Every few months we are told consumers have fundamentally changed. Gen Z has fallen out of love with alcohol; dating apps are dead; shoppers have become more conscious. The implication is always the same — a new consumer has arrived and brands need to catch up.
Human behaviour is infinitely unpredictable, so when you read a headline that confidently announces a new, unflappable trend it’s important to approach it with at least a hint of scepticism.
The narrative sticks because it suggests that behaviour moves in predictable patterns. In reality, it rarely works like that. Behaviour changes all the time, but the motivations behind it are often stable. People still want to connect with others, enjoy themselves and fit in. Those motivations have not disappeared. What changes are the conditions surrounding them.
The behaviour isn’t the story
Take the conversation around alcohol. For the past few years, headlines have screamed that Gen Z is drinking less than previous generations, often presenting it as evidence of a wholesale cultural shift towards wellness and moderation. What followed was a torrent of product adaptations, new launches and strategy pivots as brands rushed to respond.
Yet recent reporting has complicated that picture, with evidence suggesting older generations are reducing their alcohol consumption more than younger adults.
At the same time, canned cocktail brand MOTH has raised over £11 million as demand increases for premium ready-to-drink cocktails. However, behavioural trends have to be understood within the specific context they emerge in.
The decisions people make about alcohol can be attributed to a number of factors. Rising living costs, changing patterns of socialising, the price of a night out, different expectations around work and leisure — these all shape what people choose to drink, where they drink it and how often.
But take for example how BuzzBallz have taken off with younger people. It’s not that young people ‘these days’ are wholly different to their predecessors. The human need for social connection remains; it’s just the circumstances that are different, and brands can learn to reach them with innovative messaging, tapping into the same values and principles young people have always had.
Context explains more than trends
We’ve seen similar stories play out before. Shared ownership was once presented as the future, with car sharing services like Zipcar, BlaBlaCar and Turo, alongside home sharing platforms such as Airbnb and Kindred, held up as evidence that ownership itself was becoming outdated. Those services are still part of everyday life, but ownership hasn’t disappeared.
In fact new car registrations were up 11.4% year on year in June 2026 and Zipcar has since stopped operating in the UK. Rather than signalling a complete shift in consumer attitudes, shared ownership reflected a set of economic, technological and cultural conditions that made those models more appealing at that moment.
Dating is another great example. The growing popularity of in-person dating events has prompted predictable headlines about the death of dating apps. It sounds interesting, but it probably tells us less about technology than it does about human nature.
Dating apps became popular because they solved a problem of access and convenience. Meeting someone in person has never stopped being desirable. If anything, the renewed interest in real-world events reflects changing expectations about what different environments are good for. Technology is still useful for many things, but it does not replace the emotional value of face-to-face interaction, which remains a core principle for all of us.
Look beyond what people do
Marketers understandably spend a lot of time tracking behaviour because behaviour is visible. We can measure purchases, visits, clicks and searches. Whereas context is harder to measure.
When we focus only on the outcome, we end up describing behaviour rather than explaining it. We might conclude that consumers have become less loyal, more health conscious or less interested in certain categories. In many cases, those conclusions are incomplete because they ignore the wider pressures shaping decisions.
This is where behavioural science becomes valuable. Rather than treating every emerging trend as evidence of a new mindset, it asks what has changed in people’s environment. It questions what barriers have appeared, what incentives have changed, and allows brands to see clearly through the noise and understand what consumers really want, even if the chatter seems to go the other way.
The consumer is more stable than we think
The marketing industry will always be fascinated by the next big trend, and rightly so. Spotting change is part of the job. But we should be more cautious about assuming every behavioural shift represents a new consumer.
The people we are trying to reach have not suddenly developed entirely different needs and ideals. They still seek belonging, enjoyment, identity, status and connection, just as they always have. What has changed is the world they are navigating. If a headline suggests that consumer behaviour has changed, don’t just take it at face value. Dig into the context first because that’s where the real story usually is.
