Shoppers aren’t loyal to a store anymore. They’re loyal to an experience.
Ease of shopping just overtook everyday low price as the top reason shoppers pick a retailer. Release No. 2 of the Advantage360™ 2026 Shopper Study breaks down why — and what retailers and brands can do about it.
This is Release 2 of our 2026 Shopper Study. Release 1, The Adaptive Shopper, showed how new routines are reshaping how people eat, shop and buy. This release picks up where that left off — knowing why shoppers shop only gets you halfway. The other half is why they choose one retailer over another.
Why it matters: Retailers and Brands are competing for the same shopper dollars, but the decision of where to shop rarely comes down to price alone anymore. Understanding what shapes that decision, and where the biggest opportunities and risks sit, is what separates the retailers earning loyalty from the ones losing trips to a competitor down the street.
Get the full report!
If you haven’t accessed Shopper Study Release 1, new data on what shoppers buy, where they shop, and why it’s harder to keep them loyal, you can get it here.
What’s inside:
Release 2 delves deeper into three areas that shape retailer choice this year.
Category Experience: where shopper satisfaction holds strong, where it’s slipping, and which categories carry the highest risk when a product isn’t on the shelf.
Store Choice Factors: what pulls Shoppers through the door in the first place, from price and assortment to the services they’ve come to expect at checkout and beyond.
Connected Shopping and Product Discovery: how digital and physical touchpoints work together across today’s shopping journey, and where sampling fits into the path to purchase.
Based on responses from 8,675 Shoppers, this release digs into what actually drives retailer choice: the services that matter most, where out-of-stocks cost you the whole trip (not just the sale), and how sampling is turning product discovery into purchase across in-store, pickup and delivery. Average retailer NPS climbed to 57 this year. Find out who’s earning it, and how.
