Mintel: GLP-1 Use Will Build a 'New Beauty Universe' by 2027

Mintel has named GLP-1 weight-loss drug use as a defining force in its Global Predictions 2027 report, which points to the emergence of what the consumer insights firm calls a "new beauty universe" reshaped by the medication's widespread adoption. The prediction carries a hard date: 2027, the horizon against which Mintel expects the next wave of beauty and personal care growth to arrive — and it will not come from the face alone.

What does the report actually predict?

According to the Global Predictions 2027 report, the next wave of growth in beauty will come from systems built around aspirations that extend beyond facial care. Mintel frames these aspirations as four distinct consumer goals:

• Look Well for Longer
• Feel Well
• Stay Protected
• Feel Confident

Each goal describes a consumer outcome rather than a product category. That distinction sits at the centre of Mintel's argument: growth will belong to the brands that organise themselves around what the consumer is trying to achieve, not around the shelves they have traditionally occupied.

A reversal of the brand-consumer orbit

The structural claim in the report is blunt. For years, Mintel observes, brands sat at the centre and the consumer orbited around them. That arrangement, the firm claims, has inverted: "the pull has reversed" and the "consumer is the sun."

"Around them turn products, services and data, held close or released by a single force: results," the Mintel statement reads.

The word "results" carries weight here. Mintel is arguing that consumers now grant or withdraw their attention — and their spending — based on measurable outcomes. Products, services and data orbit that demand, and any of them can drift away when the results stop.

Why category boundaries are eroding

Mintel extends the astronomical metaphor to the market itself. "Under that pull, the boundaries between categories erode," the statement continues.

For formulators, marketers and buyers, this is the operational consequence of the shift. If consumers pursue goals rather than categories, the lines between beauty, personal care, wellness and adjacent sectors lose their commercial meaning. A consumer pursuing "Feel Well" does not distinguish between a skin-care product, a supplement and a service if all of them serve the same system.

Mintel sharpens the point with a warning about the past decade. "The behaviour that shaped the past decade of growth will not shape the next," the firm states. "Behaviour driven by goals, and the systems consumers build to pursue them."

Where GLP-1 fits in

Mintel positions increased GLP-1 use as a catalyst for this systemic shift rather than a passing trend. The report links the medication's rise directly to the "new beauty universe" it describes, where consumer aspirations — looking well for longer, feeling well, staying protected, feeling confident — organise purchasing behaviour across multiple categories at once.

The implication for product development is that demand will increasingly arrive as a bundle of interrelated needs rather than as discrete category purchases. Systems, in Mintel's framing, are what consumers build to pursue their goals, and the beauty brands positioned for 2027 will be the ones that plug into those systems.

What to watch next

The full Global Predictions 2027 report, from which these findings are drawn, offers the detail behind the headline claims. The next data points to watch are the report's category-level breakdowns and any quantitative sizing of the GLP-1-adjacent beauty opportunity as Mintel releases further analysis through the coming cycle.