Technology and price sensitivity are the top trends shaping the future of shopping—and success lies in turning both into a competitive advantage, suggests a new report from McKinsey & Company. State of the Consumer 2026—which draws from responses from almost 5,000 consumers in five countries—also points to the health revolution, the experience economy, increasing resourcefulness on the part of consumers, and AI’s role in the path to purchase as key trends brands and retailers should be aware of.
Businesses must be able to navigate an increasingly complex ecosystem of platforms, partners, and consumer touchpoints to reach and win consumers. Among the strategies the authors advocate are “showing up prominently in social-media-based and agentic environments, reshaping portfolios to meet more specific consumer needs, creating experiences that reinforce brand meaning, and designing offerings that reflect a more nuanced definition of value.”
While brand equity, scale, and distribution still matter, “brand influence is more diffuse,” the authors warn, and consumers across all income levels care more about value than ever. Even in high-end households, people are adopting make-do habits, DIYing, and considering buying at resale, according to the report.
“For businesses, this trend creates a more complex playing field,” the authors write. “Competing on price alone is insufficient; consumers are optimizing across multiple dimensions of value—up-front cost, as well as durability, versatility, and the ability to repair or resell a product over time.” Trade-in and buyback programs offered by brands can provide a way for companies to tap into the opportunities arising from the new consumer mindset.
With AI reshaping shopper behavior, brands also need to become savvy about the technology and strategic about how they use it. This is especially important for those with a younger core customer. Not surprisingly, the survey showed that Gen Zers are more than twice as likely as Boomers to use generative AI for shopping. More than half said they use the AI overview on search platforms regularly, and 28 percent said they use AI tools to shop.
Gen Z respondents are also more apt to use social media to discover new brands than Boomers, who still tend to rely on stores for brand discovery. Social media’s power to sway purchase decision may increase as the platforms develop their own shopping tools, the authors predict.
Both factors are part of the new tech-driven path from discovery to purchase, which requires fewer clicks through to brand and retailer websites. “For brands, this reduces opportunities to influence decisions through traditional organic and paid search strategies. Historically, search has often served as a high-intent stage of the consumer journey—when consumers actively evaluate brands and options. As AI-generated results increasingly answer those questions directly, brands may have fewer opportunities to enter consumers’ consideration sets at the moment intent is expressed.”
AI makes controlling the narrative about your brand or store more challenging because whenever a user asks gen AI a question, the technology aggregates information from numerous third-party sources—online forums, reviews on retailer websites, social media video platforms, etc. If the information AI finds is inconsistent or incomplete, the technology may not present a business in the best light. The upshot? Businesses need to shape the first- and third-party content large language models (LLMs) draw on.
For more insights, download the full report here.
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