Consumption of Cosmetic Products: Why Bleach?

Due to consumers' high demand for cosmetic products and the effect of cultural diversities, we find mainly blacks engaging in bleaching in order to become light-skin instead of remaining dark skin as they were born. Considering that the context of the survey was made up of mainly French-speaking individuals, the questionnaire was administered through a computer-assisted personal interview [CAPI survey] using tablets and smartphones. The data was collected in cosmetic shops in a metropolitan city in Cameroon. On one hand, we captured consumers' perception of bleaching through several Likert scale items [1. strongly disagree - 5. strongly agree], second, we captured the motives behind bleaching and lastly we measured the effect of peers and advertisements on bleaching. The data indicates that; female are more prone to bleaching due to peer pressure, and partner requests compared to males who mainly bleach because they want to look more handsome.