Retail trends 2026: Less innovation theatre, more results
Retail has never lacked bold promises about the “next big thing”. But 2026 brings a more grounded reality.
What matters now is no longer the narrative, but what retailers can execute reliably in day-to-day operations. Economic pressure and shifting customer expectations have narrowed the gap between ambition and results, raising the bar for efficiency, consistency, and measurable impact.
Against this backdrop, the following trends reflect where retail execution is genuinely changing in 2026, and where it continues to struggle.
Retail trend 1: Value as the new baseline
When value becomes non-negotiable
The shift
Value-driven retail focuses on delivering clear customer value in a price-sensitive market without relying on heavy discounting. The emphasis is on affordability paired with quality, relevance, and convenience, delivered consistently, not through short-term promotions.
Why it matters now
Value-seeking has become a baseline expectation across income groups. Inflation has reshaped consumer behaviour, forcing retailers to rethink how value is defined, priced, and communicated. This requires platforms that support flexible pricing logic, tiered assortments, and transparent value communication without constant rework.
What we saw in 2025
- Promised: AI-driven personalisation and premium digital experiences, often disconnected from the customer’s core need for affordability.
- Delivered: Private label expansion and clear value propositions. Retailers that invested in own-brand assortments and simple pricing logic saw measurable gains, while advanced pricing bots frequently ran into data quality and customer trust issues.
- Stalled in pilots: Alternative profit models: from data monetisation to gamified loyalty, struggled to scale due to operational complexity and margin pressure.
What retailers ask for NOW
The conversation has shifted from optimising promotions to building a sustainable value strategy. Retailers are asking, "Help us build a value-tier store format" or "How can our loyalty program double as a value engine?" rather than just an engagement tool. There is a surge in requests for cost-to-serve analysis to fund these price investments.
What scales in 2026
In 2026, value-centric retail scales through platform capabilities rather than isolated initiatives. Tiered assortments, expanded private labels, and loyalty-driven savings become standard, supported by tighter integration between pricing, inventory, and customer data.
Execution reality
The biggest blockers are organisational alignment and rigid pricing systems. Retailers that succeed keep value logic simple, transparent, and consistent across channels.
HYPE vs REALITY SNAPSHOT
Hype: 2/5 | Reality: 5/5 | Confidence: High
Retail trend 2: AI operationalised at scale
From pilots to production
The shift
This trend closes the gap between AI’s theoretical potential and day-to-day retail operations. Instead of isolated pilots, intelligence is embedded into core workflows such as demand forecasting, pricing, and content operations, where it can influence decisions at scale.
Why it matters now
AI has moved from optional to operational. Ongoing labour shortages and margin pressure are forcing retailers to automate decisions that were previously manual. At the same time, the emergence of AI-driven shopping assistants is changing how products are discovered, increasing pressure on retailers to modernise their operational foundations.
What we saw in 2025
- Promised: Generative AI everywhere, from automated marketing copy to immersive, AI-powered shopping experiences.
- Delivered: Operational use cases created the most value. AI-driven demand forecasting reduced stockouts, pricing algorithms improved margins, and generative AI proved effective in accelerating e-commerce content production.
- Stalled in pilots: Many initiatives failed to scale due to poor data quality and low trust. Planners frequently overrode AI recommendations when decision logic lacked transparency or confidence.
What retailers ask for NOW
The question has moved from "What can AI do?" to "We have a proven use case, but how do we scale it enterprise-wide?". Retailers are asking for governance frameworks, ensuring they can trust an AI to automate markdowns or supply chain decisions without constant human supervision.
What scales in 2026
AI becomes a standard operational layer rather than a differentiator. Retailers scale proven use cases such as automated markdowns, supply chain visibility, and dynamic pricing.
In parallel, attention shifts to preparing product and inventory data for discovery by AI shopping agents.
Execution reality
Data fragmentation remains the primary constraint. Without shared, reliable data across inventory, pricing, and customer systems, AI cannot perform consistently. Cultural resistance also slows adoption when algorithms are perceived as opaque or threatening to human expertise.
