Kirk Ram­per­sad

The start of a new year does not ar­rive qui­et­ly. It comes with pres­sure. Pres­sure to per­form, to grow, to re­cov­er, to keep up. And for many busi­ness­es in T&T, 2026 is not be­gin­ning with a clean slate. It is be­gin­ning with a re­al­i­ty check.

Con­sumers are more cau­tious. Com­pe­ti­tion is more ag­gres­sive. Costs re­main high. Trust is hard­er to earn and eas­i­er to lose. Tech­nol­o­gy is ac­cel­er­at­ing faster than most teams can com­fort­ably ab­sorb. And while many or­gan­i­sa­tions are still us­ing yes­ter­day’s strate­gies, the mar­ket has al­ready moved on.

This is the un­com­fort­able truth: the rules of busi­ness in T&T have changed, and they will not change back.

Over the past year, my week­ly con­tri­bu­tions to the Busi­ness Guardian al­lowed me to ex­plore the forces re­shap­ing how we shop, com­mu­ni­cate, choose brands and build loy­al­ty. From AI and da­ta to trust, sus­tain­abil­i­ty, in­flu­ence, re­ten­tion and chang­ing con­sumer ex­pec­ta­tions, one in­sight sur­faced re­peat­ed­ly:

In a world that is be­com­ing more dig­i­tal, more com­pet­i­tive and more un­cer­tain, busi­ness suc­cess in T&T still comes down to peo­ple: how we lis­ten to them, how we serve them and how we treat them.

As 2026 be­gins, the ques­tion is no longer whether change is com­ing. The ques­tion is whether we are build­ing busi­ness­es that can thrive in­side it.

1. Trust is no longer a soft val­ue, it is the new busi­ness cur­ren­cy

If I had to choose the sin­gle most im­por­tant les­son that re­peat­ed it­self across al­most every top­ic I wrote about in 2025, it is this:

Trust is no longer op­tion­al. It is the new cur­ren­cy of busi­ness.

Glob­al­ly, trust has be­come one of the strongest pre­dic­tors of brand re­silience. Across mul­ti­ple in­ter­na­tion­al stud­ies and con­sumer re­ports, the trend is con­sis­tent: peo­ple are in­creas­ing­ly scep­ti­cal of in­sti­tu­tions, more se­lec­tive about who they be­lieve and quick­er to walk away from brands that feel dis­hon­est, in­con­sis­tent or pure­ly per­for­ma­tive.

That same re­al­i­ty is play­ing out here at home.

In dis­cus­sions around in­flu­encer cred­i­bil­i­ty, fake mar­ket­ing, em­ploy­ee-gen­er­at­ed con­tent, da­ta pri­va­cy and brand in­tegri­ty, a clear pat­tern emerged. Con­sumers are more aware than ever. They are quick­er to ques­tion claims, quick­er to de­tect in­con­sis­ten­cy and far more will­ing to dis­en­gage from brands that feel pol­ished on the sur­face but un­sta­ble un­der­neath.

They re­spond­ed most pos­i­tive­ly to:

• em­ploy­ees shar­ing gen­uine ex­pe­ri­ences

• cre­ators who keep their con­tent ground­ed and hon­est

• brands trans­par­ent about pric­ing, sourc­ing and process­es

• com­pa­nies that com­mu­ni­cat­ed clear­ly, es­pe­cial­ly dur­ing chal­lenges

The mes­sage is straight­for­ward: cred­i­bil­i­ty can­not be bought, it must be earned dai­ly. And in a small coun­try like ours, where every­one knows some­one who knows some­one, trust be­comes even more valu­able. Rep­u­ta­tion moves faster than ad­ver­tis­ing. One poor cus­tomer ex­pe­ri­ence can be am­pli­fied in min­utes, while a con­sis­tent, de­pend­able brand earns loy­al­ty that mon­ey can­not eas­i­ly pur­chase. In 2026, the busi­ness­es that win will not be the loud­est. They will be the most con­sis­tent.

