Every year, the National Retail Federation’s Big Show sets the tone for the year ahead. Drawing in brands and tech vendors from around the world, the now-week-long trade show includes hours of programming featuring hundreds of speakers, who ultimately produce thousands of soundbites their peers bring back to their desks to seize what NRF calls “the Next Now.” 

Despite the last 12 months of social, political, and economic upheaval, the dreaded t-word (tariffs) was barely uttered. Instead, executives from the keynote room to the breakout tracks zeroed in on the new cultural implications for retailers seeking to create value for consumers. (Note: We saw similar prioritization at Shoptalk Fall.)

Within this discussion of value lies supporting channels and tech innovations ranging from retail media to store design, and yes, AI. In fact, “artificial intelligence” (AI), “agentic,” and autonomous were front and center, serving as the hub for many adjacent conversations tied to customer and employee experience. But the challenge for anyone who attends the Big Show isn’t so much about finding valuable content; it’s about synthesizing all of that content into meaningful insights and mandates for the future. 

Our team attended sessions, had conversations, and ran through vendor demos. Then, we combined all this “raw data” to understand where ideas converged, conflicted, or repeated. We noted the trends speakers emphasized, the points they avoided, and the trends they saw more as an opportunity than a challenge. From there, interpreted these insights and patterns to determine how commerce will change over the next year and beyond.

With this Member Brief, we’re breaking down what actually matters, what’s structurally new, and the signals that will lead to real change, not cyclical noise. And what we uncovered are four equally important shifts that all point to the same underlying reality: commerce is entering a period of cultural unlearning. Long-standing assumptions about efficiency, value, control, and scale are being challenged, even dismantled. As a result, the leading organizations will no longer be defined by which adopt the most tools, but by those that develop their cultures to better understand and relate to shoppers. 

Trend 1: Organizational Rewiring Focuses More on Cultural Evolution Than Digital Transformation

NRF 2026 served as a pivot point for the industry. While many vendors were quick to add “agentic” and “autonomous” to their booth copy, retailers on stage largely took a more pragmatic view of the technology’s role in their organization. Discussions were not so much framed around possibilities, with executives waxing poetic about a big, bold future. Instead, brands ranging from LVMH to Ralph Lauren and Taco Bell took a more pragmatic approach, connecting AI to their fundamental reasons for being. 

There’s a throughline of this outcome to one of the trends Cassandra Napoli, WGSN’s Head of Marketing, Events, and Cultural Forecasting, featured in her session: “AI is Ordinary.” As AI becomes ambient, the risk shifts from technological failure to emotional, cultural, and organizational deficit.

“AI will become a normal and everyday part of our lives in the next two years, neither being a miracle as it was touted to be, or a menace,” Napoli said. “The real intelligence relies on using it to enhance human traits. That means creativity, empathy. The real risk won't be automation, but emotional deficit.” 

We believe this shift is already starting and, as a result, leaders will need to set the guardrails. 

Dane Mathews, Taco Bell’s Global Chief Digital and Technology Officer, noted that digital initiatives, such as its ConnectMe experience for drive-thrus, are built using AI and robust technology. While that’s all well and good, the execution is simply “fine” without the right person making the magic happen. “There is no way I can make a consumer experience memorable with a bunch of screens and AI,” he said. “They'll be better, but I don't know if they’ll necessarily be memorable.” (If you want more takeaways from Mathews' talk, you can click here.) 

Luxury leaders reinforced this theme from a different angle. Soumia Hadjali, Louis Vuitton’s Global SVP of Client Development and Digital, framed AI as an augmentative force that is most valuable when paired with human judgment, taste, and cultural intuition.

“AI never replaces the creative intent; it amplifies it in our studios,” Hadjali said. “For example, AI helps our designers explore deeper and faster. For example, visualizing materials, testing colors, and so on, so that they can really focus time on exploring, testing creativity, emotions, craftsmanship, and the narrative.” 

Louis Vuitton has also brought AI into stores, arming client advisors to elevate the service level for which the brand is known. “The advisors can get access to the clients' preferences and intentions, so that they really focus on the relationship, not on the screen.”

Apply the insights: Map where AI can augment the human experience in your organization. Set clear standards for testing, learning, and using this tech to meet individual and organizational roles. And ensure that AI augments and empowers your people, reaffirming your value every step of the way. 

Trend 2: Trust as a New Competitive Moat

Our research shows that consumers trust AI platforms to collect and synthesize information that is most relevant to their wants and needs. But when the time comes to make a purchase, most (77%) consumers still prefer to click through to the branded eCommerce site. 

That hasn’t stopped companies like URBN from being early adopters of in-platform checkout for ChatGPT, Perplexity, and other AI-integrated experiences. But with this adaptability comes a clear rule: brands must not be disintermediated. URBN’s insistence on maintaining merchant-of-record status and ownership of customer service reflects a growing concern: when AI intermediates transactions, brands must actively defend the relationship.

“These customers are Anthropologie customers,” said Rob Frieman, CIO of URBN, in a conversation with Stripe’s CRO of AI, Maia Josebachvili. “When the order is transacted, it's actually like a native transaction platform, which is one of the reasons we're so excited about it. Behind the scenes, the product that's being selected has an inventory check that is real-time. We're calculating tax based on shipping. We're offering shipping options. It feels natural.”

Much like AI agents and platforms like ChatGPT, commerce media networks have reshaped discovery and compressed the marketing funnel. But as commerce media’s interface ecosystem becomes more complex, the networks that want to sell to advertisers and serve consumers will need to focus on building trust across the value chain. (If you want to learn more about the NASCARification of eCommerce, check out our piece on Drake’s pants.)  

