Scented candles receive negative reviews again, and the aftereffects of the COVID-19 pandemic have affected scented products

Scented candles receive negative reviews , possibly linked to surge in COVID-19 cases

Yankee Candle, a well-known candle brand, has always received rave reviews, but its reputation has recently suffered a setback, with Amazon US being flooded with negative reviews.

The following are recent ( November to December) negative reviews:

“—I bought it before and the scent would fill the whole room, but this one has almost no smell.

- No smell unless you put your face in the glass container. Burned for 8 hours and no fragrance at all.

——It smells only of wax...and nothing else.

——I suspect this may be a knockoff. If not, then their quality has declined.

… ”

With so many negative reviews popping up all of a sudden, is it true that the quality has declined as the reviews say? However, the problem may not be the candles, but people's sense of smell. Consumers who gave negative reviews may have been infected with the new coronavirus, as loss of smell is one of its symptoms.

Nick Beauchamp, an assistant professor of political science at Northeastern University , studied customer reviews of the top three Yankee Candles on Amazon and found that around December, reviews about "no smell" increased dramatically.

And at this moment, the global epidemic is on the rise again, and the epidemic in the United States has once again reached a "tragic milestone."

According to the New York Times, the number of newly confirmed cases in the United States increased by 48% in the past week ending on the 26th, with an average daily increase of 182,682 cases in the past seven days. Data from the New York State Department of Health showed that the number of children hospitalized for COVID-19 in New York City has increased fourfold since the 5th of this month.

As the Omicron strain spreads rapidly across the United States, the current daily positive COVID-19 test rate in the United States is higher than the peak of the Delta strain this summer. Among the newly confirmed cases in the United States, the Omicron strain accounts for nearly three-quarters of the cases , and in some areas on the East Coast, the figure is as high as 90%.

In fact, this is not the first time that such a situation has occurred. At the end of last year, it was reported that the scented candle store on Amazon in the United States received a large number of negative reviews, and sellers of scented candles of different brands received negative reviews at the same time.

Academics also investigated this at the time. Kate Petrova, a research assistant at Harvard University's Department of Adult Development, analyzed reviews of the three best-selling scented candles and ordinary candles on Amazon in the United States from 2017 to 2020 .

The survey found that the ratings of unscented candles did not change much, but the ratings of scented candles dropped sharply between January and November 2020, and most of the reasons for the negative reviews were that they had no smell. The negative reviews for lack of fragrance all saw a small peak in April , August , October, and November . This coincides with the outbreak of several waves of the epidemic in the United States.

This phenomenon is not limited to the United States. A similar trend was also seen in perfume reviews on Amazon UK. Not only that, but there were also feedbacks from domestic sellers: “I originally thought that Europeans and Americans were anxious and irritable due to long-term isolation at home, so they kept giving bad reviews. Now I think my beauty products are also scent-based.”

In this light, does the negative reviews for scented candles mean that all fragrance-related products will be affected? This is really worth the attention of sellers.

Problems with the sense of smell will affect consumers' purchasing decisions. And studies have shown that the sequelae of the new crown may not be recovered in a short time, it may take a week, a month, or a year, or even permanent damage. This means that sellers need to fight a "protracted war."

Crisis is also a business opportunity. Sales of wigs and decompression products have soared

The sequelae of COVID-19 are far more than just olfactory problems. A survey on the sequelae of COVID-19 patients in South Korea showed that relatively severe hair loss and asthma during exercise occurred three months after recovery . In Japan, a woman who had recovered from COVID-19 was interviewed. Two months after the symptoms of COVID-19 disappeared, she found that her hair had fallen out in large quantities, and her hair volume was reduced to about half of what it used to be.

The director of a Tokyo clinic said that some COVID-19 patients have almost lost all their hair. This phenomenon of hair loss is different from hair loss caused by aging. It does not have a tendency to occur in different age groups. It is easy to have this symptom several months after the onset of COVID-19. The director also pointed out that the number of people who came to the hospital for consultation on hair loss in October this year was 4.5 times that of August.

In addition, during the epidemic, people's exercise volume decreased, but the pressure of work and life did not decrease, which also led to more and more serious "head anxiety". A survey shows that about 60% of Japanese people are in danger of hair loss. And everyone wears a mask and can't see their face, so they pay more attention to their hair and hairstyle.

Due to various reasons, the sales of wigs, hair growth oils and other related products have increased rapidly in the past two years, and the demand is gender-neutral. The head of the marketing planning department of a Japanese wig manufacturer said that the female wig industry has grown 3.6 times compared with the previous year , and the male wig industry has grown 2.7 times. A men's custom wig salon in Ginza is also doing a booming business, with sales increasing by 30% year-on-year since 2020.

Some experienced sellers said: "The sequelae of the new crown can cause hair loss, impaired vision, photophobia, loss of smell, insufficient lung capacity, etc. If you sell wigs in 2021, the sales should be very good..."

According to data from AliExpress, the global wig market has reached hundreds of billions of dollars, and China's exports account for 80% of the global total , and 80% of the world's wigs come from Xuchang, China. On Xuchang's own e-commerce platform, an average of 40,000 wigs are sold worldwide every day, with an annual turnover of 1.5 billion yuan.

As the epidemic is unlikely to end in the short term, the wig market can be said to continue to maintain huge potential. According to industry experts, the market size of hair-related products will reach about 71.9 billion yuan in the future . Sellers can seize this opportunity and take advantage of the export advantages of Made in China to create more opportunities for explosive orders.

In addition to wigs, a paper previously published in The Lancet also mentioned that muscle pain, fatigue, fear, depression and other psychological disorders are the most common long-term sequelae after infection with COVID-19.

As a result, the sales of decompression products have also doubled. According to previous statistics from the Russian AliExpress platform, from January 1 to January 18, 2021, the total turnover of decompression products doubled compared with the same period in 2020 and tripled compared with the same period in 2019.

In this category, the most popular products include inverse kinematic spinners, soft pressure bricks with stress balls, spinning gyroscopes with LED backlights , etc. Experts analyzed that since people have always been anxious, decompression products are people's first choice; in order to relieve stress and find an outlet for release, the sales of diaries have also increased significantly during the epidemic.

In addition, exercise is also a good way to maintain physical and mental health and relieve stress. The epidemic has also made many people pay more attention to their physical health and exercise, so sports products have also opened up the market during the epidemic. In particular, fitness equipment that can be completed at home, such as fitness bikes, ab wheels, yoga mats, etc., are favored by many consumers.

The emergence of an epidemic has indeed changed the world. But from another perspective, it has also brought opportunities and hope to many industries. The epidemic may not disappear in the short term, so we can only respond to it and turn the "crisis" into a "business opportunity."

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