Face cleansers: price works the same at €8 as at €40
I measured 3,483 price changes across 205 cleansing foams and gels and compared each one against the products that held their price. A 10 percent discount improved rank by about 6 percent, a 10 percent increase cost about 6 percent, and both ranges stay clear of one for one. What makes this category unusual is how little the price level matters: split into three price groups, all six figures land between 0.50 and 0.67. There is no segment pattern here at all.
In short
- A 10 percent discount improved rank by about 6 percent (range 5 to 7). Less than the discount gives away.
- A 10 percent increase cost about 6 percent of rank (range 4 to 7). Also demonstrably less than the price gained.
- The price level makes no difference. Budget, mid and premium all react between 0.50 and 0.67, and every range overlaps every other. In eye creams the same split produced a factor of two.
- Deeper discounts still work: a quarter off or more improved rank by 26 percent, against 8 percent for a small cut.
- No easy way in. Not one of the twelve price ranges scores above 44 on the entry assessment, and the best corridor is classified as entrenched.
Price cuts
A 10% cut improved rank by roughly 5 to 7 percent.
Price increases
A 10% increase cost roughly 4 to 7 percent of rank.
Three price groups, one answer
Six figures, all between 0.50 and 0.67, every range overlapping every other. That flatness is the finding. Whether a cleanser costs €8 or €40, a price change produces a rank change roughly six tenths its own size — no more at the premium end, no less at the cheap one.
It is worth holding that against the two categories where the same split did produce a difference. In eye creams a discount bought 0.66 at the budget end and 1.37 at the premium end, a factor of two. In face serums the gap was similar. Here there is nothing to allocate differently: a discount budget spent at the top of the category buys the same as one spent at the bottom.
In both directions the reaction is below one for one, so the practical reading is symmetrical. Discounting gives away more margin than it recovers in visibility. Raising prices costs less rank than the price gained. Neither is dramatic, and neither depends on where the product sits.
The full picture
01 · 1 · Does the size of the price change matter?
Yes — this is where the category does respond.
Rank after price changes of different sizes
The depth of the cut matters more here than the price level does. A small discount improved rank by 8 percent, a moderate one by 15 percent, a quarter off or more by 26 percent — a clean threefold spread across the discount range, with no ceiling in sight.
The increase side climbs more gently at first and then steepens: 8 percent worse rank for a small rise, 12 percent for a moderate one, 25 percent above a quarter. So a modest price correction is comparatively cheap in this category, and a large one is not.
02 · 2 · Will competitors follow?
A little, within a day.
Time until the first competitor answers a price cut
Across 5,397 price changes from 210 products, rivals answered a cut 8 percent more often than their own repricing rhythm would produce and an increase 14 percent more often. Six in ten answers land on the same day. That places this category in the middle of the series — busier than hair oils, calmer than face serums.
03 · 3 · Where could a new product enter?
Nowhere comfortably — and the numbers say so plainly.
Competition and demand by price range
Three price ranges clear the demand baseline, and the strongest of them — €12.29 to €14.64, where 41 percent of the 27 products reach the top third — is classified as entrenched. Not one of the twelve ranges scores above 44 on the entry assessment. This is the first category in the series where the honest answer to the entry question is that there is no good door.
The reason shows up in the entrant record. Sixty-five products launched here in the last two years. Nine have reached the top third. None disappeared. Read together, that describes a category that lets newcomers in and then absorbs them: they survive, and they stay in the lower two thirds.
Two ranges illustrate the wall. €14.64 to €17.45 is the most crowded band with 40 products and just misses the demand baseline. And €35.15 to €41.88 has a typical review count of 1,117 across six products — that end is held by established names, not open ground.
04 · 4 · What the market looks like underneath
Busy, and thin on comparable neighbours.
Of 5,558 price changes found, 953 had another change from the same product running in the same window, 488 had too little ranking data, 219 coincided with a burst of new reviews and 214 with a stockout. 205 were dropped because fewer than five comparable products held their price during the window, and 215 because the product was already sliding before the price came down.
58 of the 340 products do not sit in the foams-and-gels branch of Amazon's own category tree, and 119 of their events are excluded from every figure here. Observed price changes run from 78 percent off to more than thirty-seven times the price — the upper extreme comes from listings returning to a nominal price after being unavailable, far outside the range the figures above are read from.
Data appendix
340 products on amazon.de, taken from the foams-and-gels branch of the face-cleansing listing and then narrowed: no cleansing oils or balms, no micellar waters or wipes, no peels or scrubs, no masks, no bar soaps, no brushes or devices, no men's or children's lines, no multipacks or gift sets, nothing below €7 or above €45, and container sizes between 100 and 250 ml where stated. That volume band removed 135 products and is the reason the price groups can be read as positioning rather than bottle size — this category sells the same formula in 50 ml travel sizes and 400 ml pump bottles. At most three listings per brand, and only products with at least 20 reviews. Products that Amazon does not place in this branch are flagged automatically and excluded from all figures. The product list is available on request for methodological review.
| Step | Events | Removed because |
|---|---|---|
| Price changes found | 5,558 | at least 5% and €0.30, held for 7 days |
| Gaps in the price history | −103 | the change cannot be located precisely |
| Too little ranking data | −488 | less than 70% of days covered |
| Overlapping price change | −953 | another change from the same product in the window |
| Deal or coupon markers | −0 | none recorded in this set |
| Stockout signals | −214 | rank moves for availability, not price |
| Burst of new reviews | −219 | more than 10% and at least 15 new reviews |
| Listing too young | −117 | less than 60 days of history |
| Too few control products | −205 | fewer than five comparable products held their price |
| Passed every check | 3,811 | an event can fail several checks, so the removals sum to more than the difference |
| Used for the figures | 3,483 | from 205 products, after removing 215 with a pre-existing trend and 119 from other category branches |
price change ≥ 5% and ≥ €0.30, held ≥ 7 days · comparison: 14 days before, days 3–14 after · control products: same category, price moved less than 2%, at least 5 of them · rank coverage ≥ 70% of days · listing older than 60 days · review burst = more than 10% and at least 15 new reviews · ranges are 90%, from a bootstrap clustered by product
Observed price changes: −77.7% to +3,746.2%. The extreme upper end comes from listings returning to a nominal price after being unavailable; the figures above are read only from the range where changes are dense.
Limits — I measure the ranking, not units sold, in the 14 days after a price change. Results hold only for the price range actually observed. Every figure is for the category as a whole or for one of its three price groups, never for an individual product. Where a range touches the level at which nothing happens, I say so instead of quoting a number.
- 340 products
- 5,558 price changes found
- 3,811 passed every check
- 3,483 used for the figures
- 205 products in the fit set
- ref 07ff0cbb
The Monthly
Each weekly report measures a single category. The Monthly is where they get compared, and it carries the quarterly report when one is published.