Retail media leaders from Costco, Nordstrom, and Best Buy prioritize customer and member trust over pure monetization. Costco was explicit that retail media exists separately from its membership promise and cannot interfere with the warehouse club’s primary goals: driving member renewal, discovery, and value.

Mark Williamson, AVP of Retail Media for Costco Wholesale, noted that he doesn’t want the company to just be compliant with a privacy and consent layer. He wants to protect trust with members, most of whom have been with Costco for a decade or more. “From there, it's about creating activation channels that leverage that data to drive relevant experiences as much as possible. Costco is about the process of discovery. And we've asked ourselves and challenged ourselves to say, ‘How does retail media play within that discovery business? How do we bring the process of discovery upstream?’”

He added that, in conjunction with the pure “sensory overload” of a Costco warehouse, retail media touchpoints should “seed the discovery process, being a treasure map for the treasure hunt.” 

This idea of trust doesn’t just speak to how retail media networks serve customers; it also reflects how they see their work with brands. Just as shoppers can choose a very seamless, low-touch experience or a very service-led one, Nordstrom Media partners can choose turnkey or high-touch. 

“We have some brand partners that want a low-touch, programmatic engagement model, and we want to be there and deliver for the moment,” said Aaron Dunford, VP of Nordstrom Media. “We also have some brand partners that want to engage with our local white-glove service and be able to pick up the phone and talk to us specifically about their business, their strategies, and how we can deliver on their goals.” 

Apply the insights: The power of retail media experiences goes far beyond the content itself. It also aligns with the formats, the touchpoints, and the moments customers experience them. Win consumers’ trust by communicating the value of participation, and use data thoughtfully to create experiences so compelling that the value inspires loyalty.

Trend 3: Experience is the Brand Moat in Shoppers’ Quest for Meaning

NRF 2026 made clear that physical retail’s role is evolving, but it’s more important than ever. The ease and efficiency of AI allows shoppers to discover and purchase in a single platform, but stores and experiences are the primary spaces where brands can prove their relevance, humanity, and cultural resonance.

DICK’S Sporting Goods positioned stores, especially its House of Sport locations, as community and identity infrastructure rather than conversion engines. There was a time when retailers were not just right-sizing their store fleets but completely downsizing their store footprints. The retailer went in the completely opposite direction, creating a 150,000-square-foot model that includes plenty of space for touching, testing, and playing. 

“Somewhere along the line, I fell in love with this business, and it’s a love affair that’s alive in the world today,” Stack said. “You can see it in House of Sport, a concept we started eight years ago or so. We said, ‘We’ve got to design this whole ecosystem of the future. What’s it going to be? It’s going to be around community, service, and product…the North Star of the conversation has been creating a concept that will kill sporting goods. If somebody else built this store across the street from one of our traditional stores, we would be out of business. That’s what we did.”  

Mary Beth Laughton, President and CEO of REI Co-op reinforced this community-first framing, especially the power of associates (who the brand calls “green vests”). 

“The green vests [are] such a differentiator for us, especially in a world where the transaction is just going to be super easy through AI,” Laughton said. “So we've got to really lean into the green vest, who are not just employees. They are trusted guides. They are passionate experts about the outdoors. We're thinking a lot about how we can leverage them, really, at any touchpoint.”

Apply the insights: In a world that’s incredibly wired, the biggest differentiators will be rooted in human experiences. Identify the moments in your customer journey where human presence is irreplaceable and invest there.

Trend 4: Redefine Value from Price Consciousness to Confidence 

2025 earnings reports underscored the rise of the “value-driven consumer,” whose wallets were squeezed and whose minds were overwhelmed by financial responsibilities. But the nuance many overlooked about this consumer came roaring to the forefront at NRF 2026: value isn’t just about price. 

Even executives from companies like Walmart made a point to separate value from price. The mass merchant has largely focused on competitive pricing, but leaders like Denise Incandela were brought into the fold to reframe the story. 

“We were winning on price, but this does not make value,” Incandela said. “We were not working on quality, esthetic and style. And so that's what we've been pursuing: the opportunity to service more of our customers' closets.”

With a storied career in luxury, Incandela has helped bolster and shape Walmart’s fashion strategy, which includes a host of new brands, including Millie Bobby Brown’s new line, Mills, collaborations, and trendier aesthetics. 

WGSN added cultural context to this evolved idea of value. Consumers are witnessing cultural fragmentation, experiencing severe decision fatigue, and are feeling a growing desire for curation over abundance. These shifts, along with the rise of subcultures and niche interests, creates more opportunities for brands to create meaning.

“Niche interest will be a better indicator of behavior than traditional demographics, and human premium will become a core differentiator,” Napoli said. “That means human is the new luxury.”

Apply the insights: Design for what consumers find meaningful, whether it be product, price, or experience. 

The Work of Unlearning

The expo floor wasn’t lacking in robotics, virtual reality, and immersive digital screens. But beneath the glitz of buzzy tech, the most resonant moments were grounded in pragmatism. 

And across every theme in this brief, a common throughline emerges: progress in commerce now requires subtraction as much as addition. Brands must unlearn inherited playbooks before new ones can take hold.

For Future Commerce members, the implication is clear: the most important work of 2026 is not trend adoption. It is cultural evolution. This means revisiting internal assumptions, redrawing boundaries around trust and control, and designing experiences and value propositions that restore confidence and dignity in an increasingly automated world.

NRF 2026 did not provide a single roadmap forward. It provided something more useful: evidence that the industry is collectively shedding outdated mental models.

Winning organizations do not always move the fastest, but they’re the most willing to let go of what no longer serves them. And perhaps most importantly, they’re willing to get out from behind their desks and truly experience the world around them, so they can understand what their customers see, hear, feel, and believe. 

That is the work ahead.