I remember as a girl when I got my first pimple, my mom took me to the cosmetics store and asked the beauty advisor what would work on my skin. She recommended the new Lacto Calamine and we went home with it, no questions asked.
A couple of days back, over conversations about niacinamide and salicylic acid with a 21-year-old consumer, I realised something very interesting. Gen Z knows what it wants long before setting foot in the store. It’s a mental checklist formed after foraging through hours of influencer recommendations and friends’ experiences. Between the “get ready with me”s and “October empties”, influencers sure know how to hammer in a degree of consumerism I’m sure was rare in the past. There are layers of e-commerce reviews and AI recommendations (16% of shoppers start a product search on ChatGPT, reviews being the most common next step!) that add to the checklist. I’ve spoken to girls who have shown me 10 products they absolutely can’t imagine life without. I’m positive they’ll change next week.
There’s still a category of shoppers though, who, like my mom and so many consumers I spoke to, depend wholeheartedly on BA signals. That’s the last, and arguably most convincing, stage of the purchase funnel for these people. The girl behind the counter is the ultimate authority over what’s a good product. As someone who’s seen the commissions and incentives these people work on, it’s hard to imagine an unbiased product opinion.
This becomes even more prominent in the stores that offer home deliveries. The shopper here often just names a category and lets the retailer choose the brand and pack. This shopper passivity in choice is where the margins and schemes a brand offers become a crucial deciding factor for the final sale.
As a brand, it’s important to service both these trust signals (or pick and choose based on goals). You’ve got to win the approval of popular media and/ or make sure you’ve got a real voice in these retail outlets to get the chance of entering a consumer household. I’m excited to see how Gen Alpha adds to this generational cross section.
