RETAIL TRENDS

What’s in Your Future?

The 5 mega trends redefining consumer behavior that will benefit your business

BY BARBARA THAU

It’s that time of year when prognosticators gaze into their crystal balls to predict the trends that will drive retail and consumer product sales in the near future.

Eyecare Business recently attended TrendWatching’s New York Trend Seminar to learn about the mega trends shaping—and reshaping—shopper expectations. Here are five of the most opportunity-rich trends pinpointed specifically by this highly respected global trend firm.

Optical businesses of all shapes and sizes, take note: If your business strategies aren’t addressing these trends, you run the risk of leaving big money on the table.

1
Marketing to the Post-Generation Generation

Yes, the millennials, born between 1982 and 2000, are poised to displace the baby boomers as the nation’s biggest buying group by the next decade.

But TrendWatching says to forget about them—and the boomers, too, while you’re at it. And forget about Generation X, for that matter. That’s because marketing to generations, as well as to ethnic groups and other cohorts, is becoming an obsolete practice in the “post-demographic era,” Henry Mason, managing director of TrendWatching, noted during his company’s Trend Seminar presentation in New York City recently.

Demographic segmentation in a post-demographic world “no longer has the same predictive power, as consumption patterns are no longer defined by traditional segmentation,” he adds.

For one, the Internet has exposed consumers of all ages around the world to “the same global mega brands—Apple, Facebook, Ikea, H&M,” Mason notes. And people of all walks of life are defying demographic stereo-types. Case in point: 73% of applications for a recent computer coding class at the New York Public Library were from women.

As the generation gap between age groups dissolves, so should marketing silos. That’s because consumers just aren’t acting their age these days.

Some examples: Berlin boasts an “over-40” disco, and there’s a 40% overlap in the 1,000 favorite music artists of 60-year-olds and 13-year-olds. “Let’s end the demographic clichés,” Mason says.

The key takeaway for retailers is to “think beyond traditional demographics,” and “take [a concept] aimed at one demographic and shape it to another.”

Some retailers and brands are doing just that. Yoga brand Lululemon opened a men’s-only store in New York. And host accommodation service Hovelstay offers a down-market version of the popular Airbnb.

Social trends have also chipped away at the effectiveness of marketing aimed at perceived differences between consumers.

Statistics point to the growing acceptance of life choices like gay marriage as gender fluidity “amid a growing sense of unity among humanity.”

This means that “there is a new permission for people to lead the lives they want,” Mason says.

2
Thriving in the ‘Expectation Economy’

The rising quality of a plethora of products and services today marks a watershed period of “creative destruction,” attributable, in part, to technology gains and “total transparency,” says Mason, who refers to an online shopping site, for example, featuring 581 reviews of a single Swingline stapler.

At the same time, the Internet has raised consumers’ awareness of everything from climate change to healthy eating in unprecedented ways, making it easy for shoppers to evaluate a brand’s value—or lack thereof. Hence, shopper expectations are at an all-time high.

So it might not seem surprising that “only 7% of consumers think brands positively or meaningfully add to their lives,” Mason says. “There’s a gap between what people want and what they have.”

It’s why many newer, “clean slate” brands—think Chipotle versus McDonald’s—have an advantage these days. These newer brands “are conditioning all brands to do this,” he says. “If you don’t understand this, you won’t succeed in business.”

3
Catering to the New ‘Youniverse’

It’s the consumers’ world—you’re just living in it. That’s the new paradigm businesses are facing with shoppers increasingly in the driver’s seat.

To that end, forward-thinking marketers are finding ways to serve shoppers’ burgeoning interest in products that facilitate self-actualization, “the pinnacle of consumer status” today, Mason says.

In today’s consumer marketplace with its infinite shopping choices, businesses that facilitate personal expression trump “glossy, shiny, ‘look at me’” merchandise.

Businesses that are hip to the shift are making the consumer the star of their narratives and the center of the “Youniverse,” TrendWatching notes.

GoPro does just that. Via a partnership with Marriott Hotels and Resorts, the wearable video camera company offers guests cameras to film their vacation experience, which are then incorporated into the company’s promotional materials.

Serving the Youniverse trend also means empowering shoppers to be inspired. “The role of the brand has shifted from inspiration to inspiration and enablement,” says Mason. With its FuelBand activity tracker wristband, for example, Nike is implicitly responding to consumers who are saying, “Enable me to ‘Just do it.’”

Meanwhile, Flow Hive, a gadget that helps people harvest honey, is tapping into the rise of urban beekeeping. It is shorthand for “‘I am an enlightened, progressive consumer. I make my own honey,’” he says.

4
Enabling Social Actualization via ‘Better Business’

Just as technology and social media have fostered a self-focused consumer agenda, they’ve also given rise to shoppers’ digital-era informed social consciousness, one that brands would do well to stoke.

You can call it “conscious capitalism” or “ethical shopping,” but consumers are seeking opportunities for what TrendWatching calls “social actualization.”

As digital platforms give consumers a virtual stage on which to express everything from their cultural tastes to political leanings and social beliefs, consumers are increasingly seeking brands that enable some kind of social good and allow for “guilt-free consumption,” Mason says.

To that end, forward-thinking businesses are finding ways to combine customer purchases with charitable causes, social activism, community service, and even global volunteerism.

Carnival Cruises offers trips to Miami and the Dominican Republic that double as volunteer missions; adidas launched a shoe made from recycled plastic salvaged from ocean trash; and Warby Parker has a Buy One Give One frame donation program.

The common thread: “People want to feel, ‘I’m a member of society,’” Mason says.

5
The Rise of Ubitech

This year, consumers’ passion for all things tech will coincide with a demand for technology to serve them in ways that add measurable value to their lives.

Serving that demand calls for businesses to harness what TrendWatching calls “beneficial intelligence.” Quite simply, “start seeing technology through a lens of basic human needs and wants that solve a human dilemma,” says David Mattin, head of trends and insights for TrendWatching.

And, because consumers are increasingly willing to share personal information in exchange for compelling offers, it’s becoming all the more easy for businesses to suss out shoppers’ unmet needs.

One expression of the trend is consumers turning to connected objects that add meaningful solutions to everyday tasks, such as “smart” bike pedals that help locate stolen bikes and “smart” chopsticks that can test for contaminated food.

Barbara Thau is a contributing writer at Forbes.com, where she writes about the intersection of retail and consumer trends.

Bonus Trend—A Web Exclusive!

See our Web Exclusives (eyecarebusiness.com/webexclusives) for a bonus trend and to learn how you can take advantage of “ephemeral moments” to engage customers.