#consumer4sight

#Consumer4Sight No. 9: Wants to play

by

For more in this series, see #Consumer4sight

Domino's makes pizza buying fun with an iPad game, Pizza Hero

The future consumer wants to play: with you and with her friends. That means having more options, choices, new experiences, and interaction with you, your products, systems, and services. It means variety and fun in the course of using a product or service and engaging with a company. We have come to talk about “gamification” in this context. That means that a system or user experience is made more like a game, with interaction, puzzles to solve, players to compete with, rewards and “levels” along the way.

A key driver of this new consumer expectation is digitally-enabled interactivity. We’ve already set new standards for engagement with technology, e.g. with i-devices and even with Siri, the voice recognizing iPhone agent. Technology is also making this possible with non-electronic products, since any product or brand can have associated apps. More consumers will look for the chance to interact and play.

The bottom line for business  – Interactivity and engagement are essential for consumers. There will always be products that are used without much thought, e.g. trash bags, but the sense of fun and the positive possibilities for it for business can come just about anywhere. If a product cannot be interactive and fun, maybe the buying experience, or the ads for it can be. Consumers increasingly crave variety and interest, and reward the companies that offer it.

Here’s a nice example: Dodge, to promote its Journey model, hid cars around the world, offering clues for people to find them. The first to find one of the cars got to keep it.

i-device enabled consumer life is more and more app-driven. That means with a service or access to a product, such as through a store’s app, there are ways to build in fun. The goal is to enchant the consumer and build interest and loyalty. And there’s plenty of room for more fun in the consumer marketplace.

#Consumer4sight no. 8: Touch, voice and gesture

by
iPad-experienced toddler encounters a magazine: "It doesn't work"

Consumers now and going forward expect a screen to be a touch screen and to respond to voice and gesture. Pad devices and Siri are moving those expectation along quickly. Just behind this are the demands that things be interactive in general and by that means offer the user a personalized experience. A recent video of children playing with iPads points this out: they find when they turn to a print magazine, that the magazine won’t respond to touch—it “doesn’t work”.

For more in this series, see #Consumer4sight

What it means to business – Interactive is the base standard for your systems that consumers encounter, but that’s only the base. On the way to delighting the customer, you will succeed most if those systems are intuitive, respond to touch, voice, or gestures or all three. The broader demand is for user experience design, but that design often critically includes a technology interface. And consumers have high and ever-evolving expectations for those interfaces.

A provocation on all this is the interplay between fear of germs and touch interfaces. Imagine the ideal ATM—you would not need to touch the screen or the buttons a dozen or more times to get your cash.

#Consumer4sight no. 7: Citizen of the world

by
Slumdog Millionaire opened up Indian pop culture to a much bigger North American audience

Consumers have gone global too. The consumer increasingly is and feels like a citizen of the world, at least as far as media, food, fashion and other consumer tastes are concerned. Globalization means big things for big systems like trade, and everyday things for many consumers. More of us are partaking of products, ideas, trends, and cultural elements from some other part of the world. For example, Bangra music from India blends with American Rap, and shawarmas have become a lunch staple in US towns where the average consumer may not even know what continent they’re from. Technology is enabling this: it’s rendering geography irrelevant or at least differently relevant and giving us instant access to ideas and products from other places.

For more in this series, see #Consumer4sight

The bottom line for business: the consumer wants variety, and the world is now his or her consumption playground. If you don’t help them find new and interesting products and experiences from around our world, someone else will. And Western companies especially need a wake-up call: they are no longer the font of product innovation, nor do they have a guaranteed spot in the pantheon of global brands—new brands and products are emerging from the emerging markets, and that trend will accelerate.

#Consumer4sight No 6: Greening it up by choice or by force

by

More consumers are greening it up – Soon regulatory and social pressures will meet economic pressures to drive greener lifestyles. People are already subject to local recycling laws and often laws relating to their use of energy and water resources. But higher prices are an even surer way to wake up consumers to the need to conserve, reuse, etc. And shifts in consumer values are, at least for some, in the direction of less material consumption, but you don't have to care about the earth to be greening up your lifestyle. The bottom line for business. Though it’s not a majority of consumers who are acting on green values as they consume, plenty are. And sometimes the green option is the choice when two choices are otherwise about equal. It's also critical to get ahead of evolving regulation on matters of sustainability. Playing catch-up is expensive. At some point a company’s overall profile is a critical brand attribute, and if that profile looks anti-green in the marketplace, that company loses. Sustainable practices will be an integral part of corporate processes and a prominent brand matter. And the sustainability bar is regularly raised, as we gain knowledge and awareness of what matters. Image: photologue_np, via Flickr cc attribution license

