Retail pricing conversations we’re taking to the season’s biggest events

A price decision no longer lives in isolation. It affects how shoppers perceive value, how categories perform, how promotions build loyalty and how confidently a retailer can respond to changing demand.

That is why the most useful retail conversations this season will go beyond the question of whether prices should go up or down. Retail leaders are asking how to protect value without giving away margin, how to use AI responsibly and how to make pricing work consistently across an increasingly complex shopping journey.

Revionics will be part of those conversations at several events this fall across the US, the UK and Europe. Following are the topics we expect to hear about most and the viewpoints we’ll be bringing with us.

The retail pricing topics likely to dominate the conversation

Providing value — not just a blanket discount — is the strategy

The current economic environment continues to put pressure on household budgets and retailer profitability. Shoppers are scrutinizing baskets, comparing retailers more actively and looking for evidence that a retailer understands what matters to them.

For retailers, that makes value perception more nuanced than simply lowering prices across the board. The challenge is to identify the products and categories where price matters most, protect those signals of value and make more precise decisions elsewhere. That requires a clear view of price sensitivity, customer expectations, competitive context and the role each item plays in the total proposition.

The result is a more balanced question: Where can pricing strengthen trust and loyalty, and where can it support the margin needed to keep the wider business healthy?

Agentic AI is making pricing more responsive and precise

Agentic AI will be one of the biggest themes across the event calendar. The conversation is shifting from what AI can generate to what AI can help a retail organization understand, decide and do.

In pricing, agentic AI can help retailers move faster from insight to action. It can bring together demand signals, competitive context, customer behavior and business objectives to identify opportunities, recommend pricing actions and help teams evaluate price and promotion scenarios more efficiently.

That creates a more adaptive approach to pricing — one that can respond to changing market conditions while keeping decisions aligned with value perception, category strategy and margin goals. Pricing teams can spend less time searching for signals and more time focusing on the decisions that have the greatest commercial and customer impact.

The opportunity is not simply to automate more activity. It is to give pricing and merchandising teams intelligent support across the pricing lifecycle, helping them make more informed decisions, act with greater precision and deliver stronger value for shoppers and the business.

Promotions will be judged by quality, not just by volume

Promotions remain a powerful lever, but promotional intensity alone is not a strategy. Retailers are looking more closely at incremental demand, cannibalization, margin, stock outcomes and the longer-term effect on loyalty and price perception.

That creates an opportunity to move from repeating familiar promotional patterns to making more deliberate choices about where an offer is genuinely valuable to shoppers and commercially sustainable for the retailer. The strongest promotional strategies will connect customer insight with pricing science and category objectives.

Demand is shifting in ways that change the pricing equation

Value-seeking is only one part of the changing demand picture. Convenience, health priorities, new shopping missions, format preferences and the continuing influence of trends such as GLP-1 medications are all affecting what shoppers buy, how often they shop and what they are willing to pay.

These shifts make historical patterns less reliable on their own. Retailers will need to combine market context with current behavioral signals so that assortment, pricing and promotions can keep pace with changing missions and customer segments.

Where to find us this fall

Retail Gazette Retailer Roundtable | September 17 | London

At Retail Gazette’s roundtable, “How to design pricing that protects value, but promotes loyalty,” Revionics will join senior grocery leaders for a practical discussion about responsible, customer-aware pricing.

The conversation will explore how retailers can hold back price increases on the products shoppers care about most, identify where there is more room to move, and connect pricing decisions with category plans, margin targets, buying priorities and brand positioning.

It is exactly the kind of candid conversation the current environment calls for: less focus on pricing as a siloed process and more focus on how better decisions can build confidence and loyalty. UK grocery, pharmacy and hard goods retailers are welcome to request their invitation to participate here.

Groceryshop | September 22–24 | Las Vegas

Groceryshop’s 2026 agenda brings together many of the themes above, including AI-powered shopping, profitability and productivity, and changing shopper priorities.

Two sessions are particularly relevant to the pricing conversation:

• “AI-Powered Shopping: New Insights on What’s Truly Driving Adoption” — industry analysts from Kantar, Bain and Euromonitor International will share sharp insights on the current state of AI-powered grocery shopping.

• “Panel: Resonating with Consumers Demanding Value and Affordability” — an industry leader panel featuring Dollar General and Hormel Foods, moderated by Rethink Retail.

If you’ll be at Groceryshop, book a meeting with us to compare notes on shopper trends, AI and the next generation of pricing decisions.

Wiesn-Talk: Retailer Roundtable with Google and Accenture | September 24 | Munich

Revionics, Accenture and Google invite retail decision-makers to “Wiesn-Talk: Agentic AI in Retail” — a morning of discussion followed by an afternoon at Oktoberfest.

The event will explore how agentic AI can help retail organizations respond to rising costs and changing consumer behavior. The program includes a Google and Accenture session, “Agentic Approaches in Retail”; a retailer roundtable moderated by Dr. Markus Husemann-Kopetzky of the Price Management Institute; and a Revionics keynote, “The Future of Pricing: Securing Value Creation, Customer Loyalty and Margins with Agentic Intelligence.”

The morning will conclude with a summary before attendees head to Oktoberfest for an afternoon of informal conversation and networking. Participation is by invitation and spots are limited. If you are a retailer interested in joining us, you can request your invitation here.

Retail Gazette Grocery Horizons | November 18 | London

We’re also pleased to be sponsoring Retail Gazette’s Grocery Horizons event. Grocery remains one of the clearest places to see the tension between affordability, competition, innovation and profitability play out in real time.

We look forward to discussing how retailers can respond with greater precision — using data and AI to understand changing demand, manage price perception, and make decisions that work for both shoppers and the business.

Open to all senior grocery leaders, visit the event website to learn more and register.

The common thread

Across every event, the same principle will keep coming back: Better pricing is not about being the lowest-priced retailer everywhere. It is about knowing where value matters, acting with precision and making decisions that are adaptive, explainable and aligned to the customer relationship.

We look forward to sharing ideas, hearing what retailers are seeing in their businesses and continuing the conversation throughout the season. Visit our events page to see our full upcoming events schedule and plan your next meeting with Revionics.