“In 2026, we expect the US retail sector to see stable but selective growth, as retailers navigate economic uncertainty and tariff-related volatility,” said Anand Kumar, Coresight Research’s associate director of retail research. ”Traditional strategies will no longer suffice; success will favour those adopting agile, technology-driven approaches to boost productivity, enhance customer experiences and drive operational efficiency.” Coresight Research, meanwhile, broke down the five core pillars reshaping consumer behaviour and the retail landscape in 2026.  Together, these pillars highlight where disruption is accelerating – and the critical priorities retailers must address to remain competitive and succeed in the year ahead. Five predictions poised to reshape the US retail landscape in 2026 Consumer demand will stabilise amid easing economic pressures  “In 2026, we expect consumer demand to be more stable than in 2025, supported by easing inflation, lower interest rates and slightly lower unemployment.” While some uncertainty will persist early in the year – driven by the pace of rate cuts and lingering cost pressures – improving macro conditions should reduce pressure on consumers and retailers, Kumar theorised.  However, while retailers were able to cushion tariff-related cost increases during the holiday 2025 through inventory pull-forward, supplier negotiations, assortment adjustments, and selective margin absorption, limiting near-term price shock, these buffers will be harder to sustain in 2026.  Additionally, tariff pass-through could weigh on discretionary spending and reinforce value-conscious behaviour even as macro conditions improve. Agentic commerce will enhance customer conversion, purchase speed and ROI in retail “Retailers that adopt AI-powered shopping assistants and automation will see significant improvements in conversion rates, increased customer spending and accelerated purchase decision-making,” said Kumar. On average, Coresight Research found that customers who engaged with AI chatbots converted at 12.3 per cent versus 3.1 per cent for non-users (four times higher), completed purchases 47 per cent faster, and, among returning shoppers, spent around 25 per cent more when interacting with AI-driven tools such as recommendation engines. Beyond these metrics, Kumar expects agentic AI to enhance marketing ROI and operational efficiency, and to strengthen supply chain and fulfilment processes, positioning retailers for faster growth and higher profitability. Experiential, tech-powered stores will drive significant revenue and margin gains “Tech-powered, experiential stores will deliver significant performance gains by deepening engagement, personalising journeys and improving operational efficiency.” For example, a 2025 experiential retail activation for American beauty brand Kiehl’s, designed by the agency Gradient, demonstrated how immersive store formats can directly drive sales performance.  The brand’s redesign delivered a 2.6 times higher conversion rate and an average dwell time of 13.4 minutes – roughly 55 per cent above beauty industry benchmarks – while store transactions outperformed the brand’s national average by eight percentage points.  Not to mention that the brand’s engagement data showed that each additional minute spent in-store correlated with a 1.3 per cent increase in sales. Supply chain agility will be a core competitive differentiator In 2026, supply chain agility will be one of the core competitive differentiators as retailers invest heavily in agentic AI, automation and data platforms to counter cost volatility and disruption. This will be especially relevant as tariff-related cost pressures become more visible to consumers in 2026 – and as the inventory pull-forward and margin absorption tactics used to cushion holiday 2025 costs become harder to sustain. Retailers will need to increasingly use AI agents to support real-time inventory optimisation, demand sensing, scenario-based sourcing decisions and risk monitoring.  “Retailers that can keep the right products in stock and positioned in the right places, while dynamically adapting to cost and supply shocks, will be better positioned to protect margins and capture market share,” stated Kumar.  Retail media: High-margin growth engines reshaping retail economics In 2026, an increasing share of retailer profits will be driven by high-margin, data-enabled B2B services such as retail media, Coresight Research predicted. “As retailers scale media platforms and data-driven capabilities, they will unlock incremental profit pools that meaningfully enhance overall profitability while reinforcing their core retail operations,” said Kumar.   For mid-market retailers in the early stages of retail media, Coresight Research anticipates net margins in the range of 40–60 per cent. This reflects the low inventory costs and strong pricing power typically associated with retail media, balanced against platform fees, ad operations, sales teams and shared technology and data infrastructure.  Kumar noted that the impact retail media can deliver is most pronounced in grocery and mass retail, where thin core margins amplify the value of incremental profit streams. What retailers need to keep in mind for 2026 “Overall,” Kumar concluded, “2026 is likely to see more benign macroeconomic factors than 2025, even if some uncertainty and rising inflation carry into the early part of the year.” For example, for 2026, the Federal Reserve projects lower inflation, lower interest rates, and slightly lower unemployment than in 2025, all of which could alleviate some pressure on consumers and retailers.  Additionally, Coresight Research expects total US retail sales to grow by approximately 3.5 per cent YoY in 2026, easing from the estimated 3.9 per cent growth in 2025, for a US$5.4 trillion market. The research firm also predicted that online sales will capture an additional 100 basis points’ share of total retail sales in 2026, accounting for 24.1 per cent of retail sales, up from an estimated 23.1 per cent in 2025. While it looks like retailers are a bit more likely to spend in 2026 than they were the year prior, retailers will still need to stay on their toes if they want to come out on top. Further reading: Six retail technology trends to watch this year