As UK households become more deliberate and less trusting of claims, Britain is emerging as one of the clearest tests of whether products genuinely deliver, forcing companies to rethink how value is built and proven.
Across the UK, one of the most competitive consumer markets in the world, and wider Europe, inflation may move up or down in the months ahead. But what matters more is that expectations have changed. Consumers are no longer taking value on trust.
According to KPMG, over half of UK consumers (56%) are now cutting back on everyday spending, a shift proving more durable than inflation itself.
For retailers, that raises a more fundamental question: what does ‘value’ actually mean now? Price remains critical, but no longer decisive on its own. When consumers experience strong and consistent performance, price becomes part of the equation, not the whole equation. At its core, consumer value is superior product performance delivered consistently over time, at a price that feels fair.
What matters is the outcome over time: reliability, effectiveness and confidence. That shift is exposing long-standing assumptions about how value is built and how products earn their place on shelf.
For years, many industries equated innovation with adding more. More features, more variants, more visible change. The assumption was that more choice signaled more value. Increasingly, that assumption is being tested.
So what do consumers want, if not more features?
In many categories, they are already using far less than many products are built to offer. In connected appliances, for example, our data shows most people rely on just a couple of settings despite being offered many more. What they value is not choice, but certainty.
In practice, that means removing friction, designing products that perform consistently without requiring effort or constant decision-making. Delivering that kind of simplicity is not easy; it often depends on more advanced technology behind the scenes. But when it works, the benefits are tangible: less energy and water use, longer product life, and simpler daily routines.
That is why understanding real behaviour matters more than ever. There is often a gap between what consumers say and what they do. Insight comes not only from data, but from observing how people live, their routines, constraints and expectations.
At P&G we call this consumer obsession and, in my role, that means spending time in stores, in homes and alongside consumers as they make everyday decisions. Because growth is not driven by what is said about products, but by how those products perform in real life.
The UK is one of the clearest places to see this shift in action and, more broadly, across Europe. It is a highly competitive and demanding environment, with strong scrutiny on performance.
Retailers’ private labels also play an important role, they are credible and accessible. They force brands to be precise about superiority and disciplined on price. That pressure is forcing retailers and manufacturers to return to fundamentals, moving away from innovation for its own sake, and towards innovation that delivers meaningful improvement in everyday life.
At the same time, trust is harder to earn. Consumers are exposed to more information, more choice and more claims than ever before. The brands that succeed are not the loudest, but the clearest, those that consistently deliver what they promise. The same is true for retailers seeking to build loyalty and repeat purchase.
For retail, the implication is straightforward. Growth will not come from adding complexity or increasing choice for its own sake. It will come from understanding people better, building products that genuinely perform, and delivering value that consumers can recognise in everyday life.
In today’s market, value is not what you claim but instead what performs. It’s what earns its place on shelf and in the basket, day after day, through repeat use and repeat choice.
To find out more on P&G’s approach to innovation, please visit: https://www.pg.co.uk/innovation/
