Sustainable Beauty: A Conceptual Paper of How Sustainable Marketing Impact Consumer Behaviour in the Cosmetic Industry

: This conceptual paper outlines the impact of sustainable marketing on consumer behaviour in China's cosmetics industry. With the severe environmental changes and people's environmental protection awareness, consumers are more likely to buy environmentally friendly products when buying cosmetics. The study demonstrates the role of sustainability in changing consumer buying habits, highlighting the cosmetic industry's shift towards environmentally friendly and ethical approaches. It highlights the sector's challenges, particularly in production and management, which pose serious sustainability issues. By taking a closer look at how sustainable marketing influences consumer choices and buying patterns, this study aims to reveal how eco-friendly buying habits, ethical considerations, and environmental awareness drive demand for beauty products. Through the literature review, this study discovers the trends in this industry, such as the growing interest in cleansing beauty products and the shift of consumer behaviors towards sustainability. It also builds a framework linking sustainable practices to consumer behaviour, which is based on the interplay between consumer purchase considerations and sustainable practices.


Introduction
The cosmetics industry in China generally refers to the beauty or personal care industry.Many products such as skin care, hair care, cosmetics, perfumes and other products fall under the cosmetics industry [1].Chinese consumers will consider various environment-related issues when purchasing cosmetics, because the rapid growth of the cosmetics market is accompanied by effective environmental deterioration [2].
According to the research of Man and Rahman, the cosmetics industry is undergoing a significant transformation in today's world, with environmental sustainability and ethical consumerism increasingly perfected [3].While cosmetics such as skin care products enhance beauty and selfesteem, they often carry environmental risks.A large ecological footprint is created in the production, packaging and handling of these products.The sustainability challenges facing the cosmetics industry must therefore be addressed both globally and locally in China [4].The primary purpose of this study is to explore sustainable marketing's role in shaping Chinese consumer behaviour when purchasing cosmetics.In the cosmetics industry, sustainable marketing practices are emerging as a key to addressing challenges.Sustainable marketing includes multiple aspects, mainly focusing on environmental responsibility strategies, ethical procurement and transparent communication with consumers [5].
As in many other parts of the world, sustainable marketing practices are gaining popularity as cosmetics companies in China realize the importance of appealing to consumers who prioritize sustainability.As cleaning products became popular, different celebrities began to promote and publicize the beauty of cleaning [6].It can be seen that consumers in the cosmetics industry want clean, natural products and, simultaneously, want them to be safer to use.
Due to increasing environmental pollution and its impact on people's health, the sustainability aspect of the business environment has gradually moved to the forefront [7].As with the global environment, the cosmetics industry in China is experiencing a growing focus on environmentally friendly and ethical businesses [8].Consumers are looking for environmentally friendly products from natural or organic raw materials.Concerns include animal testing, excessive packaging of products and the use of dangerous chemicals.One of the major contributing factors to creating environmental sustainability is consumers' green purchasing behaviour.
The study is important in making readers more aware of the necessity and effectiveness of adopting sustainable marketing, thus influencing the behaviour of Chinese consumers when purchasing cosmetics products.The study aimed to understand how sustainable marketing can change customer behaviour and attitudes towards cosmetic skincare products and practices.

Literature review
Consumers are increasing their environmental awareness and demand for clean products in the global cosmetics industry, which is a shift in consumer purchase habits [9].As Pop, suniplalcan & Alt [10] stated, the cosmetics industry actively responds to customer needs, including developing an increasing number of healthy lifestyle items and eco-friendly beauty products.This shift is happening in many places outside Western markets, such as China.Under the complex role of economic, cultural and social factors, the emergence of environmental awareness and clean beauty has impacted consumer behaviour in the Chinese cosmetics industry.Kapoor, Singh & Misra [11] argued that developing countries could use green cosmetics as a new competitive advantage.At the same time, consideration of sustainability is also an influential factor in consumers' purchases [12].The consumer environment constantly changes, and sustainable marketing has become a key factor in customer behaviour.Sustainable marketing is a multifaceted approach that combines ethical sourcing, social responsibility and environmentally friendly practices.Changes in consumer preference for cleaning products and green purchasing behaviour are affecting various cosmetics companies in China [13].Consumers' green buying patterns will lead to more consideration of reducing carbon footprint, ethical considerations, sustainable business practices, and sustainable products when purchasing cosmetics.Scholars analyze from different angles when studying green purchasing behavior.This paper sorted out the effects of Reduction of the carbon footprint, Environmental awareness and Social influence on green purchasing decisions, as shown in the following table.