HYPE vs REALITY SNAPSHOT
Hype: 4/5 | Reality: 4/5 | Confidence: High
Retail trend 3: Marketing & CX redefined
From broad reach to data-driven value creation
The shift
This trend replaces “spray and pray” marketing (broad, untargeted marketing aimed at large audiences, with limited segmentation or precision) with targeted, measurable engagement built on first-party data.
As third-party cookies disappear, retailers are turning customer insight into both better experiences and new revenue streams through Retail Media Networks (retailer-owned advertising platforms that monetise first-party customer data across digital and in-store touchpoints)
Why it matters now
First-party data has become a strategic asset, not a marketing by-product. With the so-called “cookie apocalypse” (the gradual phase-out of third-party cookies used for cross-site tracking), loyalty programmes now underpin personalisation, measurement, and monetisation. At the same time, margin pressure in core retail has accelerated interest in Retail Media Networks, which offer significantly higher margins than traditional retail operations.
What we saw in 2025
- Promised: The “segment of one” and immersive, next-generation CX experiences, including heavy metaverse experimentation.
- Delivered: Retail Media Networks scaled rapidly for large retailers, contributing material profit. Loyalty-driven personalisation improved relevance and redemption rates, particularly across owned digital channels.
- Stalled in pilots: Large-scale personalisation engines often failed due to a lack of usable creative content. Smaller retailers struggled to launch media networks without sufficient traffic scale or advertiser demand.
What retailers ask for NOW
Retailers are asking, "How do we scale and differentiate our retail media offering?" and looking to expand into non-endemic advertising. There is also a huge push to bring marketing in-house to save agency fees, with clients asking how to reorganise teams and use Generative AI to produce creative content faster.
What scales in 2026
Personalisation moves from broad segmentation to micro-segmentation as a standard capability. Retail Media matures, with clearer measurement standards and expansion into non-endemic advertising. AI-powered assistants within retailer apps become a baseline expectation for customer service and product discovery.
Execution reality
The main constraint is not data volume, but activation. Many retailers face a content bottleneck that limits personalisation, alongside organisational silos between marketing, e-commerce, and store operations. Without shared ownership and orchestration, customer experiences remain fragmented.
HYPE vs REALITY SNAPSHOT
Hype: 3/5 | Reality: 5/5 | Confidence: High
Retail trend 4: Unified commerce
Seamless integration of physical and digital
The shift
Unified commerce removes channel boundaries that create fragmented customer experiences. It addresses the technical debt of disconnected legacy systems by enabling a single view of inventory and customer data across all touchpoints.
Why it matters now
Seamlessness is expected by default. Yet many retailers still rely on legacy platforms that limit speed and visibility. As growth normalises, competitive advantage shifts to retailers that can execute omnichannel journeys profitably
What we saw in 2025
- Promised: “Headless commerce” as a silver bullet, alongside ambitious visions of endless aisle kiosks transforming in-store experiences overnight.
- Delivered: BOPIS (Buy Online, Pick Up In Store) became both ubiquitous and profitable. Store fulfillment (Ship-from-Store) saved the day during holiday peaks by turning stores into mini-warehouses.
- Stalled in pilots: Real-time inventory visibility remained difficult to achieve, and endless aisle initiatives often failed due to operational issues.
What retailers ask for NOW
“We need to modernise our platform, how do we do it without disrupting the business?” Retailers are asking how to achieve a genuine single view of the customer and how to operationalise store-based fulfilment.
What scales in 2026
Real-time inventory visibility becomes a baseline expectation. Platform modernisation accelerates, with retailers moving toward cloud-based, modular architectures. Stores continue to evolve to support returns, pickups, and fulfilment.
Execution reality
The challenge is not omnichannel intent, but backend unification. Retailers that succeed treat inventory, order management, and customer data as shared capabilities rather than channel-specific assets.
