Consumers are navigating a more complex world by building systems around the outcomes they want to achieve. Mintel’s 2027 Predictions point to a clear shift: the next phase of brand growth will not be driven by more products, formats or claims alone, but by the role brands earn within these connected solutions.
In 2027, Brands Must Compete for Outcomes
For decades, brands have responded to changing needs with more products, more formats, and more claims. But more is not always more meaningful. Across categories, people are combining products, services, technologies and behaviours to manage everyday goals, whether improving sleep, sustained energy, emotional wellness, simplifying routines, or making household tasks more efficient.
For brands, this means growth will depend less on launching another standalone product and more on understanding the role they can play within these connected solutions. This requires systems thinking.
Systems thinking, takes familiar marketing ideas (benefits, needs and occasions) a step further. It shifts the focus from the benefit one product delivers to the complete combination of inputs consumers use to achieve an outcome.
For Example:
- 2007 – 2010: The Smart System: The smartphone and the growth of smart homes started bringing together interconnection and the rise of technology serving as a connective tool for productivity and efficiency.
- 2010 – 2025: The Lifestyle System: Social media pushed forward a blurring of lifestyles and product collaborations. However, products remained the key selling point.
- 2026 – Beyond: The Outcome System: The rise of AI and powerful algorithms, geopolitical conflict, GLP-1, microplastics and food safety concerns are just a few of the challenges that have become top of mind for every brand and consumer. These challenges require interconnection beyond a collaborative product; they require integration to enable consumers with a sense of capability to move forward.
With this framework in place, here is how Products to Systems is reshaping four key categories.
1. Wellness
Wellness shows why the shift from products to systems is already underway. The wellness category has expanded into food, drink, supplements, beauty, fitness, healthcare, technology, and personal routines. But the explosion of claims and formats has also created consumer confusion. The more wellness products that consumers encounter, the more they need help understanding what actually works for them.
The implication is clear: impact will come from routines, not isolated products. As diagnostics, wearables and at-home testing become more accessible, consumers will expect evidence that products contribute to measurable outcomes.
For example, Kohler Health’s device can be attached to the toilet and translates what you leave behind into patterns and trends that get more precise the longer you use it helping consumers find their trigger foods, track hydration, and get alerts for signs of blood.
What Mintel’s experts recommend brands do next: Brands should innovate for real-life routines, build or partner for measurement capabilities and support consistency over time. Help consumers track progress, simplify choices and adapt routines as their needs change. Leave room for examples such as wearable-enabled supplement tracking, AI-led skin or health analysis, or personalised nutrition systems.
Explore what this means for your brand in our 2027 Wellness Predictions webinar, where Mintel experts will unpack the following two additional predictions for the future of wellness:
- The Recommendation Engine is the New Brand: Mintel predicts the data-led consumer will be won by the brands the engine can read: proven by what gets in, stated in the consumer’s own metrics, and built into the systems they already trust.
- Wellness is a Swear Word: Mintel predicts the word “wellness” will no longer resonate. Consumers will reward the brands whose benefits they can feel: credible everyday support at a fair price, with a longer, healthier life within reach of the many.
- Participation Replaces Promotion: Mintel predicts brands will be found in the places people gather, and kept in the places they return to.
2. Food and Drink
Food and drink are no longer judged only by taste, convenience or satiety. Consumers increasingly consider how what they consume contributes to broader outcomes (client link only) such as sustained energy, better sleep, hydration, weight management, beauty or emotional resilience. This is already breaking down boundaries between conventional food, functional drinks, supplements, beauty, and healthcare.
The implication is that food and drink brands must earn and maintain their place within consumers’ outcome stacks. A protein drink will not only compete with another protein drink; it will compete for a role in a system built around recovery, satiety, focus or everyday resilience. Partnerships with technology, wellness, beauty, or healthcare can help make these outcomes easier to understand and achieve.
Hydration is one example of a trending outcome. One consumer might take a product-centric approach and try to moderately improve their daily hydration by adding a category-blurred beverage such as Vietnam’s M-150 electrolyte-enhanced energy drink (client link only).
Meanwhile, another consumer will build a daily hydration “stack” that includes water, electrolyte-enhanced drinks, and dairy milk. Further embodying the transition from products to systems is that hydration’s health benefits extend into people’s beauty regimens.
What Mintel’s experts recommend brands do next: Position products by the role they play within a consumer’s broader system, not only by category or occasion. Leave room for examples such as cross-category hydration, food-as-beauty products, recovery bundles or fitness-linked beverage partnerships.
