Critical perspectives on trends transforming Canadian retail
TCS Global Retail Outlook Key Findings Report - Canada
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TCS Global Retail Outlook Key Findings Report - Canada
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The path to success in 2026 depends on real-time intelligence and swift, AI‑led decision‑making.
The Canadian retail sector faces challenges related to operational costs, workforce skill shortages, and margin pressure, demanding strategic innovation and efficiency to sustain growth.
This report, derived from the comprehensive TCS Global Retail Outlook key findings report, includes insights from 65 respondents in Canada and covers five subsectors. It is designed for senior leaders and decision-makers who want to understand the most essential capabilities and forces that will define success for Canadian retailers in 2026.
This report highlights:
The sector faces significant challenges from rising operational costs, workforce skills gaps, and persistent margin pressures, requiring innovation and efficiency to sustain growth.
Critical success factors include cost reduction through process optimisation, real-time sensing of market changes, and the adoption of automated workflows to reduce manual intervention.
AI-powered chatbots, supply chain optimisation, and demand forecasting are among the highest priority initiatives, but most Canadian retailers have yet to fully tap into advanced AI capabilities such as multi-agent systems and enterprise-wide human+AI collaboration.
Loyalty programs are increasingly valued for enabling long-term customer retention and personalisation, yet many organisations struggle to maximise their impact on enterprise-wide decisions, with challenges around program costs, member acquisition, and reward expectations.
The research recommends ensuring AI investments directly support core business priorities and capabilities and shifting loyalty programs from transactional discounts to data-driven personalisation, using first-party insights to anticipate customer needs and deepen engagement.
These insights can help retail leaders anticipate key factors impacting the Canadian retail industry and chart an effective strategy for sustainable success in the age of AI-powered retail.
Want to drive profitable growth
Plan to focus on cost optimisation and operational efficiency
Seek to improve customer experience and loyalty
Advanced AI capabilities elude most Canadian retailers.
The biggest obstacles for Canadian retailers:
Other takeaways:
Loyalty programs are not yet factoring into most enterprise decisions.
Most retailers are still in the early stages of AI implementation. They are most mature in adopting systems that can identify unstated customer preferences. However, they are lagging in the adoption of multi-agent systems and systems that can understand and reason across multiple data types.
Retail’s next chapter in Canada will be defined by how quickly organisations move from experimenting with AI to embedding it as a strategic, enterprise-wide capability to unlock new levels of decision-making, speed, and agility.