HYPE vs REALITY SNAPSHOT
Hype: 2/5 | Reality: 4/5 | Confidence: High
Retail trend 5: Predictive and resilient supply chains
AI-driven planning and localised fulfilment
The shift
Supply chains are moving from reactive to predictive. Retailers are using AI-driven planning to anticipate demand, rebalance inventory, and build resilience through diversified and more local sourcing.
Why it matters now
After repeated shocks across global supply, trade, and logistics, resilience has become a strategic requirement. Continued volatility and rising logistics costs are shifting focus toward forecasting accuracy and regional supply networks.
What we saw in 2025
- Promised: End-to-end “control towers” (centralised platforms that give retailers visibility and decision support across supply chain operations), with perfect real-time visibility, alongside drone delivery replacing traditional logistics.
- Delivered: AI-driven demand forecasting reduced forecast error materially, while logistics optimisation algorithms delivered tangible cost savings. Nearshoring and supplier diversification began to shorten lead times for early adopters.
- Stalled in pilots: Advanced planning tools often failed where internal alignment was missing. Merchandising, supply chain, and finance teams struggled to agree on shared planning processes, limiting the impact of new software. Drone delivery remained niche due to regulatory and economic constraints.
What retailers ask for NOW
“How do we prepare for the next disruption rather than reacting to it?” Retailers are asking how to embed AI into planning and replenishment, manage exceptions, and reduce labour risk through automation.
What scales in 2026
AI-driven forecasting becomes standard. Nearshoring strategies show structural impact, and automated micro-fulfilment centres scale in grocery and urban retail.
Execution reality
Data quality and supplier collaboration remain the primary constraints. Predictive models are only as strong as the data and alignment behind them.
HYPE vs REALITY SNAPSHOT
Hype: 3/5 | Reality: 4/5 | Confidence: High
Retail trend 6: Shoppertainment and social commerce
Commerce shifts from transaction to entertainment
The shift
Shoppertainment responds to the declining efficiency of traditional e-commerce funnels and performance marketing. Instead of forcing conversion through ads, commerce is embedded directly into entertainment-led, creator-driven content, turning discovery, trust-building, and purchase into a single continuous experience.
Why it matters now
As AI takes over routine purchases, customers spend more time discovering and buying discretionary products through social and creator-led experiences. At the same time, paid acquisition is becoming more expensive and less reliable, pushing retailers to look beyond traditional performance marketing.
What we saw in 2025
- Promised: Social commerce positioned as a replacement for traditional e-commerce.
- Delivered: Creator-led commerce reached material scale, particularly in discovery-driven categories.
- Stalled in pilots: Brand-owned live shopping without creators failed to sustain audiences.
What retailers ask for NOW
Retailers are asking how to turn creator commerce into a repeatable revenue channel, how to manage creator ecosystems at scale, and how to attribute sales across platforms and native checkout environments.
What scales in 2026
Shoppertainment becomes a standard demand-generation layer for discretionary retail. Always-on creator affiliate programmes, platform-native checkout, and systematic reuse of creator-generated content across product pages, CRM, and retail media begin to scale. This model grows because it aligns with where attention already exists and reduces reliance on increasingly inefficient paid acquisition.
Execution reality
The challenge is infrastructure, not creativity. Scaling requires creator management systems, content rights governance, native commerce integration, and cross-platform attribution.
HYPE vs REALITY SNAPSHOT
Hype: 4/5 | Reality: 4/5 | Confidence: High
What this means for retail leaders in 2026
Taken together, these trends point to a clear shift in retail priorities. Success in 2026 will not come from adopting more tools or chasing isolated innovations. It will come from the ability to execute consistently across pricing, operations, customer experience, and supply chains at scale.
Across value strategies, AI adoption, unified commerce, and new demand channels, the pattern is the same. The differentiator is no longer the idea itself, but whether systems, data, and operating models are designed to support real-world execution.
For technology, digital, and operations leaders in retail, this means making fewer bets, but building stronger foundations behind each one. Competitive advantage increasingly belongs to retailers who treat technology as an enabler of execution, not experimentation, and who build systems that reflect how retail actually operates.
