Once the chorus of “Happy New Year” wishes have faded away in early 2026, retailers and brand executives will find themselves dealing with a variety of challenges, some ongoing and some emerging. Identifying and offering potential strategies for dealing with all those changes is Rithum’s recently released 2026 Commerce Readiness report.
Based on a survey of 200 U.S. and U.K. retail and brand executives, the report highlights where leaders are focusing amid growing pressure to modernize operations, and where they are falling short on efficiency, speed and competitiveness.
“Commerce leaders know the turbulence of this year isn’t slowing down, and many factors—like tariffs and inflation—remain out of their control,” said Suzin Wold, CMO at Rithum, which helps clients streamline their commerce operations and maximize results. “What they can control is how quickly and effectively they adapt. Our report offers a roadmap to help retail and brand executives do that.”
Based on the survey responses, the report describes the five critical challenges respondents say they face in 2026:
- External and internal roadblocks: Nearly 75% of commerce leaders admit that decisions are often made on outdated, inconsistent, or incomplete data, creating dangerous blind spots.
- Reliance on manual processes: Around half of commerce leaders still depend on spreadsheets and manual workflows. This bottleneck slows their ability to respond to fast-moving signals, from viral demand spikes to sudden supply chain disruptions.
- Shaky AI adoption: Nearly 3 in 4 leaders say AI is evolving faster than they can adopt it, creating a widening execution gap. But at the same time, many are rushing into AI investments without fixing underlying data quality issues.
- Margin pressures: Rising costs, tariffs, and product complexity are forcing executives into hard trade-offs on pricing, assortment, and promotions. With 91% of retail executives saying pricing is heavily influenced by government policy, and 92% of brands citing product complexity as a cost-control barrier, protecting profitability is becoming even harder.
- Revenue leakage in customer journeys: Over 90% of commerce leaders shifted their marketing mix in the past year, but operational cracks remain. Retailers see the biggest leaks before checkout—broken links, outdated product content, irrelevant ads—while brands lose revenue after the sale through costly returns, fulfillment gaps and poor customer service.
Click here to download the full report for more ways retailers and brands can prepare for 2026 headwinds.
