List of attributes: As for most formulated consumer products, the definition of product attributes for cosmetics constitutes the primary input required and is usually obtained from multiple sources, such as market and customer surveys, patent, literature, among others.³⁸ Once the set of words defining product attributes is established (i.e., SA), the next step is a reduction in the number of words by excluding unnecessary or repeated words. We used experts'  opinions to this purpose, but several other techniques, such as affinity diagrams, factor analysis or Principal Component Analysis (PCA), may also be applied.^16,30