In releasing its 2013 trends, Euromonitor International says food has become more than a staple item and more consumers are focusing on healthy eating while going green.
"Food is now celebrated, greener, healthier, grown in more urban spaces and hopefully safer," according to Daphne Kasriel-Alexander, consumers editor at Euromonitor International, who published a list of trends for the new year.
Consumer culture also has universal appeal. "The lack of a dedicated trend about emerging market consumers underlines the fact that our world is no longer experienced as ‘The West and the Rest’ and because consumer culture is everywhere," Kasriel-Alexander added.
Euromonitor International's 2013 trend list included the following themes:
1. Spending on convenience nudging into the quest for value
The recessionary consumer’s dislike of paying for convenience is softening, according to Kasriel-Alexander. Consumers are tempted by bite-sized brand offerings aimed at emerging and now developed market shoppers and greater novelty and superior niche services. Consumer reviews also cut the risk of trying something new.
2. Crowded house redux
Multigenerational and other combined living arrangements are leading to shifting consumption patterns as the ‘floating generation’ stay or return home to economize while peers and even separated couples are forced to cohabit.
3. Downtime decoded
Digital life is making ‘leisure’ harder to define and even as ‘digital detox’ periods are shared digitally, and consumers are ‘smoasting’—using social networking to boast about their holiday fun. Meanwhile, health conscious consumers are working hard to stay fit.
4. Food: More than a life staple
Food is now celebrated, greener, healthier, grown in more urban spaces and hopefully safer.
5. Gendered consumption RIP?
Gender-specific consumption and outlooks may be fading—apparent in unisex tech preferences and more—and traditionally female behavior celebrated in business situations.
6. Local love
Things local are capturing the consumer imagination as more prosocial consumers (those who care about others and society as a whole) reject ‘burbiness’ (a term that reflects commercialism and the prevalence of chain stores) and global brands court local cultural relevance and tastes.
7. Older and off to work and train
More tech-savvy, active and image-conscious older consumers need and want to work and spend comfortably for longer as more governments and firms are raising or abolishing retirement thresholds.
8. Parenting lifestyles
Parents are buying to suit themselves and tomorrow’s generation including ‘shopturnals’, parents befriending their teens online, stay-at-home dads, ‘idle parents’, parent bloggers and gifts in lieu of time spent with kids.
9. Shopping like it's the future
New tech-driven shopping culture reveals generational faultlines. Brands are focusing on interpreting consumer lifestyles to reach out to customers warming to innovation. ‘Showrooming’, gamification, Facebook’s piloted ‘want’ button and in-store digital information offerings are all part of this trend.
10. The roll call of consumer concerns
A catalogue of often-disparate concerns preoccupies swelling consumer segments. These include bigger peoples’ needs, the quest for simplicity and the grasp of consumer data as an asset to brands. There are even havens for smokers.