Skin care product makers spent US$3.38 billion on advertising in the Asia-Pacific region in the year to June, a report said yesterday.
Ad spending on skin care products was up 12 percent from the same period the year before, with much of the money spent in the Chinese market, Nielsen Media Research said.
Many Asian women bought skin care products to achieve a desired status symbol: a fairer complexion.
"A fair complexion is a symbol of status for many Asian women, while Australians and to a lesser extent New Zealanders, still prefer a tanned `healthier' complexion," Nielsen said.
China accounted for 82 percent of the top 60 ad spenders, and an estimated 70 percent of the US$3.38 billion spent on advertisements was committed to winning new customers in the world's most populous nation, it added.
Richard Basil-Jones, Asia-Pacific managing director at Nielsen Media Research, said skin care advertising appeared to be the most highly competitive sub-sector in the cosmetics and toiletries category.
More than 600 skin care products are tracked for their spending on advertisements across the region, Nielsen said. Usage of products also varied, it said.
Around 80 percent of New Zealanders preferred facial skin care items, while 74 percent of Indonesians preferred body skin care.
Facial cleansing products were No. 1 for 66 percent of Taiwanese and 61 percent of Singaporeans.
"Malaysians appear to be the least enamored to face skin care products," the report said.
Among the rows of vibrators, rubber torsos and leather harnesses at a Chinese sex toys exhibition in Shanghai this weekend, the beginnings of an artificial intelligence (AI)-driven shift in the industry quietly pulsed. China manufactures about 70 percent of the world’s sex toys, most of it the “hardware” on display at the fair — whether that be technicolor tentacled dildos or hyper-realistic personalized silicone dolls. Yet smart toys have been rising in popularity for some time. Many major European and US brands already offer tech-enhanced products that can enable long-distance love, monitor well-being and even bring people one step closer to
Malaysia’s leader yesterday announced plans to build a massive semiconductor design park, aiming to boost the Southeast Asian nation’s role in the global chip industry. A prominent player in the semiconductor industry for decades, Malaysia accounts for an estimated 13 percent of global back-end manufacturing, according to German tech giant Bosch. Now it wants to go beyond production and emerge as a chip design powerhouse too, Malaysian Prime Minister Anwar Ibrahim said. “I am pleased to announce the largest IC (integrated circuit) Design Park in Southeast Asia, that will house world-class anchor tenants and collaborate with global companies such as Arm [Holdings PLC],”
Sales in the retail, and food and beverage sectors last month continued to rise, increasing 0.7 percent and 13.6 percent respectively from a year earlier, setting record highs for the month of March, the Ministry of Economic Affairs said yesterday. Sales in the wholesale sector also grew last month by 4.6 annually, mainly due to the business opportunities for emerging applications related to artificial intelligence (AI) and high-performance computing technologies, the ministry said in a report. The ministry forecast that retail, and food and beverage sales this month would retain their growth momentum as the former would benefit from Tomb Sweeping Day
Thousands of parents in Singapore are furious after a Cordlife Group Ltd (康盛人生集團), a major operator of cord blood banks in Asia, irreparably damaged their children’s samples through improper handling, with some now pursuing legal action. The ongoing case, one of the worst to hit the largely untested industry, has renewed concerns over companies marketing themselves to anxious parents with mostly unproven assurances. This has implications across the region, given Cordlife’s operations in Hong Kong, Macau, Indonesia, the Philippines and India. The parents paid for years to have their infants’ cord blood stored, with the understanding that the stem cells they contained