Four out of ten Retail and Consumer CEOs in Brazil have started competing in new sectors in the last five years

The retail and consumer sector in Brazil demonstrates that it is in alignment with the global economic reconfiguration movement. Over the last five years, 42% of the companies in the sector have begun to compete in new sectors, such as adjacent expansion routes. The data are in the sectorial cut of the 29th edition of the Global CEO Survey, a survey that heard more than 4,400 business leaders from 95 countries, including Brazil.

This movement is aligned with the global economic reconfiguration (42%). Although expressive, the percentage of Retail and Consumer companies is still below the general Brazilian average (51%), indicating that the sector may be adopting innovations more selectively.

“When 4 out of 10 CEOs in the industry say they have opened new avenues of growth, we see that retail is becoming an even more diverse ecosystem”, explains Luciana Medeiros, partner and Retail and Consumer leader at PwC Brasil.

The business reinvention movement is also aligned with the fears and threats pointed out by the CEOs of the sector. For 42% of executives in Brazil the lack of manpower, inflation and macroeconomic instability follow as main concerns. Then, cyber risks and technological disruption appear, both with 30%, reinforcing the priority over operational continuity.

Tension in the Air

The study shows the cautious environment in the retail and consumer sector in Brazil, when it reveals a decline from 51% to 39% in executive confidence in the revenue growth of the companies themselves in the next twelve months. Over the three-year horizon, the behavior is more stable. The confidence of executives in the retail and consumption sector grows gradually, from 47% in 2024 to 49% in 2025 and 48% in 2026, remaining in a relatively constant range.

It also draws attention to how the agenda of the leaders of the retail and consumer sector in Brazil is currently oriented to the short term, with a majority share of the time (62%) dedicated to topics with a horizon of less than one year. The proportion is higher than the national average (57%). According to Luciana Medeiros, this concentration reflects a challenging short-term scenario and tends to narrow the space for more strategic discussions in the medium and long term, even if the sector maintains a relevant presence of these less immediate topics .

Impacts of AI

Artificial Intelligence (AI) is also undergoing a consolidation stage in the Retail and Consumer industry. While 34% of companies in the sector have registered an increase in revenue attributed to the use of AI in the last 12 months, most companies still consider the impact small, either in costs (55%) or in revenues (66%). A sign, according to Luciana Medeiros, that the sector is still undergoing a stage of adaptation to the new technology, a trend that may consolidate in the coming years.

Compared to the set of industries in Brazil, the sector has a very aligned pattern, suggesting that the adoption of AI follows a similar trajectory to the national average.

Innovation & trust

Business and technology innovation in the retail and consumer sector appears as a relevant strategic axis, but with signs of execution still selective.Slightly more than half of leaders see it as a critical component of the strategy, a percentage close to the Brazilian average, which indicates conceptual alignment on its importance, although the translation of this consensus into broader practices is uneven.

The research also points out that the incorporation of climate risks to decision making is still concentrated in a few processes. The supply chain and procurement area is the sector that stands out most, where 30% of companies have defined processes to assess climate risks, surpassing the average Brazil (18%).
In contrast to the climate issue, the rapid testing of new ideas with customers or end users is still low (18%), lower than the national average of 28%.

“O retail feels the climate impact directly on the shelf and delivery, which explains why the sector leads the national average in managing climate risks in the supply chain. However, complete reinvention requires more: we need to take this operational maturity to the investment table, where the integration of climate criteria in capital allocation is still incipient”, concludes Luciana Medeiros.