Cost Management Barometer 2026 – Retail Edition

This is ERA Group's sector edition for retail. It is built from the retail portion of the Cost Management Barometer 2026: according to its own methodology, the edition isolates the responses of 330 retail leaders from a dataset of 1,000 senior decision-makers. The research was conducted in Q1 2026 with particular emphasis on EMEA.

The report frames 2026 as a year of “controlled ambition” in retail. The sector remains the most growth-oriented in the dataset — 49.1% forecast revenue growth — but optimism is more disciplined than the year before. 63% expect EBITDA to increase, with most of that confidence sitting in slight rather than significant improvement.

A clear theme is that pricing power is no longer automatic: pricing confidence drops from 96% in 2025 to 63.9% in 2026. The report links this to margin having to be engineered instead through pricing discipline, productivity, procurement and cost-to-serve control. Workforce development leads the priority list at 43.6%, followed by technology and cost optimization, while investment is directed towards measurable business impact including sustainability and supply chain optimization at 37.9%.

The findings are ERA Group's own survey results. JMF Europe provides a short summary; the original English report remains the complete source.