Stand behind someone at a supermarket till and you may see a small economic mystery. In the same trolley: own-brand pasta, the cheapest washing-up liquid on the shelf, and a bottle of olive oil that costs more than the rest of the shop combined.
Is this person a bargain hunter or a big spender? The honest answer is both, and neither. They’ve simply decided where saving feels sensible and where spending feels worth it. The pasta is just pasta. The olive oil is Sunday lunch.
That trolley is a fair summary of how customers think about value today. Research suggests value-seeking is no longer confined to people on tight budgets, and that brand loyalty is far less automatic than it used to be. For businesses, that sounds alarming. But it also hides a more useful idea: if everyone is looking for value, the business that understands what value means to its customers has a real advantage over the one that simply cuts prices.
One Like insight: Customers aren’t only asking “How much?” They’re asking “Is it worth it to me?”
Everyone is value-seeking now
McKinsey’s State of the Consumer 2026 report, based on a survey of 4,863 people in Brazil, France, Germany, the UK and the US, describes what it calls the resourceful consumer. More than three-quarters of respondents were still trading down in some way. Eighty-two percent said they were using items for longer before replacing them, and 69% were repairing things rather than throwing them away.
The surprising part is who’s doing it. More high-income consumers than low-income ones said they had adopted habits such as doing services themselves, looking for DIY ideas online and using budgeting tools. These aren’t people who have to economise. They’re choosing to, and some of them clearly enjoy it. McKinsey notes that for younger shoppers in particular, secondhand buying offers the thrill of the hunt as much as the saving, and that being resourceful has become something to be quietly proud of.
At the same time, people haven’t stopped spending. They’re reserving it for moments that feel justified. When McKinsey asked what people would do with an extra $200 to treat themselves, the most common answer across age groups was to save it for a holiday. The report’s conclusion for businesses is short and pointed: “Competing on price alone is insufficient.” Customers are weighing durability, versatility and how a purchase makes them feel, not just the number on the tag.
The same report found that brand influence has become more diffuse. People now discover and judge products through social media, AI summaries, reviews and forums as well as shops and adverts. Loyalty has to be re-earned more often, in more places, with fewer chances to make your case directly.
Highlight: Thrift is no longer a sign of having less. For many customers, it’s a sign of being savvy.
Value is a judgement, not a price tag
If this feels like a new problem, it isn’t. In 1988 the marketing researcher Valarie Zeithaml published one of the most cited papers on the subject, based on interviews with shoppers about something as ordinary as fruit juice. She found that customers didn’t share a single meaning of value. Some said value simply meant low price. Others said it was whatever they wanted from a product. Some described it as quality for the price paid, and others as everything they got for everything they gave.
Her summary definition has aged remarkably well. Value, she wrote, is the customer’s overall judgement of a product based on “what is received and what is given”. The important word is given, because money is only one part of it. Zeithaml pointed out that customers also give up time, effort and peace of mind. She cited industry research from the mid-1980s in which supermarket shoppers rated a fast checkout as more important than low prices.
That explains the supermarket trolley. The pasta shopper is minimising money. The olive-oil buyer is maximising what they receive: flavour, a sense of occasion, a meal that feels special. Same person, same afternoon, two different value equations.
[Infographic placement] The value scales. An old-fashioned balance scale. On the “What I get” side: quality, convenience, confidence, meaning, a good story to tell. On the “What I give” side: money, time, effort, worry. A caption beneath: Price is only one weight on the scale. Optional: show the scale tipping towards “worth it” when a business removes effort or worry rather than cutting the price. Based on Zeithaml (1988).
Zeithaml also observed that most people don’t carefully calculate any of this. They rely on cues and shortcuts: a familiar brand, a trusted shop, packaging that signals freshness. Value is felt before it’s worked out. Her research was exploratory and focused on one product category, so it’s a framework rather than a law. But nearly four decades later, it still describes the resourceful consumer surprisingly well.
Highlight: Customers don’t just spend money. They spend time, effort and trust, and they notice when you save them any of the three.
The ease effect
If value is felt before it’s calculated, then how something feels to deal with becomes part of what it’s worth. Psychologists call one version of this processing fluency: the tendency to prefer things that are easy to take in.
The most memorable demonstration came from an unlikely place. In 2006, Princeton psychologists Adam Alter and Daniel Oppenheimer looked at shares newly listed on two major US stock exchanges. Companies with names that were easy to pronounce tended to outperform those with awkward names in the days after listing, even after the researchers accounted for company size and industry. As Oppenheimer put it, the research shows that “people take mental shortcuts, even when it comes to their investments”. The effect was strongest shortly after listing and weakened as investors learned more. But if investors can be nudged by how easily a name rolls off the tongue, it’s fair to assume customers can be nudged by how easily a business is understood.
This is where the current interest in sensory, “felt” brand experiences becomes useful rather than fashionable. McKinsey’s 2026 report found that people still splurge on experiences that leave them feeling connected, relaxed or excited, even while trimming elsewhere. A clear website, a booking process that takes one minute instead of five, a shop that smells of fresh bread, a quote that’s easy to read. None of these change the price. All of them change how the price feels.
There’s a gentle warning here for anyone tempted by the trend towards constantly shifting, dynamic visual identities. Ease often comes from familiarity. A brand that keeps changing how it looks may feel exciting to the team that designed it and slightly harder to recognise for the customer trying to find it. That’s our interpretation rather than a research finding, but it’s worth weighing before you redesign everything.
Highlight: Every bit of effort you remove from a customer’s day is value you’ve added without touching the price.
What this means for a small business
When customers start talking about value, the reflex is to reach for a discount. Sometimes that’s right. But for a small business, it’s rarely a race you can win, and it teaches customers that the price was the most interesting thing about you.
The research suggests a wider set of levers. You can reduce what customers give, by saving them time, effort and worry. You can increase what they receive, by making the experience clearer, warmer or more memorable. And you can help them see the value they’re already getting, which often goes unnoticed because nobody pointed it out.
A few questions can help you find where your value really sits:
- What do our customers give up to buy from us, besides money?
- Which part of our process feels like hard work, and could we remove it?
- When customers splurge with us, what are they actually paying for?
- If a customer had to explain why we’re worth it, what would they say?
The resourceful consumer isn’t a cheapskate. They’re someone who has become very good at deciding what deserves their money. That’s quite a compliment to the businesses that make the cut.
Which brings us back to the shopper with the own-brand pasta and the expensive olive oil. Nobody would call them inconsistent. They’ve simply worked out what’s worth it to them. The question for every business is which side of that trolley it wants to be on, and what it’s doing to earn the place.
Sources
- Anna Pione, Clarisse Magnin, Danielle Bozarth, Jessica Moulton and Kari Alldredge, “State of the Consumer 2026: When tech acceleration and cost pressures collide”, McKinsey, 22 June 2026. Survey of 4,863 consumers in Brazil, France, Germany, the UK and the US, 31 March to 8 April 2026.
- Valarie A. Zeithaml, “Consumer Perceptions of Price, Quality, and Value: A Means-End Model and Synthesis of Evidence”, Journal of Marketing 52, July 1988.
- Princeton University, “Study: Stock performance tied to ease of pronouncing company’s name”, 29 May 2006. Summary of Alter and Oppenheimer, “Predicting Short-Term Stock Fluctuations by Using Processing Fluency”, PNAS, 2006.
