future consumer

#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 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

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