As 2025 draws to a close, it’s tempting to look for a single defining trend for the year. Yet in reality this year wasn’t shaped by one big shift, but by a series of smaller, faster-moving changes that together tell us a lot about how consumers are behaving and how brands need to respond.

Below, we reflect on the most important themes we saw in 2025 and what they signal for the year ahead.

Small shifts, not big trends, reshaped consumer behaviour

One of the clearest messages from 2025 was that change rarely arrived as a single headline-grabbing trend. Instead, behaviour evolved through a series of incremental shifts, often driven by retail mechanics, pricing strategies and subtle product changes.

Our analysis of Black Friday fatigue highlighted how quickly consumer expectations can reset. What was once a clearly defined sales moment became stretched across days or weeks, blurring urgency and, in some cases, undermining trust altogether. This shift wasn’t driven by one brand decision, but by repeated exposure to the same tactics across the market.

We saw similar patterns in responses to product reformulation and pricing changes. Small adjustments to ingredients, pack sizes or positioning often triggered emotional reactions, particularly where consumers felt those changes were poorly communicated.

For brands and insight teams, this places less emphasis on spotting ‘the next big thing’ and more on understanding which small signals are starting to add up, and when they’re likely to tip into real commercial impact.

Humour returned as a strategic response, not a creative fad

Another strong theme across 2025 was the renewed use of humour in brand communications. This wasn’t simply a stylistic choice. It reflected a clear shift in consumer mood.

As we explored in our blog on humour versus aspiration in advertising, many audiences showed growing fatigue with overly polished, aspirational messaging. Against a backdrop of financial pressure and decision overload, humour worked because it lowered emotional barriers and made brands feel more relatable.

Importantly, the most effective examples weren’t just cheeky for the sake of it. Brands that succeeded used humour in a way that aligned with their positioning and reassured consumers, rather than undermining credibility. Insight played a critical role here in understanding where humour built trust – and where it risked doing the opposite.

Customer journeys became less linear and more uncertain

Journey mapping remained a recurring focus throughout 2025, but the way journeys were understood began to change. Rather than neat funnels with clearly defined stages, we increasingly saw fragmented paths shaped by hesitation, reassurance-seeking and context.

Our blog on customer journey mapping showed that high-consideration decisions are often influenced less by product features and more by moments of doubt. Questions around risk, value and trust frequently outweighed rational comparison, particularly in complex or unfamiliar categories.

The implication for brands is significant. Optimising touchpoints alone is no longer sufficient, and instead the real opportunity lies in identifying where customers pause, question themselves or seek reassurance. Brand should focus on designing experiences that address those emotional inflection points directly.

AI reshaped how decisions begin, not just how data is analysed

While AI featured heavily in industry discussion in previous years, 2025 marked a more fundamental shift in how it influenced consumer behaviour. The change wasn’t just behind the scenes. It showed up right at the start of the decision-making process.

As we explored in our article on how AI is rewriting the consumer journey via search, discovery has moved from a “search and sift” model to something far more direct. Rather than scanning pages of results and weighing multiple sources, consumers are increasingly asking AI tools a single question and acting on the answer they’re given.

This shift matters because it changes how trust is built. Where trust was once formed through comparison and validation, it is now often granted quickly, based on how confident and relevant an AI-generated response feels. When an answer is perceived as “good enough”, the journey accelerates, and many traditional touchpoints are bypassed entirely.

For brands, this has significant implications. Visibility is no longer just about ranking well in search engines, but about how your brand is represented when AI becomes the first, and sometimes only, source a consumer consults. The same dynamic applies in B2B, where procurement and supplier decisions can now be influenced before a shortlist is even consciously formed.

From a research perspective, this represents a new layer of the customer journey to understand and monitor. Insight teams are increasingly being asked not only how consumers perceive a brand, but how that brand is framed and recommended by AI – and whether there is a gap between intended positioning and algorithmic output.

What this means as we move into 2026

Looking at this altogether, we can see a clear theme where consumer behaviour is moving faster than traditional planning cycles, and tolerance for assumption-led decision-making within business is shrinking.

For insight teams, the value now lies less in producing more data and more in making sense of it. Pulling together what matters, spotting what’s changing, and giving stakeholders the confidence to move forward are just as important as robust measurement.

As we head into 2026, the organisations best placed to succeed will be those that treat insight as a living input into strategy, not a retrospective report. That’s the common thread we saw for 2025, and one we expect to matter even more in the year ahead.