WHEN CUSTOMERS CHANGE THE RULES

The success of any business focused on the end consumer depends largely on its ability to identify what buyers want—not only today, but tomorrow as well. That is why monitoring the market, studying consumer behaviour, and tracking reactions to price changes, new preferences and habits have long ceased to be optional marketing tools and become essential conditions for maintaining competitiveness.

The problem is that consumers themselves are changing noticeably. Several years of high inflation, the rapid growth of digital commerce and, finally, the spread of artificial intelligence (AI) are gradually reshaping the familiar model of purchase decision-making.

The logic of choice itself is changing, along with the rules by which manufacturers and retailers compete for buyers.

Not cheaper, but better

A study published by Boston Consulting Group (BCG) at the end of August identified several lasting changes: consumers are increasingly assessing not so much the price of a product as its actual value, becoming considerably more demanding towards brands and making growing use of artificial intelligence when choosing products. In other words, it is not simply the contents of the consumer basket that are changing.

The company surveyed more than 13,000 consumers across 12 markets, conducted over 100 in-depth interviews and compared the findings with data on the purchasing behaviour of more than 1,000 brands between 2022 and 2026.

One of the most interesting conclusions of the BCG study concerned the changing consumer attitude towards price. After a prolonged period of high inflation and rising living costs, it might seem that low prices should have become the decisive argument in purchasing decisions.

However, around 67% of respondents said they would not buy a product even if they could afford it if they did not consider it sufficiently valuable to them. This does not mean that price has ceased to matter. Rather, its function has changed. It determines whether a product enters the buyer’s field of consideration at all. After that, a different calculation begins: is the product worth the money being asked for it?

Buyers take into account quality, functionality, durability, ease of use, service, time savings and the extent to which a product meets their own needs.

A study by NielsenIQ and World Data Lab points to the same trend. Its authors note a distinctive polarisation of consumption: the same person may choose a more expensive product in one category if they see a reason to pay extra, while switching without hesitation to a budget alternative in another. As a result, the traditional practice of categorising buyers solely by age or income is becoming increasingly ineffective at explaining their actual behaviour.

This is increasing pressure on traditional brands. A well-known name alone no longer guarantees a willingness to pay. Retailers’ own-label products are gradually shedding their reputation as merely “cheap alternatives” and are increasingly entering higher price segments. Buyers now have to be given a fresh explanation of why one particular brand costs more than another.

The conclusion for businesses is fairly simple, although much more difficult to implement: a strategy of continually raising prices has a natural limit. Growth increasingly depends on a company’s ability to demonstrate convincingly what exactly the buyer receives in return for their money. This means that competition is now based on quality, convenience, service, functionality and the amount of time a product can save its owner.

Algorithms making choice

The process of choosing a product is changing just as noticeably. Until recently, buyers’ main aids were search engines, manufacturers’ websites, reviews from other users, recommendations from friends and social media. Now a new intermediary is emerging between manufacturers and consumers—artificial intelligence.

This process is largely a consequence of another feature of the digital age: an excess of information. According to the BCG study, 43% of consumers admit to feeling psychologically overwhelmed by the volume of information, while more than half do not fully trust any single source. As a result, buyers increasingly want not to study dozens of websites and hundreds of reviews themselves, but to receive a selection of options that have already been filtered and match their requirements.

Today, 31% of those surveyed by BCG use AI at some stage of the purchasing process at least occasionally—approximately three times more than a year and a half ago. Among Generation Z and millennials, the figure reaches 42%; among high-income consumers, 43%; and in developing markets, 50%. Almost one in five participants in the study already turns to AI regularly when making purchasing decisions, and 70% of these users ultimately buy the product recommended to them.

NielsenIQ data confirm the scale of the changes: around three-quarters of respondents use AI tools to search for or learn about products, although only approximately one in five currently uses them directly while making a purchase. The direction of change is clear—artificial intelligence is rapidly becoming a channel through which consumers find products.

For now, this is primarily a question of an assistant rather than a fully autonomous buyer. According to Mastercard, 85% of consumers are prepared to use an AI agent to find the best offer, while 74% would allow it to carry out certain operations on the user’s direct instructions. However, only 10% are willing to give an algorithm full authority to make purchases without additional confirmation.

The next transformation in retail will therefore probably not involve the emergence of an autonomous “robot buyer”. Instead, algorithms are likely to take over the most time-consuming parts of the process: searching, comparing prices and specifications, reading reviews and compiling a shortlist of the most suitable offers.

This is where the most serious changes for businesses begin. Previously, companies invested huge sums in brand recognition, advertising, prominent product placement in shops, search-engine promotion and social media marketing. Now a significant part of the initial selection process may gradually shift to algorithms.

BCG calculated that in approximately 63% of AI-assisted purchases, consumers are offered brands they had not previously considered at all. This creates an unusual situation: a well-known name no longer guarantees a place on the final shortlist, while a less familiar manufacturer has a chance of appearing there if its offer corresponds more precisely to the specific request.

Manufacturers must therefore make the advantages of their products clear not only to people. An algorithm must be able to find and correctly interpret a product’s specifications, price, availability, delivery and returns terms, customer reviews and other information that makes it possible to match the offer with the user’s request. Otherwise, an entirely new commercial risk emerges—the product’s digital “invisibility”.

This is also giving rise to a new area of marketing. Alongside familiar search-engine optimisation, companies are beginning to optimise information for systems that do not merely provide users with links, but generate ready-made answers and recommendations. For businesses, this means that accurate, structured and regularly updated data about their products is becoming increasingly important.

At the same time, buyers still want to see a product in person, try it on, test it, receive advice from a specialist or resolve an unusual problem. The development of AI is therefore unlikely to mean the disappearance of physical retail. Rather, the role of the shop is changing: it is increasingly becoming the final link in a selection process, a substantial part of which has already taken place in the digital environment.

Modern buyers are therefore paying much closer attention to what they are prepared to pay for and are increasingly willing to hand over part of the selection process to technology. For businesses, monitoring these changes is becoming a condition of competitiveness, because as consumer behaviour changes, so do products, marketing and sales channels themselves. In this situation, the advantage will go to companies that recognise the new behaviour model before their competitors and adapt their strategies to it in good time.