The Growth Distillery has launched Reframe: Beauty, a new study examining how Australian consumers discover, evaluate and choose beauty products.
Developed in collaboration with The Research Agency, the research found that more than 70% of consumers are now more cautious about brand claims than ever before.
The report identifies a trust paradox in the beauty category: more information is creating less certainty, more brands are creating less clarity, and more recommendations are leaving consumers unsure of who to trust.
Credibility over attention
With more than 500 new brands entering the Australian market in the past five years, the study found the challenge for beauty brands is no longer attention, but credibility.
Reframe: Beauty identifies five trust cues now shaping purchase decisions: unfiltered content that shows a product is real, relevant expertise, real results, peer validation and personal relevance.
The five trust cues are:
I can see it’s real: unfiltered, transparently imperfect content.
I can see it’s credible: relevant expertise over generic authority.
I can see it works: real results in real conditions.
I can see others trust it: authentic peer validation and community proof.
I can see it’s for me: personally relevant, not one-size-fits-all.
Five beauty mindsets
The research also identifies five fluid mindsets that shape beauty behaviour.
These include Playing, driven by experimentation and spontaneity; Searching, focused on finding what works; Hovering, where consumers feel excluded or unsure where to start; Questioning, where they demand proof and accountability; and Grounding, where they stay loyal to what already works.
The Growth Distillery said understanding which mindset a consumer is in is key to selecting the right channel, content format and trust signal at the right moment.
Bethan Hockey Image: Supplied
Bethan Hockey, Head of Growth Intelligence, Client and Commercial at The Growth Distillery, said brands need to understand the context behind each purchase decision.
“To cut through in today’s beauty market, brands need to understand the mindset their customer is in, the category they’re shopping, and the specific signals that build genuine confidence at that moment,” Hockey said.
The Growth Distillery is a research think-tank powered by News Corp Australia.
Main image: Reframe: Beauty