he U.S. currently is the world’s largest beauty market, with about 20% share, followed by China (13%) and Japan (8%). While projections for growth vary, most agree it will continue to advance at a 5%-to-7% compound-annual-growth-rate to reach or exceed $800 billion by 2025.

Even if the world economy dips between now and then, the beauty business is more likely than other discretionary categories to hold its own. That’s owing to the “Lipstick Effect,” a theory proposed by Professor Juliet Shor back in 1999 in her book The Over-Spent American.

Shor hypothesized that when times get tight, consumers will continue to indulge in prestige cosmetics – little luxuries – that give them an emotional lift, while forgoing expenditures on higher-priced luxury goods. Having studied “why people buy things they don’t need” since then (it’s the title of my first book), I have no reason to dispute her theory. The “Lipstick Effect” holds.

Not Every Brand is seeing growth

That said, not all brands will benefit or grow as fast as the overall market. Quite the contrary, there will be plenty of losers, as well as winners, in the business of beauty, because it faces seismic shifts in how women, and increasingly men, define beauty and the role of beauty products in their lives.

A new study by Ipsos sheds light on the changing face of beauty, along with predictions about the trends that will shape the future of the beauty marketplace. The report, entitled “What the Future: Beauty,” summarizes a series of in-depth global consumer surveys. It provides an over-the-horizon look at the consumer trends that will grow in importance over the next five years.