Here are the next series of trends following on from last week. These are great to help you better understand consumer thinking and the changing needs and wants of your customers.
5. Buy Local
Demand is soaring for locally grown and made products which is great for small business owners and local communities with most of the money coming back into the community. According to Entrepreneur, the buy local thinking comes from the growth in the farmers markets. In the US alone there are almost 5,000 farmers markets across the country, and they are experiencing more than 5percent annual growth for the past five years. Consumers are seeking out cheaper, healthier options locally.
Are you able to source from local suppliers? If you can, do it. If the costs seem prohibitive or the supply is inconsistent – talk to the supplier and other businesses and see if you collectively find solutions. I know a business that was able to save significantly on their distribution costs after talking to other local businesses and establishing a group distribution system with a local transportation company.
Don’t forget to tell your customers you support local suppliers.
6. Flourishing Pet Industry (Comfort Seeking?)
The recession hasn’t phased the pet industry. While owners may be cutting back on spending on themselves they continue to look after their pets. The American Pet Products Association revealed total pet spending in 2008 topped a whopping $43 billion. The forecast for 2009 is $45.4 billion. Pets can provide great comfort at times of stress – and economically we’ve certainly had plenty of stress.
If you’re in the pet industry – capitalise on the increased spending. If you’re not, do you offer something to help your customers feel happy and comforted? Another example is comfort food – which is always popular during tough times. Last year when the sales of cars through to organic groceries was slowing, chocolate sales continued to climb. Swiss chocolate makers had record sales as did Thorntons in the UK.
7. Constant Partial Attention or also known as Constant Partial Stupidity
With the barrage of media that we are constantly monitoring our attention is becoming fragmented. We are dealing with so much digital information we have no hope of remembering and with our minds in many different places our thinking becomes scattered and we face avoidable mistakes… It’s like our brain is trying to multi-task far beyond what we have expected of it before as we try to do more things and faster.
Richard Watson of NowandNext.com has some great examples: missing an appointment because you read an email too fast and didn’t see the footnote about the last minute change of venue…struggling to remember the increasing number of passwords, so that getting money out of an ATM is a bit of a lottery…simply forgetting phone numbers including your home telephone number.
Many people are struggling because we are in a world of too much information and not enough functioning memory. According to Watson, “human attention is finite so inventing new distractions like Twitter is all very well but there are consequences, such as our inability not to notice or remember simple bits of information.”
Look at ways you can make it easy for your customer and show them you understand their desires and needs. Send them reminders – and personalise them. Don’t add to the digital load – but look at other ways to reach them. ‘Lumpy mail’ (direct mail in the post) is popular again because it reaches people differently to the mainstream.
8. Digital Isolation
As we have become more connected in our digital world we are also feeling more isolated. We are creating and joining lots of online communities but the connection is an illusion. We can now share with a global audience what we are doing each day – but are they really friends?? As Watson puts it: “how can any friendship be properly maintained in 140 characters.” Research in the US has found that American’s have fewer real friends. Loneliness and depression are likely to continue to rise. Let’s hope there is also a push back from digital friendships, with time being instead spent on building real relationships, with a focus on quality not quantity.
Great opportunity here for any business or product that helps people reconnect with family and friends or helps people to think about what is important to them and gives them information and tools to give attention to the important things. Show your customers how you understand and you can respond to their need to reconnect.
Sources: Richard Watson, 2010+, 10 Trends and Provocations, January 2010,
UK Trends, Entrepreneur.com 2010
Business Market Forces Live, 7 October, 2009, The Guardian,
UK Chocolate Sales A Sweet Spot in the Recession, April , Time, USA
