9 in 10 women have bought the wrong haircare product for their hair.
"I just grab whatever's on sale. Half the time it makes my hair worse." - Survey respondent, July 2026
of women have bought a haircare product that turned out to be wrong for their hairtype
87.3%
of women followed a professional’s recommendation for their haircare purchase
14.3%
1 in 4
women stopped buying from a brand entirely after one wrong-product experience
of dissatisfied customer left a review - the damage is invisible to brands and retailers
1.3%
*Research conducted by piiq Digital via Pollfish, July 2026. n=600 women who personally purchase their own haircare products. Margin of error ±4% at 95% confidence.
Why it keeps happening
Professional haircare has moved into mass retail. The expert consultation that made it work stayed in the salon.
Today, 59.5% of women buy haircare from a supermarket or grocery store.
Another 45.3% buy online. Only 19.5% buy from a hair salon - the one place where a professional can match a product to their actual hair.
Without that prescription, women are making the decision alone.
The most common method? Picking based on their own assessment of their hair concerns (21.8%) or brand habit (19.8%).
Only 14.3% consulted a professional.
The result: nearly 9 in 10 women end up with the wrong product. And almost half of them (48.8%) say it's happened more than once.
What Happens When a Product Doesn't Work?
The industry assumes dissatisfied customers complain. They don't.
What women actually did…
47.8%
Threw it away or left it unused
27.2%
Kept using it, hoping it would improve
27%
Switched to a different product from the same brand
24.7%
Stopped buying from that brand altogether
15.7%
Returned it or asked for a refund
1.3%
Left a negative review
Nearly half of all dissatisfied customers simply discard the product and move on. No review. No return. No signal for the brand that anything went wrong.
1 in 4 go further - they stop buying from that brand entirely. Silently. Without warning.
What This Means for the Industry
For Brands
Your product is being purchased without a diagnosis.
When it fails (and for 87.3% of consumers, it does) you lose the customer without ever knowing why.
Brand equity built over decades is eroding at the point of purchase, one silent departure at a time.
For Retailers
Returns are the visible cost.
Silent churn is the invisible one.
With only 1.3% of dissatisfied customers leaving a review, retailers have no feedback signal when a product fails a customer.
The damage compounds unseen.
For Salons & Hair Pros
Only 14.3% of women followed a hairdresser's recommendation on their last purchase.
Professional expertise is being bypassed, not because clients don't value it, but because the purchase journey no longer passes through the salon.
The Solution
Pro Hair I.D. by piiq Digital is the world's first AI-powered hair diagnostic tool built for retail scale.
In under 30 seconds (no app, no download, no sign-up) a selfie produces a professional-grade hair diagnosis matched to the right products for that specific person's hair.
Already live in-store and online at Chemist Warehouse, the southern hemisphere’s biggest beauty retailer, in partnership with L'Oréal PPD.
Already generating real consumer hair intelligence at retail scale.
The prescription gap is measurable. It is solvable. We are solving it.
