Defining and decoding skin glow of women with skin phototype IV + living in South Africa: Part 1

OBJECTIVE: The pursuit of glowing skin has gained momentum worldwide with glow beauty claims having almost doubled globally from 2017 (13%) to 2021 (25%) and continues to trend to date. Some African countries are characterized by warm, humid climatic conditions. As such, African women pursue a specific type of skin glow. However, African consumers have not strictly defined glowing skin, and standardized instrumental methods or terminology to quantify and decode skin glow remain limited across diverse phototypes, thus creating a gap between consumer perception and objective evaluation of skin glow. A unique opportunity therefore exists to scientifically decode African skin glow for new product development to help consumers achieve this ideal skin quality. METHODS: This two-part study was conducted in South Africa (SA) on subjects with Fitzpatrick scale phototypes IV-VI and investigated skin glow on the face and body in women aged 18-45 years. Part 1 explored the vocabulary of skin glow through qualitative focus groups (n = 15) and quantitative interviews (n = 131), while Part 2 focused on the instrumental quantification of glow. Due to the complexity of the findings, Part 2 will be addressed in a follow up article. RESULTS: Routine analysis showed that participants used between 4 and 7 products on average to achieve glow. In SA, the top descriptors for face and body skin glow were 'smooth' (44% for face and 47% for body), 'healthy-looking' (44% for face and 44% for body), 'radiant' (53% for face and 35% for body) and 'glowing' (46% for face and 40% for body). Dark marks and skin tone heterogeneity were key concerns that hindered glow. CONCLUSION: Our findings showed that SA consumers used varying terminology to describe skin glow, utilized different products to achieve it and experienced unique challenges that hindered their skin glow. Additionally, most consumers emphasized a strong link between hydration, moisturization and glow, indicating that these elements are essential for glowing skin. This study contributes towards addressing the paucity of literature that explores the attributes of African skin of women living in Africa and is the first to decode the perception of skin glow amongst these consumers.