Consumer Response

As of today, consumers have demonstrated a strong desire for efficacious home-use products and equally strong comfort with the technologies introduced. Far from being intimidated by words like “laser,” “radio frequency,” “microcurrent,” “chemical peel,” “microdermabrasion,” on the boxes of these new products, consumers have embraced them as a means to access treatments that were once only available through physicians. This offers the potential of greater convenience at a lower cost. As these products have generally been developed so that consumers can easily and safely use them at home, they have not yet been proven too complex or sophisticated for the average value-conscious consumer

Figure 25.1 Aesthetic home device retail sales by company, 2006-2011.

to try. For aesthetic procedure patients, this confidence is also fueled in part by the rising usage by physicians of nurses, aestheticians and others to perform treatments, leading con­sumers to believe that with proper instruction, they could also operate advanced aesthetic devices.

That said, not all the emerging home-use products have provided a high cost-benefit. Some have proven relatively ineffective, or have simply not lived up to the consumers’ expectations. This has largely been the result of unbalanced marketing campaigns, wherein the benefits of new products are exaggerated to justify their higher prices, with the inevi­table consequence of consumer dissatisfaction. Among the more spectacular examples of this phenomenon has been rotating coil hair-removal systems, which were initially pro­moted as a quick and painless method of long-term hair removal. After rushing out to try the EpiLady, which launched the category, women of all ages found that this was not the case at all, and the resulting negative publicity drove the product’s distributors into bank­ruptcy. Marketers of newer home-use devices appear to be more cautious, so that accep­tance of the products is proceeding in a more controlled and sustainable manner.