#consumer4sight No. 5: We become “free range” shoppers

by

From the series, #Consumer4sight

We’ll be doing more “free range” shopping – Anywhere/anytime network access leads to what I like to call “free-range shopping”. You don’t have to be at a shopping place to buy things, you can do that wherever you are, and increasingly, you want to. One key reason: encountering products out in the world shows them at their truest and best, and that’s probably when you recognize how they might fit your needs. My post “A 2021 Shopper’s Path to Purchase” explores how this might work. Because products have a digital life too, it will be possible to take a mobile phone picture and automatically identify the product for purchase. Apps like “Flow Powered by Amazon”—announced in November 2011—will let consumers snap a picture and buy, through a combination of image recognition and barcode or QR code or SnapTag reading with smartphone cameras. Consumers will embrace this ability, freeing them to find and choose products whenever and wherever they want. And they will be impatient with sellers who don’t make it that easy. The bottom line for business. Since the consumer lives in and wants to shop in the cloud, you will have to make more mobile purchases possible. Brick and mortar stores can continue to offer thorough, immersive experiences that are hard to replace, but convenience and ubiquitous access will often trump the qualities of store shopping. Finding ways to tie the physical with the virtual will pay off, but often brick and mortar stores will be the show-rooms for people who want to touch a product before they buy it. But does having them in the store guarantee that store gets the sale? Image: Screen capture from:http://www.youtube.com/watch?feature=player_embedded&v=fGaVFRzTTP4See prior #consumer4sight posts here: https://foresightculture.com/category/consumer4sight/

#Consumer4sight No. 4: Continuous digital access is becoming the core of consumer life

by

From the series, #Consumer4sight

Living a digital life means carrying a mobile device that gives people ubiquitous access to the ‘net. Most well-off people have that and far more have basic mobile communications with at least texting (SMS) capability. And with that is the power of social networking, which changes the dynamics of what people do while connected. Network access, instant information, and social connections will be part of nearly everything people do. In their consumer lives, they will be essential tools and powerful influencers of what people want and buy. New information tools and channels will submerge traditional media—and advertising, in a cacophony of new, powerful influences.

The bottom line for business. Selling will be about tapping into social networks, harnessing buzz, finding what resonates with specific groups. You will need to find consumers in the cloud—you can’t wait for them to enter your store, whether that’s a brick and mortar building or a website. Consumers will become even more “brand fickle”—the forces of digital communications, social networks, and the pace of change in the marketplace move them off of long-term brand loyalty. You will be able to win over consumers to your products, but it will be hard to keep them. Image: philcampbell via Flickr, Creative Commons attribution license See prior #consumer4sight posts here: https://foresightculture.com/category/consumer4sight/

#Consumer4sight — Ideas about the future consumer

by

Powerful forces are changing how consumers think and act. As we look out over the next 15 years, we can highlight critical shifts that will change the way branding, marketing, producing, advertising, and retailing are done.

This is a place where I will share ideas about that future consumer. Each idea gets introduced on Twitter, on the @packfutur and @jbmahaffie Twitter streams. They are then be collected here.

Winning businesses will reckon with these change forces by transforming how they produce, market, and sell their goods. It won’t be enough to just make minor adjustments—we will have to get beyond the low-hanging fruit.

Note: A recent post, “A 2021 Shopper’s Path to Purchase” explores some closely related possibilities.

+-+-+-+-+

Reconsidering consumption – More consumers show at least some post-materialist values in their consumption and that value will grow. That means that they at least sometimes think, “Why do I want more stuff?” and make choices that are not about having more material goods.

They focus instead on how what they consume improves the quality of their lives. Consumers other values into this too, including interests in the environment and social justice.

Post-materialist thinking may mean consuming differently, not necessarily less. For example, more people want a new, authentic experience in what they consume, not just the latest product. But that could mean buying more expensive, more authentic, and higher quality things, such as hand-crafted clothing or furniture, or patronizing businesses that add a lot of personalized service and customization to their products.

The bottom line for business. More consumers will want products that offer them something special: greater feelings of safety, wellbeing, a match to their values, authenticity, a new experience, and overall, a product that adds to the quality of their lives. They may look hard at your full value chain, not just the end product. While people will continue to buy mass-produced commodity products—ordinary things that don’t aspire to offer much beyond basic utility, it’s dangerous to assume that changing values won’t matter to consumers for your products. They will.

Image: Chantal Foster, via Flickr Creative Commons Attribution license

Future consumers will be born digital — The next generations of consumers include the tens of millions of today’s children who have lived their lives digitally—most of that time with a mobile phone in their hands. Even before they got a phone, they probably had Xbox, Wii, or Playstation.

