Babies Consumer Insights

Trend - Brands in the personal care space are creating organic sunscreens designed for infant use. These sunscreens are devoid of harmful ingredients and are easy to wash off. These sunscreens are designed to reduce sun damage for infants, preventing skin irritations and ensuring healthy development.

Insight - While sunscreen has always been a popular part of consumers' daily skincare routines in the summer, social media platforms have drawn attention to the damaging effects of the sun, with such videos going viral. Consumers are now more actively wearing sunscreens, while parents ensure their children do the same. With a focus on regions with more sun exposure throughout the year, brands are now releasing specially formulated infant sunscreens for year-round daily use, even outside of the summer.

Trend - Smart home companies are releasing baby monitors with artificial intelligence (AI)-powered features. Rather than acting as cameras and recording devices, these monitors use AI features for non-intrusive monitoring of breathing or sleeping patterns, body temperature, and more.

Insight - New Millennial and Gen Z parents are tasked with balancing full-time work with social lives and raising their newborns. Rising costs of living have led to these parents often having less free time than previous generations. To alleviate the strain of home tasks, many of these parents turn to smart home or AI-powered products, such as robot vacuum or AI washing machines. In recognition of this demand, smart home and infant care brands are releasing AI baby monitors with time-saving features.

Trend - Companies are launching artificial intelligence (AI)-powered baby naming services. These services suggest baby names based on the user's preferences, such as gender or language. The tools use conversational AI to further limit these pools, enabling the user to state more niche name preferences.

Insight - Soon-to-be parents often struggle with preparation in all forms, being tasked with planning entire months or years ahead to ensure a smooth upbringing for the upcoming baby. These parents aim to reduce stress in each part of the parenthood process, and they turn to countless resources to help, such as parenting books or blogs. In recognition of this stressful life period, companies are launching AI-powered tools and services to help alleviate stress from the parenthood process.

Trend - Skincare brands for toddlers are launching new vegan-certified collections. These products are made with natural, plant-based ingredients that are gentle and nourishing for delicate skin. Brands emphasize the ethical and environmental benefits of choosing vegan skincare products for babies.

Insight - Consumers are increasingly concerned about the ethical and environmental impact of their cosmetics choices. These consumers are aware of the animal testing and exploitation involved in many conventional skincare products, as well as the harmful effects of synthetic and animal-derived ingredients, leading to a preference for vegan and cruelty-free skincare products for themselves and their families. Brands are catering to these demands with vegan products with specialized collections for babies.

Trend - Brands are launching luxury and designer skincare collections for newborns and infants. These products have easy-to-understand, short ingredient lists for safety and transparency. Brands position these products as better solutions for ensuring the healthy development of babies.

Insight - Younger generations of parents, such as Gen Z and Millenials, are acutely aware of the potential damage of chemical ingredients. These generations grew up learning about the dangers of microplastics, processed foods, and more. This knowledge leads these parents to prefer organic, natural, and clean products for their newborn babies, and are willing to pay a premium price to ensure the products are of the highest quality. Brands are responding to these pressures with luxury products for babies.

Trend - Kid and baby food manufacturers in North America are expanding recipes to include globalized flavors. These globally-inspired recipes expose youth to more foods and flavors early on, thus expanding their familiar palate. Children raised with expanded palates more often eat healthy, balanced diets.

Insight - Younger generations of parents in North America, namely Millennials and older Gen Z, often grew up in globalized cities with countless options for cultural foods and flavors available to them. These parents want to ensure that their children not only adopt healthy diets, but are also able to enjoy the same, if not more, varieties of foods than they have. Brands are recognizing the value of expanding the palate of children early, and are launching globally-inspired kids' meals as a response.

Trend - Brands in the baby food industry have begun using hydrocolloids typically found in seaweed and algae. These extracts offer alternative, organic, plant-based sources of nutrients like DHA. This contributes to a sustainable industry while reducing costs due to the availability of algae.

Insight - Consumers with children are increasingly turning to natural baby foods, formulas, and milks. Each year the organic baby food industry grows by more than 10%, showing that there is an evergreen demand for healthy baby products. These consumers want to ensure their offspring grow up with the benefits of a natural diet, rather than risk using heavily processed foods as a cost-saving measure. As such, there is a real demand for brands to release affordable organic baby foods.

Trend - Brands in the cosmetic and beauty industry are offering their products to kids to mimic adult spa rituals. These products transform the bath time experience into a relaxing and sensory-focused activity to help kids feel pampered.

Insight - Throughout the pandemic, adult consumers have altered their lifestyles to focus more on self-care through home spa solutions and mindful practices. The stress of the last two years has taken a toll on kids as well as adults. Because of this, parents and guardians are looking for wellness products and services geared toward kids to mitigate stress and practice wellness rituals together.

Trend - As more consumers turn to convenient health solutions, health brands are offering parents of infants supplements that can be incorporated into their children's diets in order to ensure they're consuming enough nutrients.

Insight - Millennial parents are raising their children aligned with their personal beliefs and lifestyles, many of which include a focus on health and wellness. These parents are turning to brands that allow them to raise their kids with the same wellness rituals and habits that they're accustomed to.

Trend - Brands are launching apps that allow parents to rent baby equipment for short periods of time rather than purchasing the items and trying to resell them afterward. These apps are ideal for parents traveling or looking for cost-effective solutions.

Insight - The cost of raising a child can be very strenuous for parents, especially since the items needed are quickly outgrown. Many parents are looking for affordable ways to reduce their consumption and costs that meet their needs at different milestones. These consumers value collaborative consumption models and will flock to brands that offer services designed for their lifestyle.