ge to the tech-focused Nasdaq. This is partly symbolic but it has material value, too: Walmart is now head-first into agentic AI and is rapidly advancing projects that are both customer-facing and back office. The company’s leadership believes it will attract more investment if it is seen as a technology company, (say, like Amazon) rather than an old-style retailer (say, like Takashimaya). There is another important lesson for retailers and mall operators to learn from this: The wave of investor interest in ESG/DEI has been ridden to the shore already. The companies that are still, in 2026 and beyond, making this out to be a core competitive advantage that will attract investor money are falling behind the curve. The flow of money into ESG funds has hit a brick wall, and the bloated greenwashing reports that companies have been routinely putting out will need to be revisited and in many cases shrunk. Now, for better or worse, it’s about technology. There’s no glory in following trends, only in setting them Despite the routine claims of retailers and mall operators that they have redefined this or reimagined that, most of it is actually tinkering with existing formats. This is perfectly fine because after much tinkering over a long time, you can take a step back and admire much progress. However, truth be told, there is a scarcity of the genuine trendsetting type and a super-abundance of followers and this is just the way things have to be. It’s like too many cooks. You can’t have too many people issuing commands and not enough people following them. On the other hand, when a concept is so successful that too many retailers pile on, you start having a problem. It’s what we see happening with the collectables/IP category that Pop Mart has made such a success out of: Retailers with their own dignified track record in more functional categories – think Japan’s Loft and China’s Miniso – are getting drawn so far into it that we should be looking out for consumer fatigue in this category during 2026. It isn’t quite like the pet rock craze of the 1970s but it still smacks of being a ‘bubble’ category that eventually will get a pin stuck in it. Fortunately, it won’t send a lot of retailers into bankruptcy but it will require some serious lane-changing by retailers in terms of their merchandising. Functional, design-rich lifestyles will be ascendant At the same time though, lifestyle retail, which can be taken to mean accessibly priced products with true everyday functionality and imbued with imaginative design are on the ascendant. Expansion in this category throughout Asia is already significant and looks set to intensify in 2026. To name a few: Oh!Some from Singapore is launching throughout the region, Sunnies World from the Philippines has just opened in Bangkok, Moshi Moshi is back-filling locations in Thailand and has regional ambitions, and Muji continues to expand too, including magnificent new flagship stores in Bangkok and Ho Chi Minh City. Bangkok will continue to be a focal point for new openings You will notice that Bangkok crops up quite a bit in relation to new stores, new malls and new trends, and that is no accident. The revamp of Central Chidlom, re-tenanting of Central World’s old Isetan department store wing, the introduction of new experiential tenants in Siam Paragon, the openings of One Bangkok and Dusit Central Park, and the recycling of tenancies in trophy centres like Icon Siam and the Em District are collectively driving their own goldrush into the Thai capital, enhancing Bangkok’s claim of being Southeast Asia’s leading retail hub. Experiential’s next (tech-driven) generation Speaking of Siam Paragon’s new experiential tenants, this is something to look out for more of in 2026: A genuinely new generation of tech- driven entertainment/edutainment tenants. Siam Paragon has just opened Nextopia, a 15,000sqm edutainment project designed for community and city-building. It incorporates the expertise of dozens of creative partners in architecture, engineering and other fields to immerse visitors in the possibilities of a new and better world. There is also now Meland, a 5000sqm educational theme park on the fifth floor of the centre, with six physiographic zones offering rides and amusements. Across town in One Bangkok, Techhouse by .Life is a large-format technology store owned by personal tech retailer Copperwired. The store has a dazzling assortment of design- rich technology gizmos, including a foldable drone, a canine robot, robovacs, speakers, smart watches, activity trackers, security equipment, among others. Expect a lot more of these kinds of technology-driven experiential tenants in malls in the next few years. Retailers will benefit from the China government’s investment in consumption, while tourism shifts away. Mainland China’s sputtering retail industry offers new hope for retailers in 2026, too: The government is making domestic consumption a policy priority to offset uncertainty in other, more