Only 32% of US consumers say they completely or mostly trust retailers to offer a fair or competitive price, according to the "PX Pulse" survey conducted by first-party data company Dynata in August 2026 among 1,000 US consumers aged 18 and over.

The figure points to a hardening pricing environment for brands and retailers heading into the holiday quarter. Nearly six in ten respondents — 59% — said price now matters more to them than it did six months earlier, a signal that markdown pressure and promotion-dependent conversion are likely to intensify rather than fade.

The most commercially significant finding concerns timing. Some 79% of respondents said they had postponed a purchase because they believed the price might fall later. For merchants, that behaviour translates directly into softer full-price sell-through and stretched inventory cycles, with implications for order timing further upstream in the supply chain.

Comparison shopping has also become the default mode. Just 9% of respondents said they typically buy without comparing prices, while 46% compare across multiple retailers before purchasing. Consumers increasingly police cross-channel price integrity themselves: 77% said they had noticed the same product listed at different prices across retailers or platforms in the past year, and 68% said they at least sometimes check a retailer's own website or app while standing in-store to see whether the product is cheaper online.

That visibility puts a premium on consistent pricing data across channels — and carries compliance and channel-management implications for any brand running differentiated pricing across wholesale, marketplace and direct-to-consumer operations.

Personalised pricing emerges as a reputational risk. Some 57% of respondents said they would trust a retailer less if they discovered a product's price had shifted based on their personal information or shopping behaviour. With scrutiny of algorithmic and behavioural pricing growing among regulators, that consumer sensitivity adds a second layer of exposure for retailers testing dynamic price optimisation.

AI tools are entering the price-discovery stack at scale. The survey found 24% of consumers already use AI-powered tools such as ChatGPT or Google Gemini to compare prices or deals, and 56% trust these tools to provide accurate pricing when evaluating products across sellers. That trust level matters for merchandising teams: pricing and product data are increasingly being aggregated and summarised by third-party assistants rather than presented on the retailer's own terms.

The pattern is set to carry into holiday trading. Of those surveyed, 40% expect to compare retailer websites to judge whether they are getting a good deal, 37% cited search engines, and 24% plan to use AI tools such as ChatGPT or Google Gemini for price comparison during the season.

Akeneo CEO Romain Fouache said the findings raise the operational stakes for product data management. "Consumers are paying closer attention to price and that raises the stakes for retailers. Pricing can no longer sit in a silo from the rest of the product experience," Fouache said. "Consumers, and increasingly AI-powered shopping tools, are constantly comparing products, prices and offers across channels. Brands need trusted product and pricing information working together so shoppers see a consistent, credible experience wherever discovery happens."

For sourcing and supply-chain planners, the survey data suggests a holiday period defined by delayed conversion, aggressive cross-channel price checking and AI-mediated discovery — conditions that reward accurate, centralised product and pricing data and punish inconsistent channel execution. Whether the 79% deferral rate holds into the season will depend largely on how early and how deep retailers cut.