Kara Ortiga completed her PhD from Macquarie University in Sydney. Her research focuses on new media audiences and their relationships with technology, politics and information. Before jumping into academia, she was a journalist in the Philippines covering culture and the arts. Her work has been published in 

Today, audiences are shaping the cultural agenda. Empowered to speak up for the causes they believe in, people are actively calling out brands they see as inauthentic. What are the main drivers of this behavioural shift? And how can brands win the trust of these outspoken advocates?

Assertive Audiences

Aware of hidden agendas, people no longer believe in the possibility of absolute truth or complete transparency from institutions, public figures, and individuals. Yet they are still drawn to honesty, integrity, and – at times – even vulnerability, which they expect from peers and brands alike.

Radical Transparency 

As the new post-pandemic normal settles in and people adapt to a context of uncertainty, constant adversities, and pessimism, we are moving away from a moment in which consumers expected brands to rise up to society's challenges and into one when they’re demanding genuine allyship from businesses.

Shared Values

When it comes to loyalty, Australians play a little hard to get; 69% are brand agnostic – loyal to no brands at all. 

AdNews

Aussies are notoriously cautious about who they trust. 

The Conversation

This scepticism is evident in the fallout from recent high-profile corporate scandals; Woolworths, Coles, Optus and OpenAI all rank among Australia’s most distrusted brands – even though Woolworths and Coles were among its most trusted during the pandemic. 

Roy Morgan

In May 2026, the Federal Court found Coles had misled shoppers through most of the ‘Down Down’ pricing examples examined, while judgement in a parallel Woolworths case remained reserved. 

ABC News

Brands can rise or fall quickly under public scrutiny; trust must be consistently earned. Households are also facing pressure on multiple fronts. With government electricity rebates ending, average household power bills were forecast in January to rise sharply through the middle of the year. 

Finder

Australians also report feeling ripped off by shrinkflation, where familiar products offer less for the same or a higher price. 

News24

 In this climate, people are gravitating towards brands that offer assurance and give them one less thing to worry about.

Currently topping Australia’s most trusted brands are older players: Bunnings, ALDI and Kmart. 

 Their common thread is not one identical pricing model but a long-standing promise of recognisable value: 

 backs value with its Lowest Prices Policy. Amid rising living costs, Aussies also 

 being less loyal to one supermarket and more willing to chase better prices. At a time when trust is low and budgets are pinched, reliability and familiarity reign.

Trust, in this case, develops through consistency – even without elaborate loyalty programmes. Despite widespread distrust, however, Woolworths and Coles still dominate grocery retail. 

Australian Competition and Consumer Commission

 “Whether people trust brands and use brands is not the same thing,” says Michael Polonsky, chair of marketing at Deakin University. 

Interview with Michael Polonsky conducted by the author

 People can remain reliant on the majors even when trust falters, while loyalty programmes provide another reason to stay, especially as 93% of Australians now hold at least one membership. 

eCommerceNews

However, while Australians are signed up to more than eight loyalty programmes on average, they actively engage with only five – so these memberships should not be mistaken for commitment. 

Honeycomb Strategy

 In a field where people are brand-agnostic, genuine loyalty may come less from giving Australians more reasons to love a brand than fewer reasons to second-guess it.

Long-time shoppers of bars of soap or chocolate Easter eggs have recently been left fuming after discovering they are paying more for less of the same product they’ve been buying for years. 

CHOICE

As financial stress rises, shrinkflation is pushing Australians to actively call out brands quietly short-changing them; during almost every grocery shop, 32% notice shrinkflation. 

Over half actively hunt for deals on every purchase, while 54% have dipped into their savings over the past year, including 24% to cover everyday essentials. 

McKinsey & Company

Yet getting a good price requires timing. Coles and Woolworths have been found alternating promotions on the same everyday products, meaning shoppers can pay substantially different prices depending on the week and store. 

The Guardian

 Price-comparison tools have emerged around this vigilance: 

, which has surpassed 50,000 Android downloads, tracks tens of thousands of supermarket products and weekly specials. In this climate, reliability becomes an attractive asset in its own right. Australians are not simply chasing the lowest possible price; 56% would rather pay more than accept a smaller portion when dining out. 

Nine News

Many are also willing to pay for loyalty memberships when the promised benefits are worth it, including Woolworths’ Everyday Extra, Amazon Prime and OnePass. 

