Cape Town
English, French
Christelle's role involves researching retail channels in South Africa, commissioning globally, centralised project management, content creation and structured client engagement.
Christelle started as an analyst covering beverages and tobacco in Sub-Saharan Africa. She moved to services and payments in 2018, covering travel, retailing, consumer finance, consumer foodservice, and digital services in Africa. In 2021, she opted to specialise in global retail channel analysis, encompassing retail and digital consumers. Christelle was previously a research and client analyst in a capital market research company that provided profiling for global institutional and private wealth investment managers.
The post-pandemic price spikes have eased across much of Latin America, but 2026 is no clean recovery: inflation has settled near 4% and prices keep rising. Years of stacked increases have changed how people shop. This is inflation fatigue – consumers are not just spending less, they have become tactical, and the winners will adapt to it.
One in two consumers globally are using ChatGPT to search for products in 2026. Nearly four in five say AI has introduced them to a brand they hadn't considered before. And yet, we ask a shopper in Shanghai and a shopper in Seattle how they use generative AI to buy things, and there are two different stories that barely resemble each other.
AI is becoming retail’s new front door, transforming how consumers discover, evaluate and choose products. Now, retailers and brands face a critical question: can AI move beyond discovery and start rewiring the rest of the shopper journey?
