The particular preferences people stand by tend to be very idiosyncratic, Bronnenberg notes. “It’s not that all consumers stick with their coffee preferences but migrate their preferences for sugar or pasta sauce,” he says. “I think it’s that you have some favorite things that you yourself find important, and you stick with those preferences, and others you don’t.” A certain kind of pancake mix may be nearer and dearer to your heart than, say, the kind of syrup you squirt on top of it.

With over 45,000 non-brand affiliated YouTube channels specializing in cosmetic or sartorial advice, Fashion and Beauty is fast becoming a formidable game player within the digital media platform. In fact, according to the recent findings of Pixability, a big data software company that performs research to help major brands cater their marketing toward specific YouTube audiences, a whopping 14.9 billion YouTube video views are beauty-related.