Explore what this means for your brand in our 2027 Food and Drink Predictions webinars, where Mintel experts will unpack the following two additional predictions for the future of food and drink.
- Authority Shifts: As AI advice expands, climate and geopolitical threats grow and influencers and wearables accelerate information overload, authority will shift to the people behind brands who can inform, reassure and connect.
- The Segmentation Reset: Mintel predicts that long-term growth will come from understanding new needs as they emerge. As consumers adapt to changing lifestyles, household structures and economic realities, demand will become more situational, varied and difficult to capture through traditional segmentation alone.
3. Beauty and Personal Care
Beauty is moving beyond the bathroom shelf. Consumers increasingly understand that skin, hair and ageing concerns are shaped by sleep, stress, nutrition, supplements, devices, treatments and professional expertise. As routines streamline, growth will come less from adding another step and more from helping consumers navigate protocols that deliver visible, credible outcomes.
The implication for beauty brands is that value must extend beyond product claims. Brands that translate diagnostics, routine tracking and expert guidance into clear next steps can become ongoing partners in consumers’ wider self-care journeys.
For example, Amorepacific’s Skinsight uses a piezoelectric skin patch to monitor skin temperature, moisture and tightness, establishing personal baselines and enabling more responsive interventions as skin conditions change throughout the day. This could potentially create new moments of intervention tailored to skin’s dynamic needs.
What Mintel’s experts recommend brands do next: Move from selling products to supporting protocols. Leave room for examples such as AI-powered beauty counselling, diagnostics-linked skincare, treatment preparation and recovery systems, or beauty retail experiences that connect products, services and community.
Explore what this means for your brand in our 2027 Beauty and Personal Care Predictions webinars, where Mintel experts will unpack the following two additional predictions for the future of beauty and personal care.
- Built Around the Goal: Mintel predicts the next wave of growth in beauty will come from systems built around goals or outcomes beyond the face, at every level of commitment, and from consumers beauty has yet to reach.
- Trust is Earned in Public: Mintel predicts a product will stay in orbit only while it proves itself: to the consumer, to the people around them, and to the machine.
4. Household Care
Consumers do not ultimately want cleaning products; they want a home that is clean, healthy, comfortable and easier to manage. Household care is therefore shifting from products consumers use, to tasks that systems help them manage. Appliances, retailers, platforms, subscriptions, and service providers are beginning to coordinate how household needs are identified, solved, and replenished.
For example, Miele’s TwinDos Washer automatically adjusts detergent dosage and formulation based on laundry conditions, demonstrating how appliances can take on household-care decisions once made by consumers.
The implication is that control of the household interface will become a competitive advantage. If a smart appliance determines dosage, a retailer manages replenishment, or a platform selects the service, then traditional household-care brands risk becoming interchangeable components in someone else’s system.
What Mintel’s experts recommend brands do next: Brands need to secure a meaningful role before the consumer relationship is claimed by others. Integrate with appliances, retailers, subscription services, and home-management platforms. Leave room for examples such as branded laundry infrastructure, app-connected cleaning services, appliance subscriptions, automated dosing or chore-management platforms.
Explore what this means for your brand in our 2027 Household Predictions webinars, where Mintel experts will unpack an additional prediction for the future of household:
- Ingredients Without Borders: Mintel predicts that the next competitive edge in household care will come from looking beyond familiar ingredient sources. Untapped botanical and bio-derived supply chains could combine novelty and performance with stronger sustainability and ethical sourcing credentials
Prepare for What’s Next with Mintel’s 2027 Predictions
The brands best placed to grow in 2027 will be those that can clearly define their role in consumers’ connected solutions. Brands should identify the outcomes consumers are trying to achieve, understand the systems already forming around those outcomes and decide whether they should orchestrate the system, contribute specialist expertise, provide measurement or make the experience easier to navigate.
Explore what this means for your brand in our 2027 Consumer Predictions Webinars, where Mintel experts will unpack two additional consumer predictions:
- Authority Shifts: Traditional sources of authority are being disrupted, creating a landscape where power is more fragmented, and trust is harder to establish. The brands that can verify authority have the most to gain.
- The Relevance Reset: As algorithms turn connection and culture into performance, relevance will come from restoring human agency, not chasing micro-trends.
Across all categories, the mandate is consistent: stop thinking about what product to launch and start asking what outcome they can credibly help consumers achieve.
Mintel clients can explore the full 2027 Predictions by logging in here.
Not currently a Mintel client? Visit our 2027 Predictions hub for a broader view of the trends and consumer shifts shaping the future.
