Manufacturers are entering 2026 under a very different set of expectations than in prior years. Growth pressure is intensifying, margins remain under strain, and tolerance for pricing mistakes has narrowed significantly. Inflationary shocks, tariff volatility, and customer resistance have not faded into the background. Instead, they have become structural realities of the manufacturing landscape.
Findings from our 2026 Executive Pricing Survey reveal a consistent and telling pattern. Performance is no longer driven by pricing intent or ambition. It is driven by pricing execution. Manufacturers that outperform their peers are not necessarily those with the most aggressive list prices. They are the ones that execute pricing with discipline, segmentation, and operational rigor across the organization.
Four pricing trends stand out as defining manufacturing performance in 2026.
Table of Contents
Tariffs Shift From Temporary Disruption to Structural Pricing Input
Tariffs are no longer viewed as short-term cost disruptions that can be temporarily absorbed or explained away. For most manufacturers, they are now embedded directly into the cost base. Survey results show that a significant majority of manufacturers are experiencing tariff-driven landed cost increases, with many reporting increases well beyond marginal levels. Exposure is also broad, affecting entire portfolios rather than isolated SKUs. More than half of manufacturers indicate that tariffs now impact a substantial portion of their product mix.
Equally important is the expectation that volatility will persist. Very few respondents report having no plans for future tariff uncertainty. Most are actively preparing longer-term structural responses rather than relying on one-off actions.
From a pricing and revenue growth management perspective, this marks a fundamental shift. Tariffs are no longer episodic events. They must be embedded into pricing logic, governance, and execution. The central risk has moved away from whether tariffs can be passed through at all. The real challenge is whether they can be passed through consistently, selectively, and without margin erosion at the deal level.
Survey data shows a wide range of outcomes in how tariffs are handled. Some manufacturers have fully passed costs through, others have achieved only partial recovery, and a smaller share have absorbed tariffs entirely. Importantly, customer reaction has been far more manageable than many organizations anticipated. Most manufacturers report minimal to moderate pushback, and only a small minority experienced meaningful customer loss as a result of tariff-related pricing actions.
Leading manufacturers in 2026 are responding by treating tariffs as a pricing design problem rather than a cost exception. They are embedding tariff logic directly into regional price structures, surcharge frameworks, and contract escalation clauses. Segmentation is being used to determine where full pass-through is appropriate, where partial recovery makes sense, and where strategic absorption is justified. Just as critically, leaders are standardizing tariff messaging and negotiation guardrails to avoid inconsistent, rep-by-rep decisions.
Discount Discipline and Price Realization Become the Primary Margin Lever
The 2026 RML Executive Survey makes it clear that not all pricing levers deliver equal outcomes. Manufacturers that rely heavily on direct list price increases or ad-hoc discounting consistently underperform. In contrast, organizations that anchor pricing decisions in value and manage discounting with discipline achieve stronger combined revenue and margin performance.
Additional findings reinforce this conclusion. Manufacturers that review and recalibrate discount structures on a regular cadence outperform peers who allow discounting to drift over time. Data-informed bid processes also dramatically outperform sales-led, unstructured approaches.
The implication is straightforward but often overlooked. Margin is rarely lost at list price. It is lost in execution. Discounting behavior explains more variance in financial performance than headline pricing levels. In this environment, bid management is no longer a back-office control function. It has become a core growth capability.
Organizations that continue to rely on rep discretion, informal approvals, and manager overrides tend to underperform systematically. In contrast, leaders in 2026 are shifting focus away from headline price increases and toward price realization. They are formalizing discount corridors by segment, setting approval thresholds tied directly to deal size and margin risk, and embedding historical deal intelligence into bid approvals. Over time, this replaces exception-driven cultures with rules-based pricing governance.
Segmentation and Differentiation Outperform One-Price Models
Survey evidence around segmentation is unambiguous. Manufacturers that apply dynamic, continuously differentiated pricing consistently outperform those relying on one-price or lightly differentiated models. Even limited differentiation produces better outcomes than none, but it still lags far behind true leaders.
The weakest performers are often those unable to clearly articulate whether pricing differs by customer, channel, or product role. Responses to the revenue growth management maturity assessment reinforce this finding. Strategies anchored in willingness-to-pay and segmentation outperform reactive pricing, vague long-term visions, and opportunistic adjustments.
Segmentation is no longer a sophisticated capability reserved for advanced pricing teams. It is now table stakes. High-performing manufacturers price differently by customer type, channel, and product role, and they enforce those differences operationally. Lower-performing organizations continue to rely on legacy price lists, fairness narratives, and individual sales judgment.
In 2026, leaders are moving beyond abstract portfolio strategy toward enforced differentiation. Pricing is increasingly defined at the intersection of customer, product, and channel. Reliance on discretionary rep decisions is reduced, and segmentation logic is directly aligned with discount limits, bid guidance, and tariff pass-through rules.
AI Shifts From Optimization Tool to Pricing Execution Infrastructure
AI adoption in manufacturing pricing is following a clear maturity curve. The 2026 RML Executive Survey shows that top performers are actively piloting or using AI in defined pricing workflows, while laggards remain stuck in exploration mode or are not engaging at all.
The performance gap between these groups is meaningful. Companies with clearly defined AI pricing use cases consistently outperform peers, while vague experimentation correlates with weaker outcomes.
Crucially, AI’s greatest value is not theoretical optimization. It is execution at scale. When deployed effectively, AI enables real-time pricing guidance, margin guardrails during negotiations, win-probability-based discount ceilings, and faster quote turnaround. At the same time, AI initiatives fail when foundational elements are missing. Clean product hierarchies, consistent customer segmentation, and unified transaction data remain prerequisites.
Winning manufacturers in 2026 are anchoring AI investments to specific pricing workflows such as quoting, bid approvals, and discount governance. AI is used to detect margin leakage, flag high-risk deals in flight, and automate compliance. Increasingly, it is treated as pricing infrastructure rather than an analytics experiment.
Final Takeaway
The manufacturers that win in 2026 will not be those with the highest list prices. They will be the ones that execute pricing with discipline, segmentation, and speed.
The 2026 Executive Survey confirms that pricing maturity is no longer a theoretical advantage. It is a measurable driver of revenue and margin outcomes, and it is becoming one of the clearest separators between manufacturing leaders and laggards.