traditional sectors of the economy that are struggling, such as exports and property. The huge appliance trade-in scheme that has buoyed hardline sales over the past 18 months may be extended into 2026 and expanded to include other items. The government is also exerting pressure on financial institutions to broaden their services to consumers for big-ticket purchases. These kinds of policy instruments don’t just boost retail activity, they do so in a way that injects more energy-efficient and technologically advanced products into the mainstream household. This is good news for retailers of all kinds of technology products. Meanwhile, Malaysia, Cambodia, Vietnam, Japan and Korea have all figured out that a lot of people, particularly the big-spending Chinese, are becoming wary of Thailand as a tourist destination, for a number of reasons mostly centred on personal safety. A number of incidents in recent times, now capped off with the reignition, still ongoing, of the border war between the Thais and Cambodians have driven down tourism numbers into Thailand to the point where international arrivals have still not exceeded pre-Covid levels. Moreover, the arrival numbers themselves are being buoyed by tourists with different – and often less free-spending – shopping, dining and entertainment habits. Thailand’s neighbours have rolled out marketing campaigns to siphon away travellers, and it’s working. Expect this competitive national beauty contest across the region to continue over the next few years. Hubris will catch up with the large conglomerates This year will also be a time for some of Southeast Asia’s largest retail and retail property companies to start rectifying their past excesses. Hubris has been a big driver of growth for a number of companies whose leadership should have shown more maturity in their decision-making, particularly with regard to store and mall expansions and acquisitions. Thailand’s Central Retail, which has a massive portfolio of about 3800 stores and 77 malls, primarily in Thailand and Vietnam, is a poster child: In late 2025, it divested its nine Rinascente department stores in Italy and sold its Nguyen Kim appliance chain in Vietnam at a fraction of the price for which it was purchased in full six years ago. While Rinascente was a mature business far away from Central’s core operations in Southeast Asia, Nguyen Kim was an embarrassing mélange of poor service culture and out-of-stocks that Central was never able to improve even incrementally, much less make competitive. This wouldn’t be such an issue if some of the same problems didn’t infect its other operations in both countries. Domestically, it needs to fix technology, marketing and merchandising problems at its Tops supermarket and Tops Daily concepts, and do something about the service culture at Power Buy (its domestic equivalent of Nguyen Kim) and Super Sports chains. But this is not all. Central is rolling out a new wholesale concept called Go Wholesale to compete with CP Axtra’s Makro in Thailand, and it is going to be a hard road ahead. When Go Wholesale first launched at the end of 2023, Central planned to open about 40 of them by 2028 but it’s currently stuck in the low teens and foot traffic at some of the stores is weak. Teething problems, maybe, but there is significant risk it has bitten off more than it can chew. The progress it makes (or doesn’t make) with this concept in 2026 will be a key determinant of whether it has a long-term future. Elsewhere in the region, other major retailers and mall operators will be facing the music in 2026. In Vietnam, Vincom is struggling to deal with a perennially nasty vacancy problem across its portfolio that is partly a result of building too many substandard properties too fast in too many marginal locations. A reckoning awaits. Now, Japan’s Aeon Mall has also come aggressively into the Vietnam market, and despite its superior development and operational culture, risks the same fate. Already Aeon has a couple of underperforming projects in Phnom Penh, where it has only one serious competitor in the super- regional mall business. The bottom line: For Southeast Asia’s largest conglomerates, 2026 will be a year of increased focus on fixing their past excesses rather than continuing to binge on expansion. A final prediction and a question Here’s a final prediction for 2026, and this one is for the marketers. You will need to find some new words, ‘Reimagine,’ ‘reinvent’ and ‘redefine’ have been done to death. There have been too many outsized claims in order to get heard and people aren’t listening to them. We look forward to some fresh vernacular that is better married to the realities of retail. It’s a difficult business, and as we noted above, not everyone is a trendsetter. One final question: By the end of 2026, will anyone be carrying cash anymore? This story first appeared in the February 2026 issue of Inside Retail Asia magazine. Further reading: What will define marketing success in the age of AI?