Biological cosmetic products: difference between consumers‟ thoughts and perceptions about biological world

Biological products often represent the cutting edge of medical science and research. These products replicate natural substances such as enzymes, antibodies, or hormones. Nowadays, the biological products are used in different ways, for example for making cosmetics. The difference of biological cosmetic products compared to traditional cosmetics is the use of natural components to take care of ourselves. The present research aimed at detecting the consumers’ engagement during the test of different cosmetic products, biologics and traditional (chemicals) ones. The main purpose was to explore the consumers’ cognitive and emotive responses to understand the efficacy of biological products. Implicit (brain oscillations and hemispheric lateralization effect) and explicit (preference consumers) measures were considered in order to define the cortical network related to the reward mechanisms that were supposed to be frontally left-lateralized. Also, we have compared the consumers’ emotive responses to smelling and tasting of two different products. Brain oscillations (delta, theta, alpha, beta) and lateralization effect (Log-Transformed-Asymmetry, LTA) were monitored within the prefrontal area when 16 women participated to the study: at first they were asked to smell two skin creams, biological and traditional, without showing the product packages; then, they tasted the same creams by spreading the products blindly on the palm of their hands (one cream for each palm in randomized order). Right frontal theta band power revealed a significant increase (cortical activity) in all consumers during the biological product smelling and testing, despite it was itself evaluated as more preferred to take care of themselves compared to traditional chemical products. The perception of biological product was negative in the cases where participants were not aware of the tested product types: the subjects did not like the smell and the biological cream resulted hard to spread. In different ways, participants talked about cosmetic products and recognized their special properties for body. Therefore, in this research an incongruity between the consumer thought (explicit level) and her perception (implicit level) of biological cosmetic world was present.