In today’s skincare market, consumers do not only ask, ‘Which brand is more famous?’ They also compare active ingredients, percentages, claims, reviews, and availability before deciding what to buy. This behavior has helped create a strong dupe culture in beauty. A dupe is generally understood as an alternative product that offers a similar look, function, or consumer benefit without pretending to be the original brand. It is different from a counterfeit, which copies protected brand identifiers such as a name or logo. Social media makes this comparison culture much faster because users can place products side by side and judge whether the more accessible option delivers enough value.
\nThe Ordinary is one of the brands that changed the rules of skincare marketing. Instead of relying on glamorous storytelling, the brand built its identity around ingredient transparency, straightforward product names, sensible pricing, and a clinical visual style. Its own brand communication emphasizes three ideas: accessibility, transparency, and effectiveness. This positioning reduces the distance between scientific ingredients and ordinary consumers. The product itself becomes the message. A bottle named ‘Niacinamide 10% + Zinc 1%’ immediately tells shoppers what the hero ingredients are and encourages them to evaluate the formula rather than a luxury image.<\/p>\n
Skintific enters the same ingredient-aware market with a different communication engine. Its 10% Niacinamide Brightening Serum also makes niacinamide the hero active, but the proposition is broader. The formula is marketed together with Alpha Arbutin, ceramides, hyaluronic acid, and Centella Asiatica to connect brightening with barrier care and soothing benefits. This does not make Skintific an exact copy of The Ordinary. The formulas, supporting ingredients, claims, and brand identities are different. The more useful marketing question is how both brands compete when consumers are trained to compare products by function rather than prestige.<\/p>\n
Two Different Ways to Win the Same Consumer
\nThe Ordinary mainly wins through clarity. Minimalist packaging, ingredient-led naming, and price transparency make the brand feel rational and easy to verify. This works well in dupe culture because consumers increasingly question whether a famous name alone justifies a premium. Research on dupe culture also shows that social media helps shoppers discover alternatives, compare quality, and share recommendations. Skintific combines science cues with social commerce. Research on its Indonesian strategy identifies TikTok, beauty influencers, affiliates, Key Opinion Leaders, and live streaming as central tools. A 2024 study also found that influencers and online customer reviews significantly influenced purchase decisions for Skintific on TikTok Shop. The result is a different trust system:
\nThe Ordinary leans on formula transparency, while Skintific adds social proof, demonstrations, and interactive selling.<\/p>\n
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This is where dupe marketing becomes more than imitation. The competitive advantage is the comparison shortcut. When a video, review, or search result shows two products with a familiar hero ingredient, consumers can quickly ask which one is easier to understand, better reviewed, more suitable, and easier to buy. Loyalty can turn into comparison in seconds. The strategy also carries risks. If a brand imitates another product’s overall appearance too closely, legal and ethical problems can follow. Trade dress disputes increasingly consider the total visual impression of packaging, not only logos. There is also a branding risk: if a product is famous only because it is ‘similar to’ another brand, the comparison can become more memorable than the brand itself. For The Ordinary, the strongest future strategy is to protect its ingredient-first identity while simplifying routine guidance. For Skintific, the stronger path is to keep its social-commerce strength while building more distinctive product stories, recognizable innovations, and long-term community trust. The goal is not to look more like a competitor, but to become the product others are compared with. If you were the marketing manager, which strategy would you choose: The Ordinary’s radical simplicity or Skintific’s science-plus-social-commerce approach, and how would you make the brand difficult to replace?<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
In today’s skincare market, consumers do not only ask, ‘Which brand is more famous?’ They also compare active ingredients, percentages, claims, reviews, and availability before deciding what to buy. This behavior has helped create a strong dupe culture in beauty. A dupe is generally understood as an alternative product that offers a similar look, function, […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":86,"featured_media":4469,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[6],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-4468","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-articles"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/student-activity.binus.ac.id\/imcb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4468","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/student-activity.binus.ac.id\/imcb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/student-activity.binus.ac.id\/imcb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/student-activity.binus.ac.id\/imcb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/86"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/student-activity.binus.ac.id\/imcb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=4468"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/student-activity.binus.ac.id\/imcb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4468\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":4471,"href":"https:\/\/student-activity.binus.ac.id\/imcb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4468\/revisions\/4471"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/student-activity.binus.ac.id\/imcb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/4469"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/student-activity.binus.ac.id\/imcb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=4468"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/student-activity.binus.ac.id\/imcb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=4468"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/student-activity.binus.ac.id\/imcb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=4468"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}