Share of shoppers buying beauty products online 2023, by country

A survey conducted in the second quarter of 2023 revealed that around 46 percent of shoppers in the United States were purchasing beauty products through online channels, more than any other country surveyed. In France, for example, that figure stood at 30 percent.

The landscape of online beauty shopping in France

As one may expect, women in France are much more likely to buy beauty products online than their male counterparts. In the third quarter of 2022, the share of female shoppers in the country who bought beauty and personal care products online was 13 percentage points greater than that of French men, to be exact. According to a survey, the main motivations for women in France to purchase said products were their friends and acquaintances, with social media also having a large influence.

Sephora: a market leader

When discussing the e-commerce landscape of the beauty and personal care segment in France, one must always mention Sephora, as it is the go-to destination for French online shoppers interested in said products. That being said, with more than five million visits in August 2022, sephora.fr topped the list of the most visited beauty and personal care websites in the European country. Although popular in its home country of France, Sephora’s reach extends far beyond that, and in April 2022 monthly traffic to its .com website reached roughly 57 million visits.