Davos 2026: Honest Conversations to Scale Impact and Resilience for Consumers

By Helena Leurent, Director General of Consumers International

As I head to the World Economic Forum Annual Meeting, ‘Davos’, I’ve been reflecting on the theme, ‘The Spirit of Dialogue’ and its explicit emphasis on the need for more dialogue across diverse sectors and experts, each with differing approaches and opinions. It’s one that hits home with our theory of change at Consumers International and is essential to catalyse urgent sustainability transitions and to see that technology, changing our lives in unparalleled ways, is effectively governed.

We have long championed cross-sector dialogue and one which is inclusive of dialogue with people in the marketplace. In the last five years in particular, it’s become a core focus of what we call our ‘toolkit for change’ and has seen transformative results.

Innovation in dialogue – why building with consumers will see lasting change

Our experience has shown that when industry, government and other partners enter a new ‘innovative’ dialogue with consumers three core outcomes result - trust, better products and services and better economic prospects.

Dialogue with consumer advocates and the consumers they represent is the first step to allow industry and government to understand what’s working and not, the extent of the what’s not, and to embed consumer rights throughout delivery - from design to roll out to the monitoring of products and services.

We’ve seen its impact right down to the local level, where dialogue between farmers and consumers has helped to address horizontal issues commonly found in the food sector. In finance, it has helped to establish 10 legislative changes over three years in low- and middle-income countries through new bridges built between national regulators and consumer groups.

In 2023, 600 expert leaders came together from across business, government, academia and civil society in a global call Empowering Consumers Through the Clean Energy Transition for World Consumer Rights Day. It was around this time we established our energy advisory group and marked a turning point in how consumers could be brought into energy expert discussion to be active agents in the transition – not just passive bystanders.

Since then – guided by our advisory group – we have driven initiatives such as ensuring consumers exposed to vulnerability and those facing energy poverty can get the services they need, whether that be by promoting accessible technology for persons with disabilities or ensuring older people and their care givers have the confidence and know who they can talk to when things go wrong.

Our multistakeholder approach has informed how we support innovative energy ‘one stop shops’ in low- and middle- income countries to give consumers more options, interoperable connections, and education to adopt renewable energy. Most recently, through a new partnership with Octopus Energy, and together with government and consumer groups, we will advance a distributed, consumer-centric approach to drive the renewable energy transition forward at pace.

Our approach dispels the notion that each actor wants and needs different things from the market. It is not a zero-sum game. We have seen our Members collaborate with government and industry to directly support their priorities. Not only through amplifying the consumer voice but through innovation, research and testing.

Take our Member, Consumer NZ which runs Powerswitch in New Zealand, a free electricity retail price comparison site. It is partially funded by the Electricity Authority, an independent Crown entity responsible for regulating New Zealand’s electricity industry. With an average annual saving of $409 per user, Powerswitch has empowered consumers to save significantly on electricity costs. It helped consumers collectively save over $6 million in 2023 alone, showcasing the impactful results of collaborative efforts between government and consumer groups such as Consumer NZ. Contrast to this, in the USA, Consumer Reports’ collaborated with government agencies to shape policies on cyber labour, labelling and privacy. They worked closely with the Federal Trade Commission and Communications Commission to pioneer digital testing of connected devices and fintech apps which led to stronger regulations and controls in the marketplace.

Our Consumer Coalition to Stop Scams is another example of how 40+ cross-sectoral experts contribute expertise and collaborate to fight scams. With input from across government, business, consumer groups and international organisations the coalition develops a bi-annual sense check on how scams are being conducted, are escalating, or indeed, being prevented through the coalition’s flagship, ‘Scams Barometer’. To deliver action on the issues found, in November our Consumer Action Brief gave concrete steps to help regulators – supported by our Members - to respond.

Deliver a new social contract for consumers with us

These are just a few examples of how we advance innovative dialogue. In fact, all of our initiatives now make a multistakeholder approach an obligatory checkpoint.

We know building on these partnerships will be critical to accelerate the energy transition, remain ahead of issues arising from technology such as the governance of Agentic AI, the rise scams and many other issues we now see in our marketplace.

As we attend the Forum’s Annual Meeting alongside close to 3000 leaders, we look forward to more innovative dialogue that drives a new social compact for consumers.

Click here for more on our partnership opportunities.