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 October 14, 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, October 14, 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.
Save your seat
October 14, 2026
11:00 AM ET / 4:00 PM BST · 45 minutes
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 September 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.
Four decades of retail data meet the latest shopper evidence
Simon Hay
TruRating Board Advisor · Former Group CEO of dunnhumby
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
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 has climbed in eleven of the last twelve months at one European grocer, with September reaching the highest level on record. Simon and Gareth explore what that hardening of behavior means for planning, ranging, and how much of a shopping trip is now decided before anyone walks through the door.
What consumers think about pricing
Discount hunting drifted upward through the spring, but nowhere near as far as the headlines might suggest. At the same time, two other attitudes toward price did not move at all across nine months. Simon and Gareth unpack what that combination means for pricing and promotion heading into Q4.
Two retailers, same two years, opposite results
A European grocer and a US off-price retailer, tracked across the same period. One moved its value score. The other did not. And the retailer that improved its value perception was selling smaller baskets. Simon and Gareth put the two pictures side by side and explore what could explain the difference.
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
Around a quarter of apparel and footwear shoppers are buying for someone else. They arrive with a different problem to solve than the self-purchaser. The counterintuitive part is what they want when it comes to price.
Where does the data come from?
Every finding comes from a single question asked at the payment terminal, answered in about two seconds by a verified paying customer, and tied to the transaction that triggered it. No panels. No recall a week later. No self-selected group with a complaint to make.
The session draws on weekly readings from October 2025 through September 2026 across grocery, off-price, athletic footwear, and apparel in Europe, the US, and Australia, alongside store-level data from retail estates ranging from 500 to 1,500 stores.
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.
Save your seat
Join Simon Hay and Gareth Johns as they open up 30 consecutive weeks of shopper data and explore what it means for the retail decisions ahead.
Wednesday, October 14, 2026 · 11:00 AM ET / 4:00 PM BST · 45 minutes · Free
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