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Datamonitor Defines its 'Mega-trends'
New analysis from Datamonitor lists ten overarching trends that it says will shape future products and services. The report states that, in order to retain customer loyalty, companies must capitalise on at least one of these 'mega-trends', which reflect changing attitudes to age, gender and lifestyles.
The report, Evolution of Global Consumer Trends, is set to become a useful reference source, not least for devotees of marketing buzzwords. It analyses the trends, and highlights how they evolved over 2003 and 2004, based on an online survey of 3,200 consumers in the USA, UK, France, Germany, Italy, the Netherlands, Spain and Sweden. The ten mega trends are as follows.- Age complexity While adults indulge their own childishness, younger consumers are acquiring more autonomous spending power and developing brand awareness and loyalty at a younger age. Datamonitor recommends that manufacturers offer age-defying products aligned with the aspirational age of consumers, along with ageless marketing, which targets universal values and attitudes.
- Gender complexity The survey finds gender roles less defined than ever before, with 73% of men (vs 72% of women) stating that spending time on personal appearance is 'important' or 'very important'. Similarly, it shows that men are on a par with women in terms of improving their health through diet.
- Lifestage complexity The notion that the nuclear family stays together through life is changing, with more people spending more time single, and the phenomenon of 'boomeranging' children, who return to the family home after a period of independence.
- Income complexity Datamonitor says consumers with lower and mid incomes are increasingly seeking luxury on a budget, for example via accessible premium brands. Upmarket luxury is changing, too, as many higher income consumers abandon conspicuous consumption and look for more understated quality in homeware, food and beauty products.
- Individualism The report points to the fact that the increased number of single people are interested in spending money on themselves. Individualism is also reflected by the fact that over half of European and US consumers feel that 'brands that match their attitudes and outlook on life' are important.
- Sensory Consumers are seeking out more 'intense experiences' from products and are more willing to experiment. 71% of consumers surveyed, for example, feel that finding 'more excitement and sensations in life' is important, and 63% had 'tried more food and drinks that [they] haven't tried before' during 2003/4.
- Comfort This trend focuses on heightened demands for safety, simplicity and tradition, signalled by self-indulgence, nostalgic consumerism, simplifying, cocooning (89% of consumers in the survey regard their homes as 'a place of safety') and ethnocentric consumption.
- Connectivity Datamonitor attributes the growth in ethical consumption and the wristband phenomenon partly to the need to belong and to demonstrate shared values and attitudes.
- Convenience 82% of consumers in the survey say that time-saving products and 'quick fixes' are important to them, and sales of ready meals in Europe and the US are forecast to exceed US$40bn by 2009, up from US$29bn in 1999. Convenience also impacts on personal care products: 57% of consumers report that they groom on the move, and 58% groom at work.
- Health An overwhelming majority (90%) of consumers surveyed feel that improving their health is important. More significant is that 64% of these people took steps to improve their health during 2003-04.The health mega-trend continues to drive the growth in natural and organic products.
Daniel Bone, consumer market analyst and author of the study, says the ten trends all have 'longevity and significance because they are rooted in core consumer needs'. He believes that 'successful products must be founded on at least one and ideally several of them'. For example, Datamonitor identifies the crossover trend of health and convenience ('health on the go') as an under-targeted opportunity with high growth potential. Other combinations are perhaps harder to envisage: individualism and a sense of belonging, say, or ethical consumption and the demand for disposable products might be difficult to reconcile.
Datamonitor is online at www.datamonitor.com .
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