Did COVID-19 lockdown impact consumption of risky fairness creams in India?

Abstract

Fairness industry, all over the globe is going through a drastic change in its structure. The outrage against the killing of George Floyd’s in America led to multiple accusations against the fairness industry like openly promotion of racism and discrimination using their product. This called for an immediate action from top companies like HUL and Lakme. With this context and background, the report will analyze the impact of covid-19 on the consumption of fairness cream in India. To analyze the same, the report will focus first on understanding the fairness industry trends in India. Further industry analysis has been done to understand the current global and Indian skincare market. The report also looks at the COVID-19 impact on the skincare product in India. Survey analysis was conducted to understand the behaviour changes in the people before covid and post COVID world. The report also tries to relate the inferences of the survey with the inferences drawn from Focussed Group Discussion and Interviews. NVivo tool has also been used to do comment analysis on online review platform like Mouthshut.com. NVivo helped us to identify the sentiments of the people about the fairness cream. Based on the analysis, the report concludes that despite understanding the harmful impact of fairness on the skin, there was no significant shift in its perception during the COVID-19 lockdown. However, COVID-19 did reduce the usage and consumption of the fairness cream in India.