The Point of Loyalty

 Amid economic uncertainty, a known cost for reliably useful benefits can offer its own kind of certainty.

It makes sense, then, that Bunnings, ALDI and Kmart top the trust rankings; each makes its value proposition easy to recognise. “They also pretty much deliver on their value,” says Polonsky. 

 supports that consistency through a limited range and standardised stores, while Kmart uses Anko and tiered ‘one-up’ and ‘two-up’ ranges to make price and quality trade-offs legible. 

The Australian

 offers a different kind of predictability through its standing promise to beat a competitor’s lower price on the same in-stock item by 10%. In a market where shoppers are constantly recalculating what their money can stretch to, brands that make value easier to anticipate relieve some of that budgeting work. Adam Posner, a customer loyalty specialist, says behavioural loyalty is a ‘transactional connection’ where customers repeatedly choose your brand versus others. 

Interview with Adam Posner conducted by the author

 Predictability becomes valuable precisely because people do not have to keep wondering whether they should have waited until next week.

Australians expect brands to meet them in times of economic hardship but also to make everyday interactions easier. Because shopping habits are repeatedly tracked and stored, people now expect a more survivalist kind of personalisation, where brands need to adapt to how they actually live rather than simply give them more choices. A frictionless physical and digital customer experience is essential to unlocking true brand loyalty; 62% of Australians now expect brands to already know their preferences. 

Australian Loyalty Association

 Beyond competing on price, the opportunity is to use that familiarity to remove unnecessary decisions and make everyday interactions easier to move through.

 for shoppers with sensory needs, offering a shopping window with dimmed lights, silenced beeps and no announcements. Now offered five days a week across more than 900 stores, it adapts the environment around a challenge some shoppers live with every day. For some Aussies, this adjustment is 

. Similarly, after a decade of complaints about Kmart’s centre-of-store checkouts, the retailer has moved checkout counters back to the front, citing direct customer feedback. 

 In both cases, personalisation is less about creating something bespoke and more about removing friction from how people already move through the world.

Yet there remains a gap between expectation and reality. Despite 36% of marketers having the capacity to personalise campaigns for their target market, 59% of Australians still perceive brand interactions as impersonal. 

SAP Emarsys

Many are also particularly guarded about their data; one in ten will never share personal information with a brand, while 27% will do so reluctantly and only when clear value is offered in return. 

Ragtrader

 If brands already know this much about people, Australians expect something useful back. As Posner puts it, “You've got to be sensitive about what data points you're asking for… What are you going to use it for?” 

 Longtime Cottee's customers felt that friction when the brand redesigned its iconic cordial bottle, with some mourning a familiar form they had relied on for years. 

 The irritation starts when something familiar suddenly takes more work. The opportunity, then, is not to personalise for its own sake but to understand which parts of an experience people should no longer have to adapt around.

The burden of doing the maths on every purchase seems to be falling on shoppers. In February 2026, the Australian Competition and Consumer Commission (ACCC) flagged concerns over supermarkets pricing fresh produce by item rather than by weight, calling the practice misleading. 

The regulator has since pushed for a strengthened unit pricing code so Australians can actually compare what they're paying for. Similarly, ‘skimpflation’ means familiar products can retain their price while quietly dropping in quality. 

 These adjustments force people to do the arithmetic just to know if a deal is really a deal – cheaper but smaller, more product but worse quality, better quality but a staggering price jump or the same price for something that is no longer quite the same.

That fatigue is what makes the ACCC's case against Coles and Woolworths land differently than a typical trust story. Their trust ratings have fallen, but the deeper cost is that believing their value claims now takes work. 

 As Polonsky explains, when Coles says a price is ‘down down’, shoppers may increasingly think, “We know that that's not true. This is just a scam.” 

 For Coles, the risk cuts particularly deep because value is part of the promise it sells. Shoppers may still walk through the doors, but every future claim gets run through the same exhausting audit.

This does not mean Australians will always leave when trust breaks. Coles and Woolworths still dominate grocery retail, and their loyalty programmes remain the country's most actively used. 

 Convenience, range and switching costs can outweigh disappointment. As Polonsky notes, “In boycotting, people have to believe the benefit outweighs the cost to themselves.” 

 Staying, however, is not the same as believing.

