Consumer Personal Care Product Usage Survey Research

The Office for Product Safety and Standards (OPSS) was created in January 2018 to deliver consumer protection and to support business confidence, productivity, and growth. OPSS is the national regulator for a wide range of non-food consumer products, including personal care and cosmetic products, and is committed to ensuring high levels of consumer protection and product safety in the UK.

This project is being delivered as part of the OPSS Strategic Research Programme (SRP), which was launched in March 2018. This programme provides high quality strategic science-based research to strengthen the evidence base for Safety and Standards policy development, delivery and enforcement, giving businesses the confidence to innovate and protecting consumers from unsafe products. The wide range of evidence-based research supported by the SRP helps to address critical questions relating to current product safety, and/or issues that might arise due to future market developments.

The aim of this project is to assess the usage of selected personal care products via an online consumer usage survey and generate an up to date and representative data set examining patterns of use for personal care products in the UK. This will also involve generating a data set examining the difference in use of personal care products between demographic groups.

By undertaking the research, we would be beginning a process that will potentially allow OPSS, the Scientific Advisory Group on Chemical Safety for Non-Food and Non-Medicinal Consumer Products (SAG-CS) and industry to deliver more accurate chemical risk assessments by improving the accuracy of the exposure assessments used. By measuring demographic characteristics against personal care product usage, it will provide OPSS with a clearer picture of the influence demographic characteristics have on personal care product usage. Diversity and inclusion is core to all the actions we take as regulators. By undertaking this research, it will allow OPSS to better understand consumer behaviour regarding personal care product usage across different groups of consumers and we can consider this evidence in future actions we take on personal care product safety (policy development, campaigns etc). It will also help us to fulfil our mission of protecting people and places through more inclusive assessment of exposure.

We would like to invite prospective bidders to attend a pre-market engagement session on 6th July at 12.30 via MS Teams. Should you wish to attend, please register your interest using the contact details below.

Additional information:

The mission of the Office for Product Safety & Standards (OPSS) is to be a trusted product regulator for the UK. This means protecting people and places, enabling business to thrive and empowering consumers to make good choices. We will be a leader of good regulatory practice and a champion of local regulation.

OPSS is:

• the national regulator for all consumer products, except for vehicles, medicines and food.
• the national regulator for legal metrology, ensuring weighing and measuring instruments are accurate and reliable.

Further information about OPSS can be found via the link provided.