Sensory evaluation in the personal care space: A review

Abstract Personal care encompasses a diverse set of product categories including primarily skincare, makeup, and haircare, among others. With such varied use occasions and application styles, researchers require less traditional sensory and consumer research methods for product evaluation including a combination of interviews, focus groups, descriptive analysis, consumer research, and instrumental testing. More novel methods, such as emotion and online review research, provide sensory scientists with new avenues for describing, categorizing, and optimizing personal care products as well. Moreover, a trend of synthesizing results from multiple sources to produce more comprehensive learnings has been found to be highly valuable to researchers. This review discusses current sensory and consumer evaluation methods relevant to the personal care space and considers future opportunities for development and innovation. Practical Application This review synthesizes the available literature on sensory evaluation in the personal care space. It aims to summarize and present the main methods used in these product categories and identify the gaps in knowledge. This work provides a foundation for future personal care research to build on.