Jed Simpfendorfer.
Jed Simpfendorfer – Director of Strategy & Partner, T garage.
Humans are terrible at worrying about multiple things at once.
We don’t carry a dashboard of anxieties.
We tend to carry one dominant worry, and everything else blends into the background.
For the past three years, that worry has been dominated by the cost of living. Not because other issues disappeared, but because financial survival has drowned everything else out.
Consumer sentiment dipped in 2022, when inflation and interest rates rose. By late 2024, there was a sense of cautious optimism that growth might return. That optimism was then tested by renewed global and political uncertainty, particularly trade tensions and broader geopolitical instability. Sentiment didn’t collapse, but momentum slowed and confidence gradually eroded through 2025.
But by the end of the year, our December 2025 T garage consumer sentiment survey shows a modest but meaningful lift. Sentiment has returned to 2022 levels and has been trending upward since July 2025.
Consumer Sentiment Tracker (Tgarage Sayso survey, Dec 25, n = 765)
So, good news, but nothing to get hugely excited about.
What’s more interesting for us is the shift in what people are worrying about.
Cost of living hasn’t gone away. Australians are still feeling the pinch. But after such a prolonged period of pressure, financial strain has become part of daily life. It’s no longer new. It’s no longer shocking. It’s no longer the lead guitar in our lives, but the bassline we are structuring ourselves around.
And when one dominant worry loosens its grip, something else takes its place.
What we’re seeing is that concern for personal safety, is playing more heavily on consumers’ minds.
The Big 5 – What’s driving Consumer sentiment right now (Tgarage Sayso survey, Dec 25)
Recent local and global events have fractured our sense of social cohesion and fundamentally changed what people are worried about.
These events don’t just make people feel sad or angry. They destabilise a shared sense of safety. And when that happens, personal financial anxiety often gives way to deeper questions about who we are as a community, how we look after each other, and whether we feel secure in public life.
In truth, the signals were already there. By mid-last year, around the election period and amid renewed global uncertainty, we observed consumers discussing social cohesion more frequently. They wanted to see Australians looking out for each other. They wanted leadership from government, business, and brands to help strengthen community and stability.
Even when given a magic wand to change the world, people did not put cost of living first. It ranked third, behind global conflict, and the need for greater social cohesion.
If you had a magic wand and the power to change things in the world around you…
This is the context brands are now operating in.
The next phase of consumer behaviour will not be won by brands that talk only to price. Affordability still matters, but it has become hygiene.
Choice is increasingly being shaped by deeper, more collective concerns. In a world that feels fragmented, polarised, and unpredictable, consumers are gravitating toward brands that make life feel more stable, more connected, and more dependable.
The strongest brands are no longer signalling constant reinvention. They are signalling continuity, familiarity and care. A sense that someone has thought about how their product fits into real life, real routines, and real communities.
This is where wellbeing shifts from an abstract mental health narrative into something more commercially tangible. Consumers are judging brands on how they support safety, belonging, and social ease. Not just what they sell, but how they help people function in the world as it is now.
The dominant worry has changed.
Consumer sentiment has shifted.
You can read more on our cultural trend analysis, in, is the Generational Divide at Work Overblown.