2. Tech­nol­o­gy ac­cel­er­at­ed, but hu­man­i­ty still de­ter­mine the out­come

Through­out 2025, AI dom­i­nat­ed glob­al head­lines and right here in T&T I saw busi­ness­es in­te­grate AI tools in­to cus­tomer ser­vice, mar­ket­ing au­toma­tion, seg­men­ta­tion, an­a­lyt­ics, lo­gis­tics and fi­nan­cial ser­vices.

Glob­al­ly, in­vest­ment in AI has grown rapid­ly, and what is no­table is not on­ly the spend­ing but the shift in mind­set. AI is no longer be­ing treat­ed as an ex­per­i­ment. It is be­ing treat­ed as in­fra­struc­ture, a ca­pa­bil­i­ty that de­ter­mines speed, ef­fi­cien­cy and com­pet­i­tive­ness.

There is no deny­ing the up­side. AI helped teams do more with less. It im­proved re­sponse times. It en­hanced de­ci­sion-mak­ing. It cre­at­ed new op­por­tu­ni­ties for small­er busi­ness­es to com­pete with big­ger ones, and big­ger ones to scale fur­ther.

But even with all this progress, one theme re­mained con­stant:

Tech­nol­o­gy works best when it en­hances, not re­places, the hu­man ex­pe­ri­ence.

In prac­ti­cal terms:

• AI can analyse be­hav­iour, but it takes peo­ple to un­der­stand mo­tives.

• AI can gen­er­ate con­tent, but it takes peo­ple to tell a sto­ry that mat­ters.

• AI can rec­om­mend ac­tions, but it takes lead­ers to make eth­i­cal de­ci­sions.

We are en­ter­ing a phase where cus­tomer ex­pec­ta­tions will rise be­cause tech­nol­o­gy is rais­ing the stan­dard. Cus­tomers will ex­pect faster ser­vice, smoother dig­i­tal jour­neys and com­mu­ni­ca­tion that feels more per­son­al. But the brands that will stand out in 2026 will be the ones that pair dig­i­tal in­tel­li­gence with emo­tion­al in­tel­li­gence, be­cause cus­tomers do not on­ly re­mem­ber what was de­liv­ered. They re­mem­ber how they were treat­ed.

3. The cur­rent re­al­i­ty: Con­sumers are spend­ing dif­fer­ent­ly, not

nec­es­sar­i­ly less

One of the most im­por­tant busi­ness mis­takes at the start of a new year is as­sum­ing con­sumer be­hav­iour will sim­ply “bounce back”.

Last year was fi­nan­cial­ly heavy for many house­holds. Even with im­prove­ments in eco­nom­ic in­di­ca­tors and sec­tor per­for­mance, the cost of liv­ing con­tin­ued to stretch con­sumers. High­er gro­cery bills, in­creased loan re­pay­ments, ser­vice fees and glob­al price pres­sures shaped how peo­ple made de­ci­sions.

This is not unique to T&T. Glob­al­ly, con­sumer re­search con­tin­ues to show that peo­ple are be­com­ing more care­ful, more val­ue-dri­ven and far more strate­gic about where their mon­ey goes.

What stood out lo­cal­ly was not pan­ic spend­ing or reck­less con­sump­tion. It was in­ten­tion­al­i­ty.

Con­sumers ad­just­ed by:

• choos­ing val­ue over ex­trav­a­gance

• re­ly­ing heav­i­ly on deals and flex­i­ble pay­ment op­tions

• buy­ing ear­li­er to avoid sea­son­al price spikes

• pri­ori­tis­ing es­sen­tials be­fore lux­u­ries

• sup­port­ing brands they felt treat­ed them fair­ly all year

For busi­ness­es, this shift is not a sign of weak­ened loy­al­ty. It is a re­minder that cus­tomers are now more de­lib­er­ate with their dol­lars.

