RocketView aims to offer ultimate beauty guide

RocketView CEO Kim Hwa-kyung gives a speech at the Contents Marketing Summit 2019 held from Sept. 24 to 27. Courtesy of Kim Hwa-kyung

By Kwak Yeon-soo

The demand for cost-effective, non-toxic products has been increasing, with savvy consumers calling for greater transparency from brands and retailers.

Until recently, few consumers considered that there might be harmful chemicals present in the products they used daily.

However, an increasing number of consumers have become more conscious about the content of, for example, their makeup products. Nowadays, they often test cosmetic products before purchasing and check ingredients to see if they are safe for their skin.

According to market research firm Embrain Trend Monitor, consumers consider ingredients as the most important factor when evaluating beauty or personal care products.

About 67 percent of those surveyed believe it is important to consider ingredients when deciding which products to buy, followed by price and brand awareness.

To satisfy consumers that are desperately in need of credible information about beauty products, Kim Hwa-kyung, CEO of RocketView, developed a mobile app designed to reveal ingredients, best prices and reviews of the products.

"I made the app thinking that people need to be able to make informed decisions about the beauty products they buy," Kim said.

The Scan and Search app helps customers make decisions when selecting cosmetic products by displaying all the information regarding the product after the customer scans the product's barcode.

The optical character recognition (OCR) software extracts text from images of the products and connects them to the firm's database of 250,000-plus products, which are divided into several categories including skincare, makeup, hair care, and perfumes.

"Our app helps consumers find out exactly what's in their beauty products and whether it poses a health risk to them," Kim said. "It also offers the best prices so they get the lowest prices."

Kim explained that the idea came from watching many struggle to make decisions at a health and beauty store.

"There are literally thousands of cosmetic products at a store and it can be a little overwhelming trying to pick the right one," she said. "I've seen consumers who just stood at the corner of the store looking up ingredients and reviews of the product."

She added that she wanted to create a trustworthy app so that consumers do not get swayed by influencers or paid advertisements.

As young consumers get more tech-savvy, they spend more time online learning about different products. With their increased access to information they are also more vigilant about whether harmful ingredients are used in them.

Kim said there are three main reasons that consumers look online for information ― to find out ingredients, search for the lowest prices and check product reviews.

"Most women gather information about the products through multiple channels including Instagram, YouTube, e-commerce sites and blogs," Kim said, "Scan and Search can save them time because it gathers all this information into a single app."

The CEO also stressed that consumers are moving away from big brands and paying more attention to cost-effectiveness and the products themselves.

"Brand value no longer guarantees good quality. Consumers are wise enough to know that a lot of companies with lower brand recognition focus on developing good quality," she said.

When asked how RocketView obtains its product database, Kim said the team uses technology and social media.

"Researching products is difficult because we constantly have to update the database. But with the help of technology and social media, the process has become much easier," she said.

Since the app does not have partnerships with big cosmetic manufacturers or health and beauty stores, its employees have to manually upload product information.

However, Scan and Search has accumulated more than 1 million users, mostly women, since it was created at the end of 2016.

"Compared with other similar apps that are widely used by those in their 20s and 30s, Scan and Search is more popular among teenagers. They account for 41 percent of all users," Kim said, "About 93 percent of the users are female."

Kim explained the benefit of having knowledge of consumers' choice of beauty products.
"We earn a profit by getting a commission from beauty brands after selling our insights of consumer trends and behavior to them," she said.

"We need to work on more advanced big data analysis since we're only given access to data of users buying products from designated retailers. We'll analyze this further to figure out our users' search data."

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