Influencing factors
Studies from scholars

Reduction of the carbon footprint
Reducing carbon footprint is the focus of sustainable marketing, an issue that can be addressed by promoting environmentally friendly technologies and products with less environmental impact while increasing consumer preferences [14].Many people make their purchasing decisions by analyzing the environmental impact of a company's products' carbon footprint [13].
Successfully reducing the carbon footprint of products in the cosmetics industry will improve consumers' purchasing decisions on green purchasing behaviour [15].
To meet consumers' green buying preferences, companies are pushing for more information about carbon footprint labels to be attached to products as a way to encourage environmentally responsible purchasing decisions [16].

Environmental awareness
Rente [17] believes that to meet consumers' environmental concerns, cosmetics manufacturers adopt more green chemistry and sustainable principles in the production of products.
With growing global concerns about climate change, sustainability and pollution, Chinese consumers are increasingly concerned about the possible environmental impact of what they buy [18].The public's growing awareness of environmental protection is one of the key factors driving Chinese consumers' green purchasing behaviour [19].
Zameer, H & Yasmeen H [20] designed a survey to explore the influencing factors of green purchase intention in quantitative research method, and found that environmental awareness significantly enhanced green purchase intention, and green purchase intention was the key to sustainable consumption.

Social influence
When Huang [21] studied the factors determining consumer behaviour in China's cosmetics industry, he took social influence factors as an effective and appropriate mediating variable.
According to the findings of Martins and Marto's [22] proactive review of the social impact in cosmetic design, cosmetic companies that value sustainability in the design process will positively impact consumer choices.Nittala and Moturu [23] mention that consumers, aware that their consumption habits have a corresponding social impact, will naturally choose to make purchasing decisions based on values that promote sustainability and environmental responsibility.Wang, S. T. [24] studied the influence of consumer characteristics and social influencing factors on green consumption, and the results showed that collectivist values and subjective norms in social influencing factors had a positive impact on consumers' green consumption intention.

Conceptual framework
This paper reviews the relationship between sustainable marketing and green consumer behaviour in the Chinese cosmetics market.This conceptual study provides a deep exploration of the research topic and makes an academic contribution to the development direction of the cosmetics industry in China.
According to domestic and foreign literature analysis, in the context of sustainable marketing, factors affecting consumer purchasing behaviour in the cosmetics industry mainly include reducing carbon footprint, environmental awareness and social influence.Therefore, this paper proposes a conceptual framework, as shown in the figure below.

Recommendations for future research
Future studies can delve into the factors that influence changes in consumer preferences.Further, study the shaping process of consumer preference for sustainable cosmetics and explores the factors influencing consumer choices, such as brand image, product effectiveness and price.Combining with specific cosmetics brands, future studies can explore how changes in brand production practices interact with consumers' green purchasing behaviour.
In addition, future research can also carry out cross-cultural comparative research.Compare consumer perceptions and attitudes towards sustainable cosmetics in different cultural contexts to better understand different cultural responses to sustainable marketing.From the perspective of different cultures, explore the green shopping promotion measures for different cultural groups.
From the perspective of enterprise development, future research can study the effectiveness of sustainable marketing strategies.Evaluate the effectiveness of different sustainable marketing strategies in the cosmetics market, including indicators such as brand awareness, sales growth and consumer loyalty.In addition, empirical analysis and research can also be carried out to conduct quantitative data analysis of various indicators to obtain enterprise strategy suggestions more objectively.

Conclusion
Over the past few years, consumer behavioral preferences have changed in the cosmetics industry.Consumers are already putting more weight on sustainability when making decisions.This shift in consumer preferences in the cosmetics industry has taken place.Due to more and more of this shift, sustainable marketing is becoming increasingly important in terms of consumer behaviour.This study found that with the deepening of environmental deterioration, the consumer behaviour of Chinese consumers in purchasing cosmetics has changed in the context of sustainable marketing.More and more consumers are inclined to buy more environmentally friendly products.When they shop, they pay attention to reducing carbon emissions.Increased environmental awareness also makes consumers think more before making a purchase.Social influence makes consumers more inclined to buy environmentally friendly products that conform to mainstream common sense when purchasing cosmetics.This study proposes a conceptual framework to explain the factors influencing consumers' green consumption behaviour.This study also enriches the research theory of sustainable shopping and consumer behaviour in the cosmetics industry.
Proceedings of the 2nd International Conference on Management Research and Economic Development DOI: 10.54254/2754-1169/93/20241083

Table 1 :
Factors affecting consumers' green purchasing behaviour.