2026 is shaping up to be a year where consumer electronics marketers are moving faster and getting smarter. AI is now expected, retail media is driving most purchases, and pricing and inventory can change week to week. These shifts are creating new opportunities for brands that can adapt quickly and stay connected to how people actually shop. Read on to learn what these changes mean for the year ahead and how CPG marketers can take the right lessons into 2026 with confidence.

Beauty is entering 2026 with its characteristic resilience, but also with a new level of complexity. Consumers are becoming more intentional in how they spend, balancing tighter budgets with a desire for small luxuries, simplicity, transparency, and products that genuinely work.

It’s no secret that beauty sales are now dominated by ecommerce, and increasingly, the winners are those who can crack the code of digital success. Brands have a new toolkit that drives their success, which includes being available, visible, and attractive.

The beauty industry is shifting from simple growth to complex channel integration. Success now requires seamlessly linking social commerce discovery with marketplace conversion to ensure sustainable profitability. The global beauty industry is entering a phase of structural transformation rather than simple expansion. While the sector globally recorded approximately 7.3% year over year value growth according to NielsenIQ, and is projected to reach between 590 and 677 billion US dollars by 2025 depending on market scope definitions, the broader ecosystem already exceeds 800 billion dollars when adjacent categories are included.

Across enterprise commerce, fraud no longer behaves like a series of isolated incidents. It operates as repeatable, automated playbooks — continuously tested, refined, and redeployed across environments. The result is not just more fraud, but fraud engineered to blend in with legitimate customer behavior. That shift is changing where fraud risk sits, how it needs to be managed, and what it costs when it isn’t.

We’re introducing UCP-powered features and AI tools to create a more intuitive, agentic shopping experience on Google for consumers and retailers. At Google I/O, we shared our vision for the future of agentic commerce, anchored by our new Universal Cart, Agent Payments Protocol (AP2) and the Universal Commerce Protocol (UCP). We co-developed UCP to help make agentic commerce available to everyone, and today, we’re taking a major step toward that. We’re bringing more UCP features to Google and launching new tools to help merchants succeed in the agentic commerce era.

The physical wallet isn’t dead, but it’s now optional. A growing share of shoppers now pay entirely with their phone, whether they’re buying online, picking up in store or browsing a pop-up on a Saturday morning. One in five digital wallet users regularly leave home without a physical wallet.

That shift creates a missed opportunity for retailers who haven’t kept pace: a customer standing at your register, ready to pay, but unable to complete the purchase because your setup doesn’t support how they want to pay.

The Pay Later market is entering a new phase. In January, BNPL use declined among younger consumers, while demand remained steady among households living paycheck to paycheck. At the same time, credit card installment plans held firm, with more than three in 10 consumers using them—unchanged from the previous month.

Generation Z showed the sharpest pullback in BNPL use, while millennials and bridge millennials also declined to their lowest levels in nearly a year. But financially constrained consumers continued to rely on BNPL at similar rates as in December, highlighting its role as a liquidity tool rather than a discretionary one.

The Youth Report by Pacsun provides a comprehensive look at the values, behaviors, and trends shaping the next generation of consumers. From Gen Z’s commitment to defining their own identity to Gen Alpha’s early engagement with creators and trusted influences, the report highlights key trends in media, fashion, spending, and well-being.