Justified Consumption Reshapes Tech Buying as Value Beats Volume

What happened

NIQ's new report on consumer technology says people are no longer upgrading by habit. Its annual State of Tech & Durables study, Consumer Tech Trends 2027: How to Win When Every Purchase Must Be Justified, came out ahead of IFA 2026 in Berlin. The report argues that years of economic volatility have changed how people buy technology.6 NIQ calls the result an era of "justified consumption". Under this mindset, buyers ask whether a product will still feel worth the money six months later, not just whether they can afford it today.1

The report combines NIQ's global sales tracking with a March 2026 online survey of 17,000 adults in 17 markets.2 The headline numbers point in two directions. NIQ expects global sales of tech and durable goods to reach $1.4 trillion in 2026, up 5.1% year over year. Yet 56% of consumers say they have put off a tech purchase because it was too expensive or because they were waiting for a discount.5 The survey classed 63% of respondents as highly price-sensitive, and 60% said they favor brands that offer good value for money.6

Perry James, NIQ's Global Head of Tech & Durables, said consumers still want innovation but now need a compelling reason to buy. He added that the brands that grow in 2027 will be the ones that make value obvious and reduce uncertainty.6

Rising revenue, falling units, and some currency effects

The industry press has largely repeated NIQ's framing. The underlying data gives a less flattering picture. In the first quarter of 2026, global tech and durables sales rose in value but fell in volume compared with a year earlier, continuing a pattern that began in 2025.3 Much of the headline growth comes from currency movements. Measured in US dollars, Q1 sales rose 9%. Measured in local currencies, they rose only 3%, because the dollar weakened, especially against the euro.2

Costs are pushing prices up as well. NIQ says rising energy, fuel and component costs, especially for memory chips, have lifted product prices faster than inflation. It concedes that sales growth is therefore not entirely the result of consumers choosing premium products.3 Other reporting puts numbers on this. Counterpoint Research found that retail prices of existing smartphone models rose 15% on average worldwide by September 2026. IDC expects new smartphone shipments to fall 13.9% this year, to 1.09 billion units.39

Some outlets have treated the $1.4 trillion forecast as evidence of a healthy market. One summary called it a paradox in which premium categories keep growing despite price sensitivity.4 A more careful reading is that part of the value growth comes from inflation and the exchange rate, not from consumers. The premium story is real, but it is limited to particular categories.

Where premium spending is real

Those categories are where the report is most useful for product managers. In small domestic appliances, vacuum cleaners as a whole grew 9% in value. Robot vacuums grew 37% and wet-and-dry vacuums 33%, both of which save time. Hot beverage makers grew 3%, while traditional pump espresso machines grew 20%.3 Smartphones with 256GB or more of storage grew 29%, and monitors with refresh rates of 120Hz or higher grew 23%.3

Some new wearable formats are growing fast. Smart rings rose 87% year over year in Q1 2026, and smart glasses grew more than 300% across the EU5 countries.3 Audio shows the same split: volume fell 4% in Q1 while value rose 12% in dollar terms, driven by premium earbuds priced above $250.3

The pattern holds across these examples. Consumers pay more when they can easily see the benefit. They are less willing when a feature only looks good on a spec sheet. NIQ found that respondents rank durability, quality, ease of use and trusted brands as more important than being inexpensive when they judge value.1 The firm also stresses that justified consumption is not a race to the bottom. Shoppers will spend, but they have little patience for redundant features or unclear benefits.3

Lessons for product managers

For product teams, the most practical finding concerns AI. NIQ says AI-powered functions are becoming more important in purchase decisions, even though buyers may not see them as "AI". Brands that succeed describe AI in terms of outcomes, such as better performance, less effort or lower running costs.1 This matches NIQ's broader consumer outlook, which found that people prefer fewer, clearer choices and that simple, low-friction products are beating feature-heavy complexity.10

