What Will Matter for Brands & Retail in 2026

For most of my career across Nike, Adidas, Sneakerboy and Westfield , conversion was treated as something you could engineer.

We would basically work with understanding the right psychological triggers, frame the message correctly, and apply enough urgency so people would act. Job done. And for a long time, that was largely correct. I’ve worked inside enough retail businesses and brand environments to know that these principles weren’t invented by marketers but came from how people actually behave. That emotion still comes before logic.That people still look to others for reassurance and that scarcity still heightens perceived value.

None of that has suddenly stopped being true but as always what has changed is the environment those behaviours now sit inside.

As we move toward 2026, I’m seeing more brands do more work for less return. More campaigns, more optimisation, more pressure and yet customer decisions are somehow slowing. Not collapsing. Slowing. And that distinction really matters. Most customers aren’t rejecting brands outright. They’re hesitating.

That hesitation is where the shift is happening.

The trust environment has changed

The good news in 2026 is that human behaviour hasn’t become more difficult. What we are seeing is that it has become more trained. Over the last decade, people have lived through an era where pressure tactics were industrialised, urgency was manufactured, and platforms optimised relentlessly for attention rather than truth. They’ve watched authority be borrowed rather than earned. They’ve learned, and often the hard way, that not every signal sent to you deserves belief.

So as a result of this happening over and over again through 2025 consumers are super sharp. Now, every claim is interrogated. Every countdown is questioned and every “limited” message is weighed against the risk of regret. This isn’t cynicism. It’s self-protection. What it means is that all those familiar conversion tactics we use haven’t stopped working, oh not at all, they’ve just stopped working unquestioned.

When brands respond to the market by pushing harder, the result isn’t outrage. It’s now delay. And delay is unfortunately one of the most dangerous failure modes of all for a brand because it rarely ever announces itself. It just shows up quietly in longer consideration cycles, weaker repeat behaviour, along with decisions that never quite land.

Why familiar tactics feel weaker now

When urgency, authority and scarcity worked consistently, they’ve worked because the signals were trusted. Limited actually meant limited. Expert actually meant experienced.Urgency usually had a very real reason behind it. Customers didn’t have to interrogate every single claim simply because those patterns then hadn’t been overused or abused and the psychology could be applied more directly because people weren’t constantly on guard.

That’s no longer the case.

In today's world and with so much going on, people are more sensitive to pressure than ever before and not because they dislike brands, but because they’ve learned to be careful. They’ve seen how easily emotion can be engineered and so when brands lean harder on the same levers without earning them, confidence doesn’t increase, it drains.

This is where many teams misread the moment and assume the problem is desire.

It rarely is.

What actually stalls decisions

One of the most important lessons I’ve learned in my career, and believe me it's taken years to fully appreciate, is that people don’t usually struggle with wanting something. They struggle with feeling safe choosing it. The decision process normally works well. They want the outcome. They like the product. They understand the value. But what stops them is a quiet fear of making the wrong call or of being misled, rushed, or left alone with regret after the transaction. And it's that fear doesn’t show up neatly presented in dashboards. It shows up in hesitation, in silence and in customers who circle but don’t land.

So the real question is now is’nt:

“How do we trigger action?”

It’s:

“What is making this decision feel unsafe?”

Buying will get faster. Shopping still needs to be designed.

As AI accelerates across retail, one thing is becoming very clear, buying and shopping are not the same experience.

Buying is all about efficiency and a cognitive default. Where do I go to get my groceries? Coles, home tech product? JB HIFI. Shopping on the other hand is about meaning. AI will and has compressed buying. It will remove steps, shorten paths, and in some categories move people from “what’s best?” to purchase in minutes. For certain products, that will be incredibly effective.

But shopping, the part where identity is formed, taste is shaped, and confidence builds… well this still requires design, restraint, and intention.

If brands treat 2026 as a continued race to remove every moment of friction, they may win the transaction and quietly lose the relationship.

The psychology that will matter in 2026

The brands performing best right now aren’t abandoning psychology. They’re applying it with more judgement and more respect for the person on the other side of the decision. I'm seeing the results with brands I work with across multiple verticals.

There's a few patterns that are showing up consistently.

First, they design for emotional safety before persuasion. Before storytelling, before urgency, before optimisation, the experience answers a simple question, Am I okay to decide here? So it's about clear information, transparent pricing and no hidden pressure. If you can establish safety first decisions will speed up naturally.

Second, they remove effort rather than add excitement. Clarity now outperforms cleverness and reducing cognitive load is more powerful than amplifying desire. I’ve seen beautifully written brands lose momentum simply because understanding required way too much work.

Third, they understand identity better than demographics. People don’t buy because something is objectively good. They buy because it fits who they believe they are or who they are becoming and when a brand reflects that accurately, without exaggeration, the decision feels almost obvious rather than forced.

Fourth, when urgency is used, it’s earned. This means real capacity limits along with real timelines and real chapters. Manufactured pressure only teaches customers to wait where honest momentum now gives them a reason to move.

And finally, they care deeply about what happens after the sale. The emotional experience after someone says yes absolutely determines whether that yes ever happens again. That reassurance or confirmation, and calm are not soft ideas or nice to haves. They are commercial ones.

Where psychology fits and properly

Behavioural psychology has never been optional in brand or retail in my opinion. 85% of my role across some of the best brands globally meant it was absolutely foundational. But you do need to be careful because when you use psychology and apply it without judgement it becomes manipulation. And manipulation, even when it “works,” erodes trust over time. As new technologies emerge, the temptation will be to game the system the same way brands learned to game the old one, borrowed authority, inflated signals, manufactured proof. AI won’t remove manipulation. It will scale it. Which is exactly why trust becomes a growth strategy, not a virtue signal.

The work I do now isn’t about finding new triggers. It’s about knowing when to pause, when to simplify, and when to let the customer breathe.

The strongest conversions often feel uneventful and that’s not at all a weakness. It’s a very clear sign of confidence.

What this means heading into 2026

Amazing brands that lead into 2026 aren't going to feel louder or sharper. They’ll actually feel calmer and more deliberate. More human. There's some that have started this process already and are seeing great results with conversion.

They’ll still use psychology, for sure. But just not carelessly. They’ll understand both the science of decision-making and the art of timing and they’ll know that influence isn’t about control but about creating the conditions where the right decision feels obvious.

Ok so I want to leave you with this because there’s also a wider truth sitting underneath all of this.

Efficiency is profitable until it starts weakening the very economy brands depend on. When automation replaces wages at scale, it doesn’t just reduce costs, it changes confidence, optimism, and spending power. Retail cannot talk about conversion in 2026 without acknowledging what’s happening to the human system that funds demand.

The brands that get this wrong won’t fail dramatically. They’ll stall very quietly. And the ones that get it right won’t need to shout about it. You’ll see it in how easily people say yes and how often they come back.

Nick Gray

Founder & CEO | IGU Global