They were born digital, and are growing up digital. They have habits and expectations on how they want to communicate with people and systems. They expect information and access 24/7, and from anywhere, to anywhere. Now their digital lives are social too, with instant connections and inputs from their friends and “friends” being integral to what they do in the marketplace.

The bottom line for business. It’s time to look at the consumer differently, to recognize that the consumer’s interactions with you and your products and services are part of a bigger picture of his or her digital life. You cannot expect to do well with the born-digital consumer if you lag behind their routine expectations from technology and for social-connectedness. Growing up with video and computer games means the digitally-born expect the systems they use to be multi-sensory and interactive—that they can communicate with gestures, not just a keyboard. That they can touch a screen and scroll, zoom, and so on. Why should the systems they find in the marketplace in 2026 be less intuitive, interactive, and lively than their Xbox 360 or Wii?

Image: Scott & Elaine van der Chijs, via Flickr, CC attribution license

Market niches of one (“N = 1”) – The consumer’s interest is in his or her individuality. Consumers have come to focus on themselves and business has supported that. Consumers care about their uniqueness and specific needs, and expect the products and services they use to fit closely to that uniqueness. This value is integral to US Baby Boomer sensibility, and America’s younger generations, steeped in it too, and are even more likely to have the digital tools and habits to do something about it. 

The bottom line for business. The “N = 1” shift results in changed relationships: firm to individual consumer, instead of firm to market niche or mass market. Ultimately, consumers want to have a hand in creating, or at least identifying and fine-tuning the products businesses offer them. The relationship becomes two-way. Each sale will be about showing the consumer you recognize who he is and how your product fits his uniqueness.

+-+-+-+-+

Look for more #Consumer4sight ideas here and on Twitter: @packfutur and @jbmahaffie

Note: part of my work is to lead groups in workshops exploring how the future consumer will shape their businesses. I also present to trade and corporate groups on this and related topics. Contact me for more information: jbmahaffie@leadingfuturists.biz.

A 2021 shopper’s path to purchase

by

Technology and social changes are transFuture Pathway to Purchaseforming how we shop. The future path to purchase won’t look like the traditional one—in fact, our path to purchase has already changed strikingly as retailing and consumer life have changed. But we’ve only begun to see what will unfold.

Retailers, CPGs, packaging developers and others up and down the consumer value chain need to grapple with the changes and be ready to do new things in new ways. Fundamentals of the retailing business: store sizes, formats, technology, locations, distribution channels, and so on, will have to be reconsidered in the coming decade.

What might the future path to purchase look like? Here is a scenario for 2021:

Claire is 32 years old, and lives in Boston. Work keeps her busy and mobile—she puts in about 60 hours a week at two jobs—and she spends a lot of time in her car for work, in Boston traffic. She likes to shop, but doesn’t have time to spend going to stores as much as she likes. So Claire relies on shopping virtually. Hers is an app-driven life, and shopping is no different.

This week, Claire bought a new sweater and blouse. Here’s how she did it.

First, Claire noticed on SocialShare that sixteen of her friends had “Liked” a new young designer’s collection. She looked at pictures of Marteen’s designs and a video of the designer talking about his work, but then thought no more about it as work distractions took hold. [“Likes” and buzz]

Later, when she was out with her friends, Becca’s blouse caught her eye—she asked about it—it was that same designer, Marteen. She really liked the blouse, and Becca let her take a quick photo with her mobile. “Don’t get this same color!” said Becca. [see and image]

That Sunday, she used the ShopNow! app to find the blouse—it recognized the brand and model from her smartphone picture. Right away it showed five stores in the Boston area that had the designs, but Claire realized she wouldn’t get out to shop that weekend or the next. But she kept thinking about the blouse. [app finds it]

So Claire decided to send “Digital Claire” shopping. Digital Claire has all her sizes and preferences, and what she had bought in the past two years. It checked the fit, and narrowed her choices from the collection. But the app found that the blouse Becca had really would not fit Claire. And to make things worse, it also showed her a gorgeous sweater that didn’t fit either. [avatar match]

Disappointed, she checked whether she could order a custom blouse in the same style. Using Digital Claire, she priced a custom-fit version, and previewed colors. She had her avatar try on the blouse and a sweater from Marteen’s collection, and showed Becca the 3D views. The blouse and sweater could be made to her specs and delivered the next day, Monday. The chance to have it immediately was exciting—she could wear it Tuesday. SOLD! [auto order custom version/produced per order/delivered]

NOTE: I offer keynote talks and workshops on the future consumer and the future of retail, contact me at jbmahaffie@leadingfuturists.biz for more information

Follow by Email
Instagram