningful information.

Cosmetics companies know that it’s hard to accomplish that goal, to be able to tell consumers how the product will perform on their face or hair. That’s why they use outside firms to do beauty product consumer perception studies to help get the numbers and opinions that provide consumers with meaningful information about their products.

While it’s true that there are a lot of good sources for information on new beauty products, there are so many different products from so many different lines in even a single company that it’s not practical for an individual blogger to try them all. As a result, the industry utilizes specialty firms to do comprehensive work that covers all their products.

How does this work? It’s harder than it sounds, but here’s a basic overview of the process.

Pre-Market Research

Sometimes the best time to test a new product is before it’s actually a new product. Benchmarking does research with consumers to see what products they think are needed on the market and then measures their interest in the viability of the market.

In other words, if there’s already a popular product out there that is widely used and has good customer satisfaction, the new product might need to be held until its prospects are more positive, such as after the leading brand falls out of fashion. It is much more cost-effective to discuss a product with a focus group and find out that there’s no demand than to invest millions in producing and marketing it, only to find out that there’s no market for it.

Marketing Testing

Have you ever just found yourself turned off by a product’s name, labeling, or packaging? You can’t always put your finger on what’s wrong, but you definitely know you don’t like it. The same goes for the way it is advertised.

Consumer studies check on these types of things. They ask consumers which of several options of the packaging looks most appealing. They discuss slogans and branding, trying to see which ones get traction in the market. That way, they can head to retail with a product that looks and “speaks” the most successful way it can, and once again, they get that information without a costly marketing misfire that could prove too financially big to overcome.

Usage Testing

Finally, we reach the part that most people think is the only part. Consumer testing helps companies determine the answer to the question posed at the very beginning of this article, which is whether a given product does what a consumer expects it to do.

Beauty product testing allows companies to try their products on all types of skin, hair, and nails, encompassing a wide range of natural characteristics to see if their products perform as advertised. The testing process gives a real-life reaction to the products and helps the company intervene before putting a product on the market, another way of preventing a financial disaster–or better yet, preparing for a runaway success.

Most consumers don’t realize just how much work goes into the products they use. They assume that some researcher develops a product, incorporates various colors, and ships it to stores. The reality is that developing beauty products is a complex and detailed process aimed at creating happy, beautiful customers.