One of the world’s leading trend firms, trendwatching.com sends out its free, monthly Trend Briefings to more than 160,000 subscribers worldwide. I of course subscribe and I have recently received a briefing detailing a number of consumer trends to watch out for next year.
- Business as unusual – For the first time, there’s a global understanding, if not a feeling of urgency that sustainability, in every possible meaning of the word, is the only way forward. Meanwhile, in mature consumer societies, companies will have to do more than just embrace the notion of being a good corporate citizen. To truly prosper, they will have to ‘move with the culture’. This may mean displaying greater transparency and honesty, or having conversations as opposed to one-way advertising, or championing collaboration instead of an us-them mentality.
- Urbany – A defining trend for 2010, 2011, 2012, and so on: urbanisation on steroids. A forever-growing number of more sophisticated, more demanding, but also more try-out-prone, super-wired urban consumers are snapping up more ‘daring’ goods, services, experiences, campaigns and conversations. And thanks to near-total online transparency of the latest and greatest, those consumers opting to remain in rural areas will be tempted to act (and shop) online like urban consumers, too.
- Real-time reviews – In short, with even more people sharing, in real time, everything they do, buy, listen to, watch, attend, wear and so on, and with even more search engines and tracking services making it easy to find and group these ‘live dispatches’ by theme, topic or brand, 2010 will see ready-to-buy consumers tapping into a live stream of (first-hand) experiences from fellow consumers. So, in 2010, expect numerous services to capitalise on this burgeoning ‘global brain’, and its endless real-time reviews and verdicts.
To read more on these trends and to find out what the other trends forecast for 2010 are, click here