One of the most useful parts of research is noticing patterns in places you weren't expecting.

Over the past few weeks, we've been reading through a number of category reports. We observed that within different categories, products, consumers - same ideas appeared repeatedly.

Across categories, the same signals kept resurfacing. Some of them challenged how value is created. Others challenged how consumers make decisions. Together, they offered a useful lens into the shifts shaping consumer behaviour in 2026.

These are four observations that stayed with us. 

1. GI Tagging is changing how consumers think about value

One of the strongest themes we came across this year was the growing importance of origin.

Consumers increasingly want to know where products come from, who makes them, how they are produced, and what makes them unique to a particular place or community. In food, this shift is becoming visible through the growing relevance of Geographical Indication (GI) tagging.

Historically, GI tags were designed to protect products tied to a specific geography, production process, or cultural heritage. Products such as Malabar Pepper, Basmati Rice, Ratlami Sev, and Bikaneri Bhujia gained legal protection through these systems. Today, GI tags are also helping consumers connect products to stories of place, tradition, craftsmanship, and identity.

The same behaviour is beginning to influence beauty and wellness categories as well. Consumers are showing greater interest in ingredient origins, traditional knowledge systems, sourcing practices, and local production stories. Whether it is Kashmiri saffron in skincare, Lakadong turmeric in wellness formulations, or indigenous botanicals rooted in Ayurvedic practices, provenance is becoming part of the product experience.

As food researcher Supriya Arun notes in the Godrej Food Trends Report 2026, consumers are increasingly resonating with products tied to specific regions and traditions, whether that is mustard oil from Bihar, sesame from Tamil Nadu, or groundnut from Gujarat.

Origin, geography, production methods, and cultural context are becoming increasingly important in how consumers evaluate value across categories.

2. Consumers increasingly move between categories while pursuing the same goal

Most businesses naturally organise themselves around categories. Beauty brands track other beauty brands. Wellness brands track other wellness brands. Food brands focus on food competitors.

Consumer behaviour tends to move far more fluidly than those structures suggest.

Someone trying to improve their wellbeing may move between a supplement, a functional beverage, a protein snack, a meal service or a fitness platform without seeing those choices as belonging to different categories. From a consumer perspective, they are all contributing to the same goal.

Someone pursuing healthier skin may simultaneously explore nutrition, hydration, skincare products, sleep habits, and stress management. The purchase decisions happen across multiple categories, but the objective remains consistent.

As consumers become more proactive about managing different aspects of their lives, they are assembling personalised systems around goals rather than staying within category boundaries. Products, services, creators, communities, and experiences increasingly work together as part of the same solution.

Categories still help businesses organise themselves. They simply explain less about how consumers move between choices than they once did.

For founders, this creates an important shift. Understanding the role a product plays within a consumer's broader journey often reveals opportunities that traditional competitor maps fail to capture.

3. Specificity is emerging as a powerful premium signal

For a long time, premium positioning relied heavily on aspiration, exclusivity, heritage, and status. Those signals continue to matter, but consumers increasingly want a clearer understanding of what makes a product worth paying more for.

Ingredients, sourcing, formulation, production methods, and quality standards are becoming central to how value is communicated. Consumers are paying closer attention to details because those details help them make more informed decisions.

The beauty industry offers one of the clearest examples of this shift. Brands such as The Ordinary have built global followings by making formulations and active ingredients central to the product story. Products are often named after ingredients such as niacinamide, hyaluronic acid, or retinol, allowing consumers to understand exactly what they are buying and why it exists. Information is no longer treated as supporting content around the product. It is becoming part of the product itself.

As NielsenIQ notes in its introduction to the Global Beauty Views 2026 report, beauty consumers are demonstrating "greater ingredient awareness and more intentional routines." Consumers are increasingly taking an active interest in what goes into products, how formulations work, and whether claims are supported by evidence.

This behaviour extends well beyond beauty. Across categories, consumers are paying closer attention to the details behind products rather than relying solely on broad brand promises. The strongest premium brands reduce ambiguity. They help consumers understand why a product costs more, how it is different, and where that value comes from.

