Wellness products. Weight-loss drugs. Resale. Spas. Agentic commerce.

These are all expected to capture greater interest and dollars from more retailers and Americans in 2026, according to research and analysis from PwC, the global professional services company.

“I have a very strong point of view on weight-loss drugs,” Ali Furman, U.S. consumer markets industry leader, PwC, told WWD, “In January 2025, 9 percent of U.S. households had one GLP-1 drug user. By December, that went up to 20 percent and 70 percent of those drug users are using it primarily for weight loss, 30 percent for diabetes. That’s a really significant increase in adoption.”

With GLP-1 drugs, the barriers have been high. They’re expensive, not covered by insurance, and require injections. “But fast forward to 2026 it’s going to become more affordable,” Furman said, during an interview at the National Retail Federation’s “Big Show” convention in New York. “It becomes an oral pill instead of [requiring] needle injection, and it’s going to be covered by more insurance companies. So you’re going to see more and more people get on this drug, and really affecting spending.

“For one, sales of smaller-sized apparel will be driven by this weight-loss drug trend. If you’re on this journey, you need a new wardrobe. You also will buy more form-fitting clothing to match your newfound identity of being more self-confident and happier. You’ll also see less plus-size clothes getting purchased, and less food- and wine-indulgent vacations being taken, and more active-based wellness vacations being taken. Think about places like Canyon Ranch or Miraval. They’ll continue to do very well.”

Furman also sees spending increasing on treatments like mitochondria IV therapy, red light therapies for skin conditions and for cell regeneration, and beauty and facial products that help GLP-1 drug users with skin elasticity, to mitigate sag. “So whether that’s a serum, cream or functional medicine, like Botox, that’ll all be up, in addition to hair-loss mitigation products. There will be a lot of innovation in these spaces, with new brands and products to capture the demand that’s coming.”

In addition, restaurant spending shifts. “You’ll see less spending at QSR [quick service restaurants] and more at casual dining,” Furman said.

And resale, she said, is “hot, hot, hot for the younger generations. That will continue. Gen Alpha is in on it ,too, even though they’re 13 and under. They don’t have their own purchasing power yet, but they’re getting allowances. They get $67 a week on average to spend.”

Agentic commerce is accelerating and changing how consumers discover, compare and purchase products. As Furman said, “With agentic commerce, retail’s new ‘front door,’ it’s going to take time to mature. But this is the year where everyone is going to get in and experiment, pilot and learn, and we’ll see it mature.”

Asked if it’s expensive, Furman replied, “It’s actually not expensive at all to pilot. Everybody should be doing it. It has tremendous potential to take friction out of buying, to become like a personal shopping assistant in your pocket, but at this point, it’s still quite transactional, so there’s work to be done to have it inspire loyalty and emotion and all the things that you kind of get from a store. It’s an evolving space. It’s not something you flip a switch and turn on. You have to have this agentic commerce protocol. You have to have all your inventory management sorted out. There are operational implications that have to be set up to sell through a brand new channel. So it takes some time. I think a lot of retailers are trying to sort that out right now, but no one is skeptical about doing it. When gen AI was all the buzz, there was a lot more skepticism. It’s not what I see here.”

The PwC executive sees certain buying trends prevalent during holiday 2025 continuing in 2026. “Consumers will buy early. They’ll buy more frequently, but their basket size will be smaller because they’re shopping for deals,” she said. “And we will continue to see this bifurcation between high-income households making up the majority of discretionary spend and low- and mid-income households having financial stress and putting more of their wallets towards necessities. Value-based stores are going to do really well,” including off-pricers, dollar stores and big box discounters. She also expects certain luxury houses to do well because high-income individuals are still spending.

During holiday 2025, consumer spending rose 6.4 percent year-over-year, according to PwC data, Furman said. That’s higher than the 4 percent, more or less, reported by other research and consulting firms including the National Retail Federation. Discrepancies in the holiday sales reports are due to differences in methodologies, including how the holiday period is defined and what categories are tracked.

“Our estimate includes all forms of payment,” Furman said. “Some of these other reports only include credit cards. Ours also includes food and we know through our research and surveys, food was a very significant gifting category.”

Asked if the inflation rate — currently at 2.7 percent in the U.S. — accounted for a chunk of the holiday sales gain, Furman said, “It wasn’t so much that things got a lot more expensive, and therefore people spent more money. It’s really a few specific drivers. The high-income cohort [those with at least $125,000 in income] was up 30 percent year-over-year, and their share of spend increased about 7 percent share to 38.5 percent.

“We saw Gen Z spend 21 percent more year-over-year, which is a very interesting outcome, considering that they told us in all of our surveys they intended to pull back materially. They said they were going to pull back 23 percent year-over-year.”

Asked if people consistently say one thing about spending on surveys and their spending behavior ends up being quite different, Furman explained, “Consumer sentiment and consumer spend used to be very correlated. Since the pandemic, you see a divergence everywhere…The consumer seems to be resilient, but it does break down differently by generation.” For holiday 2025, Gen Z was up almost 21 percent; Millennials were up 12.5 percent; Gen X was up about 5 percent; Boomers were up about 1.5 percent.

The increased spending will lead to credit card delinquencies. “You’re going to continue to see low and middle income, yeah, with higher delinquency rates versus the national average of 3 percent and you’ll continue to see young people with this challenge.”

Furman said the tax rebates from President Trump’s “One Big, Beautiful Bill” will translate into about $1,000 per household on average, and will benefit the low- and mid-income consumer. “That’s the intention. We’ll see that [impact] Q1 and Q2 spend. $1,000 should cause a little pop in consumerism. But it’s not as material as the stimulus was back in the COVID days.”