New research has nearly half of Australian Gen Z visiting stores more often and taking buying cues from friends over paid influencers. The channel that moves them is word of mouth, not reach. Brands over-indexed on influencer spend are paying the wrong voice.
The Take: Gen Z is not the online-only generation the forecasts sold you. Australia's youngest shoppers are heading back into stores and taking their buying cues from friends, not from paid influencers. If your Gen Z plan is mostly influencer spend, you are paying the wrong voice.
The context: New research has nearly half of Australian Gen Z visiting physical stores more often, the highest of any generation and about four times the rate of Baby Boomers, reported by RetailBiz. The same picture shows up in Snapchat research covered by AMI, where two-thirds say friends shape their shopping choices and nearly six in ten look to friends for beauty inspiration ahead of influencers.
Who wins: The winners here are brands that are recommendable, not just watchable. Word of mouth in a group chat does not run on a media plan, it runs on whether the last friend who bought had a good time. That favours product, service and store experience over reach. It quietly punishes brands that bought a lot of attention and skipped the part of the job that earns a recommendation in the first place.
Gen Z shoppers who look to friends for beauty inspiration ahead of influencers
The signal: Physical retail is doing a job again, and it is discovery, not just fulfilment. More than three quarters of these shoppers say a store creates memories online cannot, per B&T, which is why online-native brands are opening pop-ups to be found in person.
For Australian operators: Rebalance away from renting reach and toward earning referral. Put money into the store experience and the product moments that a Gen Z customer will screenshot and send to a friend, because that group chat is the channel doing the converting. Audit your Gen Z spend and ask how much is buying a stranger's endorsement versus improving the thing a friend would actually recommend. Make the physical space work as discovery, so staff, layout and one genuinely memorable detail, not just stock on shelves. The generation you wrote off as digital-only is standing in a shopping centre asking its friends what to buy.