4. Quick commerce is influencing discovery and purchase simultaneously

Quick commerce began as a fulfilment innovation. Its promise was straightforward: reducing the time between purchase and delivery.

What has become increasingly noticeable is the role these platforms now play in product discovery.

Platforms such as Blinkit, Zepto, and Instamart are increasingly becoming places where consumers encounter products they were not actively looking for. Discovery, evaluation, and transaction are beginning to happen within the same environment.

A consumer may open a quick commerce app intending to replenish household essentials and leave with products they had never planned to buy. Visibility inside the platform increasingly shapes consideration itself.

Brands such as Beyond Snack, Slurrp Farm, and Jimmy's have benefited from this shift because they can enter decision-making without requiring active search behaviour. Beauty and personal care brands experience the same phenomenon. A consumer restocking household essentials may discover a new sunscreen, lip balm, face wash, or haircare product during the same shopping session.

As more categories become integrated into quick commerce ecosystems, availability is starting to influence demand creation itself. The products consumers encounter most easily often gain a meaningful advantage in consideration.

The brands that are easiest to discover are increasingly becoming the brands that are easiest to choose.

None of these shifts appeared in isolation. They surfaced repeatedly across reports, categories, and consumer groups that otherwise had very little in common.

What stood out wasn't any individual trend. It was the recurrence of the same ideas.

Consumers are paying more attention to where products come from. They are looking for greater clarity before paying a premium. They are moving fluidly between categories in pursuit of broader goals. And they are discovering products in environments where purchase is only a few taps away.

For brands, the implication is straightforward. Competing within your category is no longer enough. Increasingly, the challenge is understanding how consumers create value, make decisions, and solve problems across categories.

The brands that understand those shifts early often gain an advantage long before they become obvious.

See you next Sunday :)

A few months ago, Together Hospitality approached us to build a new Pan-Asian restaurant in Kalyani Nagar, Pune, one of the city's most competitive hospitality clusters.

As we started working on the project, it became clear that the opportunity was not simply to create another restaurant within the category. The people we were designing for already had strong memories associated with Southeast Asia, and those memories extended far beyond food itself.

Many remembered street markets, small stalls, late-night discoveries, local favourites, and the feeling of moving through places where many different experiences existed side by side.

That observation became the starting point for the project.

Read the full case study here.

Instead of building one restaurant identity, we began exploring a different question.

What if the restaurant behaved more like a Southeast Asian street? Not just visually but structurally as well.

The more we studied how these streets worked, the more useful the idea became. Every stall knows exactly what it does. People move through the environment naturally. The experience feels energetic and varied without becoming difficult to navigate.

Someone can stop for a quick bite or spend an entire evening there, and both behaviours feel equally natural.

That logic eventually shaped the entire project.

Read the full case study here.

Izipizi Street was designed as a collection of eleven independent concepts operating within one ecosystem. Each concept carries its own personality, naming system, visual language, and role within the larger experience.

The goal was not to create perfect visual consistency. Real streets are shaped by many independent voices, creating environments that feel layered, dynamic, and full of character. 

The full Izipizi Street case study is now live. Inside, we break down the strategy, positioning, naming system, multi-brand architecture, visual identity, and the thinking that shaped the project from the ground up.

Read the full case study here.

One of the most common exercises during strategy work is competitor mapping.

We ask founders who they believe they are competing against, and the answers are usually predictable. Coffee brands name other coffee brands. Fitness brands name other fitness brands. Restaurants name nearby restaurants. Skincare brands name other skincare brands.

The logic makes complete sense because businesses naturally define themselves through the products they sell and the categories they operate within.

The challenge is that consumer behaviour has evolved much faster than most category structures have.

One of the more interesting patterns emerging across food, health, wellness, beauty, productivity, learning, and lifestyle categories is that consumers increasingly solve problems through ecosystems rather than individual products.

A decade ago, someone trying to become healthier may have joined a gym and occasionally purchased supplements. Today, that same person may wear a fitness tracker, track nutrition through an app, follow multiple creators for advice, subscribe to a protein brand, monitor sleep, order healthier meals, and participate in an online fitness community. What has changed is the way consumers pursue the goal.

