Xuezhu Bambou Tan

Holism in Alternative Medicine and Consumer Perception Xuezhu Bambou Tan

As a Chinese woman with double culture (French & Chinese) living in France, I have seen the rising of the holism in daily life in western world: homeopathy, naturopathy, yoga, osteopathy, mind-body balance... I find it interesting that the ancient oriental philosophy start to be integrated in western world. Holism is closely related to medicine as application. As a chemist and having worked a few years in the research of application of traditional Chinese medicine into cosmetics products, I get interested in the application of 'holism' into cosmetic case. It seems like lots of brands are developing their products in this way, marketing their products in this way, and it seems like lots of consumers or influencers are also getting more and more 'hooked' in this holistic approach for beauty products, however, does it make sense? How consumer really perceive it? Will consumer really buy products with holistic approach? That is how I started with my book. I started with the literature research on topics of: holism, alternative medicine, cosmetics, skin care. There are lots of literature on application of holism into alternative medicine, or even the concept of 'self-care', but not much regarding holism into cosmetics. Based on the literature review, I have given several 'attributes' that could represent holism in cosmetic field, and then I started the analysis of brands and qualitative study based on this 'assumption'. The 2nd part is an analysis of cosmetics brands both having 'holistic approach' as DNA of brands, and brands that are more classical but selling products with 'holistic approach'. Through this analysis, I have done a semiotic analysis on different brands based on how they perceive or treat with nature. The 3rd part is the result of the qualitative studies (semi-conductive) on 6 women, aging from 20 to 60 years old.