A Qualitative Study on Changes in Women s Perception of Beauty Care After COVID-19

Purpose: This study was conducted by using a phenomenological approach among the qualitative research methods, which is an inductive narrative method, with a view to examine in greater depth as to what changes are taking place in the women s perception of beauty care after COVID-19. Method: As for the research participants, 8 women who are serving in the beauty and health related industry in Korea were selected via the purposive sampling method. As for the data analysis of the in-depth interview con-tents, the 4-step phenomenological analytical method proposed by Giorgi was used, and to secure the validity of the study, the 8 evaluation criteria of the phenomenological research proposed by Cresswell for the validity strat-egy of the qualitative study were applied mutatis mutandis. Furthermore, to secure the reliability of the study, the truth value, applicability, consistency, and neutrality proposed by Guba and Lincoln were applied. Results: Results of the study, 113 semantic units, 20 sub-components, and 6 elements were eventually derived. The contents of the components were identified to be the changes in the perception of information search, chang-es in the interest of beauty, positive perception of evaluation according to wearing a mask, negative perception of evaluation according to wearing a mask, observation of other people s appearance management and infor-mation exchange, and the changes in the interpersonal perception. Conclusion: Based on the results of this study, it was verified that the Korean women s perception of beauty care has changed, and that it is transforming into the beauty behaviors for the rational consumption according to the situation due to the social disaster of the COVID-19. It is expected that such research results will be used as the behavioral scientific data on the changes in the women s beauty care in the future era of infectious diseases.