Since COVID-19, technology innovations and the adoption of cross-cutting consumer behaviour across countries have sharpened, through the impact of influencers on TikTok etc. Accessibility to trends worldwide consistently generates outsized impact within entire categories and industries. K-beauty devices substantially underlie these growth rates, with LED masks gaining popularity among US consumers. But what does that mean for K-beauty devices overall?

Global pet care approaches USD225 billion in retail value in 2026, expanding 5% year-on-year in current terms. Value gains continue to outpace volume growth as affordability pressures constrain spending. Future growth will increasingly come from cat food, emerging markets and affordable premium propositions. Against this backdrop, five trends are redefining the industry's growth opportunities and competitive landscape.

Longevity is everywhere in beauty today across product claims, ingredient narratives, and innovation pipelines. But when a theme becomes this pervasive, the more important question is not what is trending, but what is translating into sustained demand. From a market perspective, this distinction matters. Trends create noise while repeat purchase, ingredient scale, and cross-category adoption signal where companies should invest versus where they should wait.

As consumers strongly link being attractive with appearing healthy, beauty-positioned supplements surpass traditional health products in both growth and innovation focus.

The dairy industry in Asia Pacific is undergoing demographic shifts and rising competition from consumer health categories. To stay competitive for the long term, brands must focus on early‑life preventative health and build relevance among consumers under 30.

Wellness has become a high value expectation for consumers, creating a strong opportunity for companies to integrate it into loyalty strategies. Its broad, adaptable scope allows almost any brand to embed wellness and form partnerships with health and wellness players. By rewarding progress on personal wellness journeys, companies create a powerful engagement loop that drives loyalty, relevance, and new revenue potential.

High protein is the widest-diffusing functional claim of the last decade in food and drink, and the cautionary tale attached to it is now visible in the numbers. Full diffusion delivered tonnage but eroded margin. Fibre is the next claim on that road, and its slower, more conditional climb is not a weakness – handled well, it is what will protect its pricing power.

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.

Most claim strategy is trendspotting and activation. Brands scan the cultural landscape for what consumers are currently anxious about or aspiring towards and build claims around that signal. Clean label, gut health, immune support, stress relief; each of these has had its moment, and each has faded or been diluted as the cultural mood shifted and the category filled with me-too competitors. The underlying logic is demographic and attitudinal: find a segment, find their current focus or fear, match your claim to it. There is a more durable, sticky alternative. Alongside following trends, we should follow roles.

As the FIFA World Cup approaches, leading foodservice and delivery players are rolling out strategies to capture consumption beyond the stadium, recognising that most viewing will take place in homes, offices, bars, and restaurants.

As increasingly digital consumers prioritise convenience in their purchasing decisions, online delivery’s share of restaurant sales has skyrocketed. With third-party delivery fulfilment being the biggest engine for growth, foodservice operators are seeing their margins eroded by merchant fees. Thriving, let alone surviving, is a juggling act when ingredient, shipping, and labour costs continue to rise.

The USD3 trillion wellness industry is no longer just about green juices, yoga mats and incremental optimisation. A new frontier is emerging, one that challenges long held taboos around substances, mental states and self experimentation. Euromonitor defines this shift as transgressive wellness.

Globally, soft drinks sales are on course to reach one trillion litres by 2030. Yet very little of that growth will come from supermarket aisles in Europe or North America. It will instead come from kiranas, warungs, tiendas and kiosks across Africa, Asia and Latin America - markets where preserving affordability and entry-level brand accessibility are key. New AI-powered shelf audits can show what it takes to win in this fragmented, under-measured channel.

As luxury brands increasingly look beyond China, the Americas is emerging as a critical growth market. Yet future success will depend less on scale and ownership and more on relevance, authenticity, emotional value and experiences. As consumers become more discerning, luxury brands must justify their value through deeper, more meaningful connections.

Repeated disruptions to Gulf energy routes are creating renewed volatility across the global economy, driving higher oil, transport and logistics costs. Our latest Chart of the Month examines which major economies are most exposed to these shocks and how rising costs could affect inflation, consumer spending and business performance.

Dubai's tourism sector entered 2026 from a position of strength, welcoming 19.6 million visitors in 2025, before rising regional tensions sharply disrupted demand — hotel occupancy fell from forecasts above 80% to around 20%. The disruption shifted rather than destroyed demand, as Dubai mobilised its full tourism ecosystem through coordinated campaigns like "Kids Go Free" and the "A Dubai Invite" ambassador programme, redirecting demand toward residents and regional travellers. The experience offers lessons in resilience, ecosystem collaboration, and adapting quickly to uncertainty as a blueprint for the wider GCC.

The Strait of Hormuz blockage is the defining economic shock of 2026, disrupting a critical energy corridor and driving oil prices sharply higher. Alongside higher tariffs, rising energy costs have weakened global growth by squeezing household purchasing power and corporate margins. Energy importers face the largest impact; exporters and economies with diversified supply, resilient domestic demand or effective subsidies are better placed to absorb it.

The US has introduced a new round of Trump tariffs, keeping tariff pressure in place after the previous temporary 10% global duties expired on 24 July 2026. For many major economies, the headline rate has not changed; the bigger shift is that the tariffs now sit on a more durable framework, with some partners facing higher 12.5% rates.

Two in three consumers globally are using ChatGPT to search for products, according to Euromonitor International's Voice of the Consumer: Digital Shopper Survey, fielded March 2026. Unlike traditional search, where shoppers navigate pages of results, AI assistants narrow the consideration set to a smaller selection of products. Understanding how a brand enters and exits a recommendation is therefore becoming a crucial new dimension of digital visibility. To explore this, Euromonitor tested 1,000 shopper-style scalp care prompts across ChatGPT and Gemini in the UK and US, varying persona, tone, and writing style. Every response was coded for the brands mentioned, the language used to describe them, and the sources cited.

For two decades, e-commerce has been built around destinations. Consumers searched, browsed and transacted inside retailer websites, marketplaces and apps. GenAI challenges that model, illustrated by Amazon’s legal battle with Perplexity.

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 moving from a supporting role to a system-level driver of FMCG innovation. As companies shift from high-volume launches to precision-led strategies, AI is enabling faster demand detection, more resilient formulation and new routes to visibility on the algorithmic shelf. This article explores how AI is redefining innovation advantage and why leading companies are embedding it as the engine of their innovation systems.

As GenAI surges in popularity, more consumers are utilising GenAI platforms in place of traditional search engines when searching for products and services to buy online. Thanks to advancements in in-chat payments, consumers are also increasingly conducting transactions directly within GenAI platforms. These developments are forcing brands and retailers to embrace GenAI to an unprecedented degree, powering an extraordinary transformation in digital commerce.

Loyalty is evolving as brands move beyond purely transactional rewards towards more personalised, experience-driven engagement. Emerging trends such as agentic AI, immersive micro-content, choice-based rewards and wellness-led incentives are reshaping how value is created and delivered – with growing focus on high-net-worth consumers who expect tailored, premium and highly relevant experiences.