NIQ

Airfryer Boom Boosts Supermarket Assortment

Marktkauf Blankenburg reports a sustained airfryer trend that has expanded from devices into wide parts of the grocery assortment. The store (5,270 m², 125 staff, 68,000 SKUs) shows airfryer labels across frozen, chilled and dry goods. Market data cited: 5.8 million airfryer units sold in Germany in 2025 (up from 1.3 million in 2019), roughly one in two households now owns a device, and specialized airfryer food SKUs generated about €18 million nationwide in 2025. In-store, Edeka's private label 'zuhause' is the top-selling device in Blankenburg, followed by Tefal and then Ninja. Store management and suppliers are staging point-of-sale activations but say a permanent special fixture is unnecessary because the trend sells itself.

AI Shopping Goes Mainstream: 2026 Key Stats

A July 28, 2026 MarTech article aggregates 2026 research showing rapid consumer adoption of AI tools for shopping research. Key findings: substantial portions of U.S. consumers use AI assistants for product research (43%) and many begin purchase journeys on AI platforms (46%). AI-sourced traffic to retail sites surged dramatically (Adobe reports a 1,200% YoY increase), and AI-referred shoppers convert at higher rates. Most consumers verify AI recommendations through other sources, and organizations report both strong expectations for agentic AI handling customer interactions and gaps in cloud readiness. Category usage is broad (travel, electronics, finance) and projections estimate agentic shoppers could account for $190–$385 billion in U.S. ecommerce by 2030. The piece synthesizes data from Product.ai, L.E.K. Consulting, Adobe, NielsenIQ, Gartner and others to highlight consequences for marketing, traffic, conversion and CX strategies.

NIQ Expands GenAI Across gfknewron Platform

NIQ announced an expansion of AI-powered Smart Insights across its gfknewron platform, embedding generative-AI capabilities into market, supply chain and consumer workflows. The enhancements let users generate summaries of complex datasets, analyze up to four years of trended sales data, produce narrative recommendations, access KPI benchmarking and POS insights on mobile, and integrate insights into reports and presentations. NIQ positions Smart Insights as a way to surface trends and performance drivers more quickly while retaining the provenance of NIQ’s market intelligence. Julian Baldwin, President, Global Strategic Accounts at NIQ, is quoted describing the benefits. NIQ will demonstrate these capabilities at IFA 2026, where it will appear as an Insights Partner. The article was published July 24, 2026.