Earning that belief can mean committing beyond the immediate transaction, even when customers do not consciously notice every decision behind it. Posner describes this as moving “from value to values”: making purpose visible through how a business behaves, not simply what it markets. 

 takes that commitment literally, printing a batch code on every bag that customers can enter into its Transparency Tracker to trace ingredients back to their source. Rather than asking people to trust a front-of-pack promise, Be Frank hands over the receipts. When the bargain is easy to read, people no longer have to keep checking whether it has changed underneath them.

Meeting Australians at a financially difficult moment can prove that brands are reliable. Brands winning shoppers’ trust are not doing anything revolutionary – they are delivering on what they promise, consistently and without friction. The opportunity lies in radical simplicity – strategies such as 

, where stable prices help shoppers budget around brands rather than continually recalculate what they can afford. Indeed, 60% of Australians have switched to own-label alternatives because they are more affordable. 

For brands looking to keep people coming back through loyalty programmes, this means offering a clear, dependable value exchange, which drives a third (33%) of overall programme satisfaction. 

Coles has already changed Flybuys to let shoppers redeem more points with every shop, for example. 

 Rather than constantly inventing new rewards, brands can earn repeat behaviour by making everyday value easy to understand, access and plan around.

Value is no longer enough, especially when shopping habits are meticulously tracked for data. Australians increasingly expect the brands they shop from to use what they know to make everyday interactions easier and better suited to how they actually live. “There’s a data value benefit exchange. Brands will learn something about you, but the promise is they serve, recognise and reward you,” comments Posner. 

 Three-quarters (76%) of Australians are put off when a brand asks for data without explaining how it will be used. 

 puts that knowledge to practical use, helping Australians find grants, rebates and concessions relevant to their circumstances rather than leaving them to search alone. Personalisation does not always mean more choice or customisation – it can mean removing unnecessary decisions, anticipating common needs and adapting around real constraints. 

 similarly makes returns easier, with Polonsky noting how “that shows they’re taking care of their customers”. He adds, “I think here, loyalty is about the ease of transactions.” 

 Knowing people only creates value when that knowledge translates into less work for them.

With shrinkflation and skimpflation haunting Aussies, they’re tired of doing all the auditing. More than 16 million Australians feel ripped off by major supermarkets. 

Making the trade-offs obvious so shoppers know what they are paying for and what they will get can help rebuild that relationship. The government has acted on this, proposing clearer loyalty summaries and easier third-party price comparison. 

Treasury Ministers

 Data is part of that bargain, too. As Posner notes, asking for information can move “from cool to creepy” when people cannot see why it is needed. 

 Transparency, then, has to be earned through clear purpose and visible exchange. Officeworks’ 

 offers a simple rule shoppers can test: Find an eligible identical item cheaper elsewhere, and it will beat that price by 5%. Predictability, therefore, is the reward.

 of Australians are more likely to not be loyal to any brands at all

 of people belong to at least one loyalty programme

 of marketers able to effectively personalise their campaigns for their target market, 

 of Australian audiences still describe their interactions with brands as impersonal

Australian audiences return to brands that consistently deliver value, convenience and reliability

Loyalty programmes succeed when they provide immediate and relevant benefits, not complex points systems

Aussies feel ripped off by supermarkets and are put off by brands that are shrinking products or offering less quality for the same price

Adam Posner is an independent customer loyalty specialist with nearly three decades of experience in data-driven marketing. He founded Directivity in 2007 and The Point of Loyalty in 2017. A Certified Loyalty Marketing Professional, he has led loyalty strategies across diverse industries. Since 2013, he has authored and co-authored the 

 loyalty research series and is a sought-after international speaker on customer loyalty and loyalty programmes.

Michael Polonsky is chair in marketing and head of the Department of Marketing at Deakin Business School. A Fellow of the Australian and New Zealand Academy of Marketing, he has published more than 200 journal articles and co-edited four books. His research spans sustainability, green marketing, consumer behaviour, public policy, service design and social marketing.

Australia

Supermarkets and food

Community and grassroots

realcommercial.com.au

News.com.au

Amid today’s cost-of-living crisis, loyalty in Australia is being earned through dependable delivery, seamless experiences and transparent relationships. Tired of auditing companies quietly short-changing them, Aussies are seeking brands that consistently offer value and remove day-to-day friction.

Analysis

Kara Ortiga

Adam Posner

Michael Polonsky

Related Macro Behaviours

Assertive Audiences

Radical Transparency

Shared Values