商业实验状态

Building confidence in today'scomplexenvironment Contents 3Executive summaryBuilding confidence in decisionsamid risingcomplexity 4The new decision landscapeThe impact ofvaluepressure, performance variabilityand tighter budgets6Experimentation as a strategic capabilityFromtactical testing to decision infrastructure7Top testing trends for 2026Where organizations areconcentratingexperimentation Trend 1:AI & predictive technologiesTrend 2:Mobile and digital experienceTrend 3:Modern marketing 17Win with faster, more confident decisionsCombining experimentation and AI to drive clarity,alignment and growth Executivesummary The business landscape in 2026 is defined by rising complexityand accelerated expectations. Leaders are navigating a worldwhere decisionsmust bemadefaster, across more variables andwith less stability in underlying assumptions. Market dynamicsshift quickly, customer behavior is increasingly segmentedand competitive pressure continues to intensify as emergingtechnologies raise expectationsfor agility and precision. Across industries, organizations are expected to deliver strongeroutcomes with fewer resources and greater scrutiny. Aspriorities evolve and cycles compress, a newform of pressurehas emerged: decision pressure —the growing gap between thenumber of decisions leaders must make and the confidence theyhold in making them. In this environment, leading organizationshave already made experimentation a core operating discipline,using it to ground decisions in evidence, understand incrementalimpact and navigate variability before committing resources atscale. This report draws on insightsfrom more than 100 retailers,restaurants and financial institutions using Mastercard Test& Learn®. The state of business experimentation 2026 studyexamines howthese organizations are navigating today'sdecision landscape —where value pressure and performancevariance are reshaping priorities, and where the growing use ofAI and predictive technologies is increasing both the speed ofdecisions and the importance ofvalidating real‑world impact. The new decisionlandscape: Value pressure, variability and tighter budgets In 2026, leaders are navigating a decision landscape where consumerresponses varywidely by segment, market and context, making broadassumptions less reliable and outcomes harderto predict. Persistent value-seeking behavior Consumer behavior in 2026 remains shaped byvalue consciousness. Even as inflation stabilizes in certainmarkets, customers continueto make deliberate, trade‑off‑based choices. Their decisions varywidely bysegment, channel and moment, creating divergent patterns across industries. The study underscores this shift. In the restaurant sector, organizations report that at‑home consumptionhas risen to 56%, compared to 50% in 2024 — an illustration of how consumerhabits are evolving as valueconsiderations intensify. Retailers and financial institutions report similar patterns: customers are engagingmore selectively and seeking clearer justification for spend. This heightened value scrutiny means decisionsthat affect price, promotions, experience and conveniencecarry greater influence on customer behavior. Compounding pressures and performance variance Value‑seeking behavior is compounded by additional pressures, includinginflation, cost variability and intensified competition. These forces do not affectall customers, markets or categories equally. Instead, they introduce variancewhere the same decision can produce very different outcomes depending onsegment, channel ortiming. Historical averages can obscure thisvariation. A strategythat appearssuccessful at an aggregate level may be driving growth in one segment whileeroding value in another — a dynamic that makes broad, one‑size‑fits‑allactions riskierthan in prior cycles. Rising stakes for decision accuracy As organizations are pressured to act faster, leaders emphasize the growingimportance of alignment and clarity. Decisions must be madewith less timefor debate and increasing urgency around new initiatives, customer experienceimprovements and channel investments. With speed comes the need for stronger decision infrastructure. Leadershighlight challenges such as: •Teams interpreting resultsthrough different lenses •Conflicting performance signals across markets•Limited timeto validate assumptions•Difficulty identifying where actions create real value In this context, the organizations best positioned for growth are those thatbring clarityto complexity — learning quickly, focusing on incrementalvalue andmaking confident decisions supported by evidence. Experimentationas a strategiccapability As decisions multiply and cycles compress, organizations’ operatingmodels show a clear pattern: experimentation is moving from a tacticaltool to the infrastructure enabling confident, in‑market decisions. Leading organizations are adopting experimentation as a systematic approach to decision‑making.Instead of focusing on whe