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Grocery is one of the few categories almost everyone buys, almost every week. That makes it steady, but it also makes it hard to stand out. In 2026, the grocery shopper is more price-conscious, more digital, and less loyal than they were even a year ago, and the marketers who adjust to how these shoppers actually behave are the ones holding onto them.
Here is what is shifting, and what it means for how grocery brands and retailers market.
Grocery is a big, steady part of how young consumers spend
In our network of tens of millions of cardholders, grocery accounts for roughly 7% of total spend, with Kroger and Publix leading the category. That share is smaller than big box, but grocery is a habit. People come back every week, which makes it one of the best categories for building repeat behavior rather than chasing one-off sales.
That steadiness is exactly why loyalty matters so much here. A shopper who picks your store as their default is worth far more than the total of any single trip. The whole game in grocery marketing is earning that default and keeping it.
Value is the defining shopper behavior
The clearest trend in 2026 is value-seeking, and it runs deeper than just wanting low prices.
Private label is the sharpest signal. Store-brand sales in the US rose to a record $282.8 billion in 2025, growing nearly three times faster than national brands, according to PLMA and Circana data. More than half of Gen Z shoppers now choose where to buy groceries based on the retailer's own brands, per research reported by Retail Space Solutions. Value is no longer only about price. It is about quality, trust, and health at a price that feels fair.
Price pressure keeps feeding this. The USDA's 2026 Food Price Outlook projects food-at-home prices rising about 2.7%, slightly above the long-run average. Even modest increases change how shoppers build baskets, and they push value messaging, promotions, and loyalty to the center of a grocer's strategy.
This price sensitivity mirrors what we see with young consumers across categories. As our Gen Z spending patterns in 2026 analysis shows, this is a generation that shops with intention and waits for the right moment to buy. In grocery, that shows up as trading down, deal hunting, and switching between banners.
The shopper is digital, and expects to be met there
Grocery shopping is now a hybrid habit, split across in-store trips, delivery, and click-and-collect. The phone sits at the center of all of it.
More than half of consumers say they are more likely to shop with a grocer that has an app than one that does not, and around 84% of Millennial and Gen Z shoppers use apps to check availability before shopping in-store, per a survey reported by Toast. Loyalty engagement is climbing too: nearly two-thirds (63%) of shoppers say they are enrolled in and actively use a grocery loyalty program, according to January 2026 data from Progressive Grocer.
The takeaway for marketers is direct. Shoppers are looking for reasons to engage, and they reward the stores that give them one. A grocer without a capable app and loyalty program is not missing a feature. It is losing its most valuable shoppers to the banners that have one.
The basket is splitting across channels
It is not just that shoppers use apps. The way they build a basket now spans several channels at once, and that changes what a grocery marketer is optimizing for.
Click-and-collect has become the dominant online grocery model in the US, striking a balance between shopper convenience and economics that work for the retailer. Online grocery is now a large and growing share of the market, with most forecasts putting global sales around or above $1 trillion in 2026 and growing at double-digit rates. Hybrid shopping, where a customer splits a weekly basket between delivery, pickup, and an in-store trip, is now the default rather than the exception.
That split has a subtle effect worth planning for. Online grocery shoppers tend to behave more deliberately than in-store shoppers in some ways and more impulsively in others, so the same person may plan a delivery order carefully but add unplanned items on a quick in-store run. For marketers, this means an offer strategy built around a single channel misses most of the journey. The shopper who researches on the app, orders some items for pickup, and finishes the trip in-store should encounter consistent value across all three touchpoints, not a promotion that only fires in one.
Card-linked cash back fits this reality because it rewards the transaction wherever it happens. Whether the shopper checks out in-app, at curbside, or at the register, a card-linked offer credits the purchase the same way, which keeps the incentive consistent across a fragmented basket.
Personalization is the 2026 dividing line
If value is the shopper's lens, personalization is how grocers earn it. The stores pulling ahead in 2026 are using purchase history to deliver offers that feel made for the individual, not broadcast to everyone.
The technology is now mainstream. Roughly nine in ten grocers are already experimenting with AI in some form, and retailers like Kroger and Whole Foods are rolling out smart carts and app-based, aisle-aware coupons that surface a relevant deal as a shopper approaches a product, according to industry reporting from Toast and Mass Market Retailers. What was a concept a couple of years ago is becoming a scalable reality.
For a marketer, the point is not the hardware. It is that shoppers increasingly expect offers tuned to what they actually buy. A generic weekly circular reaches everyone and moves few. An offer on the specific items a shopper already purchases, timed to when they usually restock, reads as genuine value and earns the trip. Transaction data is what makes that possible, and it is the same data that powers card-linked offers.
Why blanket discounts are the wrong answer
Faced with price-sensitive shoppers, the instinct is to run more promotions. That instinct backfires.
Blanket discounts train shoppers to wait for sales rather than shop on habit, and they mark down items that would have sold anyway. Each one cuts into margins that are already thin. As Mercatus puts it, more promotions do not solve a price-sensitivity problem. They reinforce it.
What actually moves the needle is relevance. A shopper who gets an offer on the specific items they already buy, timed to when they typically buy them, experiences that as genuine value rather than a race to the bottom. The goal is not to be the cheapest on everything. It is to be the most relevant to each shopper.
Where card-linked cash back fits
This is where card-linked offers earn their place in a grocery marketing mix. A card-linked offer is cash back tied to a shopper's payment card, credited automatically after they pay, with no coupon to clip or code to enter.
For grocery, that structure fits the 2026 shopper well. It rewards real purchases rather than marking down the whole shelf, so it protects margin better than a blanket discount. It runs on transaction data, so offers can be targeted to what a shopper actually buys instead of blasted to everyone. And it lands in the banking and rewards apps shoppers already use, which meets them in the digital-first way they now shop.
Used this way, cash back stops being a discount and becomes a loyalty tool. It gives a value-seeking shopper a concrete reason to keep choosing your store, without teaching them to wait for the next markdown. For a fuller set of tactics, our guide to 8 proven grocery store marketing strategies covers how card-linked cash back works alongside segmentation, digital coupons, and closed-loop measurement.
What grocery marketers should take into 2026
Pulling the trends together, a few things are clear for the year ahead.
Value is the shopper's lens, so lead with it, but define it as relevance and quality, not just the lowest price. Meet shoppers on their phones, because the app and loyalty program are now where engagement happens. And be careful with blanket promotions, which erode margin and train the exact behavior you are trying to avoid.
The grocers who win in 2026 will be the ones who make each shopper feel understood: the right offer, on the items they buy, at the moment they are deciding where to shop. That is a higher bar than a storewide sale, but it is also what actually earns a shopper's default, week after week.