Pricing is changing too. In NIQ's survey, 71% said a warranty or return policy strongly influences their final choice, and 73% said the same about price promotions. The seven biggest promotional events account for 35% of annual global sales value.1 Promotions do not always mean buying cheap, though. During major sales, 51% of washing-machine shoppers and 46% of mobile-computing shoppers spent more than they had planned, reasoning that a slightly more expensive model was better value.1

The report also suggests challenger brands have an opening. NIQ says consumers are more willing to try new brands that offer perceived quality at a competitive price, and points to Chinese brands expanding into categories beyond smartphones.1

Circular business models are going mainstream

NIQ's fourth growth route is "low-risk ownership". It treats subscriptions, refurbished products, trade-ins, repairability and practical sustainability as ways to help consumers feel confident about a purchase.1 When asked what would make them buy refurbished, respondents most often named a strong warranty (51%), a meaningful discount versus new (42%), easy returns (40%) and certified testing (39%).1 In other words, refurbished is mainly a question of trust and only secondarily one of sustainability.

Rising prices for new devices are helping secondhand markets. Counterpoint valued the pre-owned smartphone market at $83 billion in 2025, or 19% of total smartphone sales value, and expects refurbished volumes to grow about 11% in 2026.39 In India, refurbished smartphone volumes rose 13% in the first half of the year while new-phone volumes fell about 11%.39 Back Market launched a repair platform in France, Germany and Spain in 2025, and Samsung plans to add recent flagship models to its certified refurbished program.38

Market sizing remains unreliable. Recent estimates for the global refurbished electronics market in 2026 range from about $27 billion40 to $187 billion34. One analysis found a four-fold spread in estimates for refurbished computers alone and declined to publish its own figure.39 The reliable data covers smartphones. Wider claims should be treated as directional only.

AI search is changing how people research purchases

NIQ's final growth route is about discovery. The report says AI search is starting to shape which products consumers consider. It urges brands to treat their sales channels as connected "trust loops", not separate silos.1 Online sales already account for 36% of global tech and durables sales, rising to 53% in IT & Office.3

Estimates of how many people use AI to shop vary widely. NIQ's monthly US tracker found that 42% of consumers had used at least one AI tool to shop in the past month, but only 5% had let a fully autonomous agent place an order.13 Salsify puts AI shopping use at 22%, with just 14% fully trusting AI to guide a purchase.19 Alchemer found that 48.5% had used AI for purchase research in the past year, but only 35.4% mostly or completely trust its recommendations.22 Product.ai reported that 86% of shoppers who used AI for research checked its suggestions elsewhere before buying.16

The differences come from different survey questions and samples. The overall pattern still holds: many people use AI to research purchases, but few trust it enough to act on its recommendations without checking. This is the same caution behind justified consumption. Consumers use AI to compare options and find deals. In Snipp's survey, 71.3% had asked AI to find a discount. They then look for a second source before buying.20

This matters for AI search companies such as You.com. The company says its API handles more than 1 billion queries a month for clients including DuckDuckGo, and it raised a $100 million Series C at a $1.5 billion valuation.28 It has moved from a consumer search engine toward enterprise research agents and APIs.27 It emphasizes citations that link to the exact sentence a claim comes from, and lets users choose between more than 40 language models.2427 Independent reviewers are mixed. They credit You.com's privacy features and developer tools, but say Perplexity offers a more polished consumer experience.2330

Our reading

The term "justified consumption" partly rebrands an older story about cautious, inflation-weary consumers. Still, the report's main point holds up. Consumers have not stopped spending. They are spending more selectively, and their criteria are getting stricter.

Companies that can prove a product will last are likely to win. That proof can take the form of warranties, certified refurbishment, clear explanations of what AI features actually do, and product information that holds up when an AI assistant summarizes it. Companies relying on ever-longer feature lists are likely to lose ground. In the coming year, a product's growth will depend less on its feature count and more on whether buyers can explain to themselves why they need it.