According to research by Global Web Index, 45% of beauty consumers look to reviews for online research purposes before buying a product.

What’s more, one in two beauty consumers say they’re motivated to buy products based on reviews from others.

It’s clear that beauty brands rely on online reviews – arguably more so than in other industries. This is largely due to the difficulty of proving the supposed benefits of skincare or beauty products. Essentially, consumers rely on others to tell them whether a product actually ‘does what it says on the tin’. Additionally, there’s a highly personal element to beauty which means that trust in reviews is vital. It can often be about the way a product makes a person feel as well as look – and nobody wants to base that investment on a lie.

Unfortunately, following on from high-profile scandals, there’s been increasing scepticism about the validity of online beauty reviews in the past couple of years. This leads us to ask the question: do beauty consumers still trust online reviews? More to the point, what can the industry do to sustain levels of trust, as well as combat the apparent decline?