Forrester’s 2026 Predictions, Explained

Last week in our What We’re Tracking section, we looked at the rise of intentional experience in an era of digital fatigue, drawing on EY data that shows almost half of younger consumers want some form of digital detox. We asked whether brands are designing for presence, ritual and the “step out the door” moment, or simply adding more to the noise.

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This week, Forrester’s 2026 predictions arrive and largely formalise what has been visible on the ground for some time. The shift is real and it can be counted. Consumers are saturated, channels are congested.

What is taking shape is a different kind of maturity. Artificial intelligence is moving from novelty to basic infrastructure. Most B2C brands will soon depend on it for personalisation, forecasting, next best action and creative production. Consumers, though, are unlikely to reward a brand simply for “using AI.” What they respond to is something quieter. Fewer steps. Cleaner flows. A sense of steady support that behaves like a calm guide rather than a sharp redirect. The technology will run through almost every layer of the business, but the brands that distinguish themselves will be the ones that make its presence barely felt.

When experience becomes the product

Experience quality is becoming the deciding factor. As budgets tighten and customer expectations rise again, the distance between good and average will stretch. The bar for delight is drifting toward emotional payoff, not just functional efficiency. This brings us back to the terrain we explored last week: ritual, pause, presence. Consumers want a sense of “less” even as channels keep getting louder. In that environment, the experience stops being the packaging. It becomes the product.

Loyalty is being rewritten too. Traditional programmes built on points and perks are struggling to keep attention. The emerging model is a form of earned loyalty that rests on memory, sentiment and story. Brands are investing in community layers, micro rituals and signature moments that create attachment. The most useful questions are no longer “How many members do we have” but “What do people remember after they have been with us” and “What stories do they tell about the encounter.”

Calm interfaces in a noisy economy

There is also a growing impatience with digital clutter. Consumers are becoming more selective about the screens and surfaces they give time to, which is pushing CX leaders toward calmer interfaces and simpler journeys. The detox is not only cultural. It is economic. Attention is saturated and expensive. The next wave of marketing will need to be built around the brief intervals when a consumer steps back into the physical world or deliberately looks away from the phone. Those small transitions are now some of the highest value moments in the journey.

Trust is shifting too. Increasingly, it rests on clarity and emotional straightness rather than clever positioning. The brands that stay in people’s heads are the ones that offer a coherent story, a clear deal and a way of speaking that leaves customers steadier, not more wound up. People want brands that acknowledge the texture of their actual lives, instead of simply feeding the churn of their screens.

Taken together, these changes point to a simple reality. Meaning now outperforms noise. The brands that create real value in 2026 will treat customer experience, brand and digital not as separate projects, but as a system rests on three deliberate choices:

• Reduce cognitive load: Design for fewer choices, fewer clicks and fewer asks. If the path to value is not obvious in a few seconds, it is already too long.
• Build for ritual and memory: Treat every touchpoint as a potential human ritual. Use colour, texture, pause and presence to create a moment that stays in the mind, not just a message that slips through a feed.
• Measure emotional outcomes, not just digital volume: Move beyond impressions and clicks. Track dwell time, sentiment, narrative recall and the stories people tell about encounters with your brand.

The latest research has not created an entirely new playbook. It has given senior teams the evidence for something many practitioners have felt for months. Consumers are no longer impressed by how much a brand says or how often it appears. They pay attention to how it makes them feel, how easy it is to deal with and whether it earns a place in their everyday routines.