Shopper insights 2026 – new pressures, new priorities

Retail in 2026 is unforgiving. Traffic is harder won, wallets are more guarded, and every visit to your store is worth more than it used to be. On September 16, Simon Hay and Gareth Johns open up 30 consecutive weeks of in-store shopper data to explore what changed this year, what did not, and what it means for the decisions retailers are making into Q4.

Wednesday, September 16, 2026 · 11:00 AM ET / 4:00 PM BST · 45 minutes · Online · Free

With Simon Hay, TruRating Board Advisor and former Group CEO of dunnhumby, and Gareth Johns, Chief Data & Customer Officer at TruRating.

Retailers are making big 2026 decisions on assumptions nobody has tested against the register

84% of US retail sales still happen inside physical stores, according to the US Census Bureau. What happens between a shopper walking through the door and reaching the register still matters enormously.

Most shopper research gives you a snapshot. This session gives you a continuous view.

Across 30 consecutive weeks from January to August 2026, shoppers answered one question in the moment, at the point of payment, in just two seconds. No panels. No recall bias. That weekly view is backed by four years of grocery polling going back to 2022, alongside separate store-level data from two anonymized retail estates.

Together, the datasets let Simon and Gareth look at shopper behavior from two angles: how the market is changing, and how those patterns play out inside individual store networks. Some findings reinforce what retailers already believe. Others challenge it.

Your speakers

Four decades of retail data meet the latest shopper evidence

Simon Hay

TruRating Board Advisor · Former Group CEO of dunnhumby

LinkedIn

Simon brings four decades of experience in retail customer data. As dunnhumby’s first employee, he played a foundational role in the development of Tesco Clubcard and later helped build dunnhumby’s US presence through its partnership with Kroger.

Gareth Johns

Chief Data & Customer Officer · TruRating

LinkedIn

Gareth has built his career at the intersection of customer data, retail, and commercial decision-making, including time at dunnhumby. He’ll bring the 2026 shopper data to life and connect what it shows to the retail decisions being made now.

What we’ll cover

Purchase decisions rarely move in a straight line, and neither does the store’s ability to influence them. Simon and Gareth will work through direct implications for value, purchase intent, store conversion, service, and retail strategy.

What four years of pressure permanently changed

Shopping with a list was a habit for around half of grocery shoppers in 2022. By 2026, it is something most of them do week in and week out. Simon and Gareth will unpack what that hardening could mean for planning, ranging, and how much of a grocery trip is decided before anyone walks through the door.

Where the cautious shopper’s patience breaks

For much of 2026, the cautious shopper followed a surprisingly consistent pattern. Then the external environment changed sharply. Simon and Gareth will use that moment to test what happens when financial pressure intensifies, and what it could mean for pricing, promotions, and value into Q4.

The purchase intent sitting between footfall and POS

Footfall shows who entered. POS shows who bought. Neither tells you what shoppers planned to do when they arrived. The 30-week dataset reveals a group of shoppers large enough to change how retailers think about the space between traffic and transaction, and where the real conversion opportunity may sit.

The gap between your best store and your worst

Across two retail estates, we can see how consistently associates actually offer help. The spread between the strongest and weakest stores is far wider than most operators would guess. Same brand. Same training. Same shopper. Simon and Gareth will break down what that execution gap could mean when a strategy depends on something happening consistently on the shop floor.

Why the gift buyer isn’t who you think

Between a fifth and a third of shoppers are buying for someone else, and that share climbed through 2026 well outside any traditional gifting season. The counterintuitive part is what that shopper wants on price. Simon and Gareth will connect gift intent to the decisions retailers make around service, ranging, staffing, and value.

Where does the data come from?

Shoppers answered a single question at the point of payment, in-store, in two seconds. No panels and no recall bias. The session draws on 309,340 responses collected across 30 weeks between January and August 2026, spanning US and UK retail, alongside separate store-level data from two anonymized retail estates.

Who should attend

This session is built for people responsible for turning shopper insight into better retail decisions.

That includes teams shaping customer strategy, merchandising and value, store operations and execution, retail strategy, and consumer research. It is especially relevant if you need to connect what shoppers are telling you with what is happening in stores, challenge assumptions before they become decisions, or give senior stakeholders a clearer view of what is changing and what is not.

You’ll leave with a stronger evidence base for conversations around value, purchase intent, conversion, service execution, and in-store strategy, plus practical questions you can take back to your own customer research.

Useful resources

• Retail store staff training – tips and strategies
• Retail conversion analysis guide
• Customer retention in retail
• How to build customer loyalty in retail
• Customer insight analysis – strategies and techniques