The tradeoff no one wants to name is that consumers tend to distrust brands and, as a result, brands respond by showing more.
The assumption is that if people see more, they’ll trust more. What isn’t talked about as often is that transparency is a strategic decision about what a brand chooses to expose.
Every point of exposure gives consumers something else to evaluate. For product development, the question becomes what that exposure allows consumers to understand and what the product will need to support as a result.
Exposure is a Business Decision
Transparency has no shared standard, so it can mean different things depending on the brand. For one brand, it can mean access to the day-to-day life of the founder. For another, it can mean behind-the-scenes content of its operations. Each gives consumers something different to understand.
Brands are ultimately deciding what level of access will influence what consumers understand and believe about them. That makes a brand’s standard of transparency a strategic decision.
The product-development implication is anticipating what each decision exposes. Showing an ingredient creates different questions than showing a formulation process. Sharing sourcing information creates different expectations than giving consumers access to the founder.
Strategic decision-making is understanding what consumers are being given to evaluate and what the product needs to substantiate.
The Brand is Not the Only Source of Authority
Transparency also changes where consumers look for authority.
Consumers no longer have to rely on the brand to determine what they believe about a product. Influencers, industry critics, third-party platforms, and other consumers contribute to how a brand is understood.
That means disclosure does not exist only within the context the brand provides. Consumers can compare it against what other sources tell them and what they experience from the product itself.
This is where strategic foresight and anticipation matter. Before deciding what to expose, teams can consider what consumers already use to evaluate that information and whether the product provides enough evidence to support the conclusion the brand wants consumers to reach.
Transparency becomes a trust-builder when what the brand exposes is reinforced by what consumers can independently perceive and validate.
More Access is Not the Same as More Confidence
Consumers may ask for transparency, but what they ultimately want is confidence. Underneath the request for more information is a need to feel reassured about the decision they are making.
This is where product development can reduce uncertainty surrounding the product, both implicitly and explicitly.
Understanding what creates that confidence can be integrated throughout product development to identify which aspects of the product reinforce it and which create additional questions.
The goal is to understand the underlying driver of the consumer behavior and ensure that what consumers need to believe is integrated throughout the product, so they do not have to reverse-engineer whether it deserves their trust.
Transparency Should Be Intentional
Showing more does not automatically create trust. Every additional point of exposure gives consumers something else to perceive, evaluate, and potentially question.
The goal is not to show everything. It is to determine what consumers need to feel confident, what the product can substantiate, and what level of transparency supports both.
That requires dimensionalizing what transparency means for the product as it is being developed.
Transparency is not only a decision about what the brand is willing to show. It’s a decision about what the product is prepared to support once consumers can see it.
—by THE BUILD BRIEF