Fifty-seven per cent of Australians switched at least one provider in the past year. Not considered it, not compared plans in a browser tab and drifted off. Switched. That number comes from NAB's latest Consumer Sentiment Survey, which also found consumer stress at its highest level since 2014, and it describes a behavioural step change: under sustained cost pressure, Australians have responded not by switching off spending but by shopping around, trading down and churning through providers with a fluency that would have looked unusual five years ago. Supermarkets were the most switched category, with insurance, internet and mobile, streaming and energy retail all running elevated churn.

The retail data tells the same story from a different angle. IAB Australia and Pureprofile's Commerce and Discovery Report 2026 found 71 per cent of online shoppers have changed their retail choices and spending because of rising costs, and, just as tellingly, 69 per cent now rely on online research to feel confident before buying. Switching is not only more common; it is more deliberate. The switch happens after comparison, and the comparison happens in channels most brands barely monitor.

For any marketer whose 2027 plan contains an assumption about customer loyalty, this is the data that should be stress-testing it. But the headline number is not the most useful part. The most useful part is the unevenness.

The unevenness is the real story

Because sitting alongside the 57 per cent are numbers that point the other way. Canstar's survey of more than 5,500 private health insurance holders found 44 per cent have never switched funds, despite savings on the table. Compare the Market found 56 per cent of energy customers would stay on their existing plan even if benchmark prices fell, and that only a small fraction of households had switched energy providers as a bill-cutting tactic, despite energy sitting squarely in the cost-of-living firing line.

So which is it? Are Australians serial switchers or creatures of inertia? The answer is both, and the split is not really about the consumer. It is about the category. Switching behaviour is a function of two forces: the willingness to move, which cost pressure has now normalised almost everywhere, and the friction of moving, which varies enormously by category. Groceries are frictionless, so willingness converts to action the same week. Health insurance and energy are wrapped in perceived complexity, waiting-period myths and set-and-forget billing, so willingness pools behind the friction instead of converting.

That distinction matters because of what the pooled willingness actually is.

Inertia is not loyalty

The comfortable reading of a low-churn category is that its customers are loyal. The accurate reading, in this environment, is that many are open to leaving and have not yet acted. We wrote about this pattern as the Switching Window: customers become measurably open to alternatives well before they move, and the window between openness and action is where brands either intervene or lose silently. What the 2026 data adds is that cost pressure has thrown that window open across nearly every category at once, including the ones whose churn numbers still look calm.

A calm churn line in a high-friction category is not evidence of a strong brand. It can be stored switching potential, held in place by nothing more than hassle. And friction has a habit of collapsing suddenly: a regulator simplifies comparison, a challenger builds a ten-minute onboarding, a comparison platform runs a campaign, a price rise crosses a psychological line. When that happens, the brands that mistook inertia for loyalty discover years of accumulated openness converting in a single quarter. Ask any energy retailer who lived through a default-offer change, or any bank that watched refinancing volumes after rates started climbing.

The deliberate switcher changes the contest

The second shift buried in the data is where the switching decision now happens. With 69 per cent of shoppers researching before they buy, and comparison spanning search, reviews, social platforms and increasingly AI tools, the moment of choice has moved upstream of the shelf and the store. A brand can lose a fifteen-year customer in a comparison session it never knew occurred, to a competitor whose case simply presented better in the channels where the research happened.

This is why churn data, the metric most retention programs are built on, is structurally too late. Churn records the outcome of a contest that was run weeks or months earlier, in the research layer, among customers who had quietly entered the market while still paying their bills.

What to do with this before the 2027 plan locks

Three questions turn this from commentary into planning input.

What share of your current customers are open to alternatives right now? Not how many left last year; how many are in the window today. This is directly measurable in tracking research, by segment, and it is the true size of your retention problem. In a well-built KPI set, switching exposure is a headline line, not a footnote.

Whose customers are open to you? Every window is two-sided. The same openness that threatens your base is the cheapest acquisition environment most categories have seen in years, but only for brands that know which competitor's customers are moveable, and on which perceptions. That is a research question with a precise answer.

What is your category's friction, and what happens to your position the day it drops? If your churn is calm, be honest about how much of that calm is brand preference and how much is hassle. The difference between the two is invisible in sales data and perfectly visible in perception measurement, and it is the difference between a defensible 2027 plan and one underwritten by friction you do not control.

Switching is now normal. The brands that will feel it least are not the ones with the calmest historical churn; they are the ones measuring openness while it is still just openness. If you want to know how wide the window is in your category, and which side of it your brand is on, book a free 30-minute consultation and we will scope what measuring it properly involves.