The same pattern appears in productivity. Someone trying to work more effectively may use AI tools, productivity software, note-taking platforms, digital planners, podcasts, newsletters, speciality coffee, and co-working spaces simultaneously. None of these businesses belong to the same category, but they are all competing to become part of the same outcome. What is changing is how they assemble solutions.

Research increasingly reflects this shift. Across categories, consumers are becoming more proactive in managing different aspects of their lives. Rather than relying on a single brand relationship, people are building personalised systems around sleep, nutrition, appearance, productivity, learning, and financial wellbeing. Consumers are becoming curators of their own routines, selecting products, services, communities, and technologies that work together rather than independently.

For founders, this creates an important challenge because categories are becoming less useful for understanding competition.

Recent consumer behaviour points in this direction. Edelman’s 2025 Brand Trust research argues that trust has shifted from broad societal purpose to personal relevance, with consumers expecting brands to offer emotional support, optimism, and usefulness in their own lives.  Numerator’s 2025 Gen Z research also found that 57% of Gen Z prefer to customise products as a form of self-expression, while 27% feel brands do not connect with them in ways that feel genuine.  In other words, consumers are not simply asking, “Is this a good product?” They are asking, “Does this fit the way I want to live, express, or feel?”

Poppi is a useful example. On paper, it is a prebiotic soda, but strategically, its role is more interesting. It lets consumers participate in soda culture without feeling like they have stepped outside wellness culture. PepsiCo’s 2025 acquisition of Poppi reflected the wider commercial value of functional beverages, but the brand’s strength was not only functional. It turned gut health into something closer to a social beverage, helped by TikTok, bright packaging, and cultural collaborations.

Newme has approached fashion from a different angle. Traditional fashion brands were built around seasons. Collections were planned months in advance, trends moved more slowly, and consumers adapted themselves to what brands decided to release. Today consumers increasingly experiences fashion differently. Trends now emerge on social media, spread through creators, disappear within weeks, and are replaced by something else. Newme's role is not simply selling clothing. It helps consumers participate in these cultural moments while they are still happening. Consumers are buying the ability to keep up with an identity that is constantly evolving online. The clothing is the product. The role is participation.

At Rare, we often see this during research. Founders arrive convinced that their category is saturated because they can easily name ten competitors selling something similar. Once we begin studying consumer behaviour instead of products, a different picture often emerges.

The strongest brands usually understand where they fit within a consumer's larger routine, identity, aspiration, or system. They recognise that people are trying to build healthier lives, more productive days, stronger relationships, greater confidence, better habits, or more control over their time.

The product becomes one component within a much larger behavioural ecosystem.

This is why founders should occasionally stop asking who their competitors are and start asking a different set of questions.

• What outcome is the customer trying to achieve?

• What other solutions are helping them achieve it?

• What routines already exist around that goal?

• What habits are consumers building for themselves?

• And what would they replace your product with if it disappeared tomorrow?

The answers often reveal competitors that never appear in traditional competitor maps.

Businesses naturally organise themselves around categories because categories help structure industries. Consumers organise their lives around goals, routines, frustrations, aspirations, and outcomes. The founders who understand this shift often discover opportunities that traditional competitor mapping completely misses.

A useful exercise this week is to redraw your competitor map. 

Start with the outcome your customer is trying to achieve rather than the category you operate in. You may discover that some of your biggest competitors do not sell anything remotely similar to what you do. More importantly, you may discover opportunities that nobody in your category is paying attention to.

One of the most common things founders say after a strategy project is finished is, "We know our positioning. We know our audience. We know where we sit in the market. Now we just need a brand story." 

The way this question is usually asked reveals a larger misunderstanding. 

Most founders treat a brand story as something that gets written after the important work is complete, almost like a final layer that sits on top of the business. It becomes a paragraph on the website, a founder story, a manifesto, a campaign thought, or a tagline designed to make the brand feel more interesting. 

In practice, a brand story is the narrative that explains what a brand stands for and why its position in the market matters. Positioning tells consumers where a brand sits. A brand story gives meaning to that position. It shapes communication, influences product development, partnerships, customer experience, culture, hiring, and the overall way a business behaves. Without a strong story, brands often become a collection of disconnected decisions. With one, every decision starts reinforcing the same underlying belief.