And when con­sumers be­come de­lib­er­ate, they be­come more de­mand­ing. They ex­pect trans­paren­cy. They want re­li­a­bil­i­ty. They want brands to re­spect their time, their bud­gets and their re­al­i­ties.

In 2026, cus­tomers will still spend, but they will spend with sharp­er judge­ment. The brands that will per­form best will be the ones that un­der­stand this new psy­chol­o­gy: peo­ple are not on­ly buy­ing prod­ucts, they are buy­ing re­as­sur­ance.

4. Con­sumers want mean­ing­ful val­ue, not more op­tions

Choice is no longer the com­pet­i­tive ad­van­tage it once was.

Across con­ver­sa­tions around the sub­scrip­tion econ­o­my, cus­tomer re­ten­tion, na­tive con­tent and dig­i­tal be­hav­iour, I saw a ma­jor shift so­lid­i­fy: con­sumers are not im­pressed by end­less of­fer­ings. They want clar­i­ty, con­ve­nience and val­ue that feels per­son­al.

Glob­al­ly, sub­scrip­tion and mem­ber­ship mod­els have ex­pand­ed across in­dus­tries, from en­ter­tain­ment and soft­ware to re­tail, fit­ness and even food. What that sig­nals is not sim­ply a trend, but a deep­er de­sire: peo­ple want pre­dictabil­i­ty and con­trol.

Through­out 2025, lo­cal con­sumers grav­i­tat­ed to­ward brands that of­fered:

• pre­dictable costs

• bun­dled val­ue

• loy­al­ty re­wards

• fric­tion­less dig­i­tal in­ter­ac­tions

• com­mu­ni­ties or mem­ber­ship ex­pe­ri­ences

• per­son­alised com­mu­ni­ca­tion

In un­cer­tain times, peo­ple cling to brands that make life feel eas­i­er, not nois­i­er.

This is why Cus­tomer Life­time Val­ue (CLV) and re­ten­tion strat­e­gy mat­ter more than ever. Re­ten­tion is not just cheap­er than ac­qui­si­tion. It is more hu­man. It re­wards re­la­tion­ships, not trans­ac­tions.And in 2026, re­la­tion­ships will out­per­form reach.

5. A clear blue­print

for 2026

So what should busi­ness­es in Trinidad and To­ba­go pri­ori­tise now, at the start of this year?

Based on every­thing I ob­served, stud­ied and wrote about in 2025, here is the clear­est blue­print for the months ahead:

1. Earn trust through con­sis­tent, trans­par­ent be­hav­iour. Con­sumers are watch­ing and re­ward­ing in­tegri­ty.

2. Use tech­nol­o­gy to en­hance re­la­tion­ships, not re­place them. AI plus hu­man­i­ty will out­per­form AI alone.

3. Build for re­ten­tion, not just reach. Loy­al­ty is now the strongest dri­ver of prof­itabil­i­ty.

4. Em­brace cred­i­ble sus­tain­abil­i­ty. Green­wash­ing will be pun­ished, re­al ac­tion will build long-term rel­e­vance.

5. Pro­tect cus­tomer da­ta like it is cur­ren­cy. Be­cause it is, and trust can dis­ap­pear overnight.

6. Strength­en teams and in­vest in skills. The fu­ture be­longs to or­gan­i­sa­tions that adapt, in­no­vate and learn con­tin­u­ous­ly.

7. Lean in­to au­then­tic sto­ry­telling and com­mu­ni­ty.

This year will not be won by the most vis­i­ble brands. It will be won by the most re­li­able ones. So the call to ac­tion is sim­ple: lead with in­tegri­ty, build with agili­ty, in­vest in peo­ple and de­liv­er val­ue that cus­tomers can feel.

Be­cause in this new era of busi­ness, trust is not a nice-to-have. It is the growth strat­e­gy.