As categories become increasingly crowded with competent products, this difference becomes commercially important. There are more skincare brands, beverage brands, hospitality concepts, wellness products, and consumer brands than ever before. In many categories, consumers are no longer struggling to find products that work. The challenge for brands is creating a reason to be remembered. 

This is often where founders become frustrated. The product is strong, the reviews are positive, the visual identity feels distinctive, and the communication appears consistent. Yet the brand still feels difficult to describe. People buy it, but they do not necessarily connect with it.

In many cases, the issue is not visibility or awareness. The brand simply has not created enough meaning for consumers to emotionally attach themselves to it. Consumers may initially try products because of functionality, convenience, or curiosity, but long-term preference is usually shaped by the meaning people attach to the brand over time. 

Consumers build stronger relationships with brands that help them express something about themselves, reinforce beliefs they already hold, or participate in a worldview they find appealing.

Research increasingly reflects this shift.

According to Edelman's 2025 Brand Trust research, 64% of consumers now say they choose, switch, avoid, or advocate for brands based on their beliefs and values. The same research found that 68% of people expect brands to make them feel good, while trust now sits alongside quality and price as one of the strongest drivers of purchase decisions. Perhaps the most interesting finding was not about products at all.

"People are choosing brands not just for what they do, but for what they mean."

That observation captures something many founders are already experiencing. Consumers are increasingly evaluating whether a brand reflects an identity, attitude, aspiration, or worldview they recognise in themselves. The product remains important, but it is often no longer enough on its own.

This shift also does not mean consumers expect every brand to stand for a larger cause or every founder to have a dramatic personal story. More than anything, people are looking for clarity and consistency. They want to understand what a brand believes and whether its actions reflect those beliefs over time.

The strongest brand stories create that consistency.

Patagonia is often discussed as a sustainability brand, but that description misses the more useful lesson. The company did not become influential because it communicated environmental responsibility particularly well. It became influential because every part of the business reinforced the same belief. Product development, repair programmes, activism, retail decisions, partnerships, and communication all point in the same direction. The story is not hidden inside a manifesto. The story is visible in the way the business behaves. Consumers trust the story because they repeatedly see evidence of it.

Liquid Death offers a completely different lesson. Water is one of the most commoditised products in the world, and most brands in the category communicate through purity, nature, hydration, or health. Liquid Death looked at those conventions and rejected them entirely. The brand built itself around entertainment, rebellion, internet culture, and anti-corporate humour. Functionally, nothing changed. It was still water. But the meaning changed completely. That shift gave consumers something far more powerful than a product benefit. It gave them a cultural signal. People were no longer choosing between bottled waters. They were choosing between identities.

The same principle appears in newer consumer brands. Indē Wild did not enter the beauty category simply by launching products built around Ayurvedic ingredients. Many brands already occupied that space. What made the brand distinctive was the belief that traditional Indian beauty rituals and modern skincare behaviour could comfortably coexist. That idea became larger than any individual product. It influenced communication, product development, collaborations, and how consumers understood the role the brand played in their lives. The products became evidence of the belief rather than the belief itself.

A similar pattern can be observed in hospitality. The Bombay Canteen was never simply serving Indian food. The more interesting question was what the restaurant believed about Indian food culture. Its menus, collaborations, events, communication, and overall guest experience consistently reinforced the idea that Indian cuisine could be interpreted through a contemporary lens without losing its identity. The story became a decision-making framework rather than a marketing message. It shaped how the brand evolved over time.

This is ultimately what a strong brand story should do. It should help answer questions that founders face every day.

• Who should we partner with?

• What products should we launch next?

• What kind of people should we hire?

• How should customer service behave?

• What should our social media sound like?

• What experiences should we create?

The strongest brand stories become filters through which these decisions are made. Without that filter, brands often become inconsistent. Every campaign starts saying something different. Every new hire interprets the brand differently. Every touchpoint slowly drifts away from the original intent.

If you're currently working through that clarity for your own brand, we'd be happy to think through it with you.