As years go by, people change habits, culture, ideals, thoughts and lifestyles. All of these influence greatly on their every day life decisions, and to company´s interests: purchasing decisions. Now, in order to predict or know what certain people are going to look for in what they buy, it’s important to know everything about them. But then again, to anyone used to it, this is just stating the obvious. Here’s the catch though, a recent study explains practically an overnight change in people’s behavior. It’s a consumer behavior study by Ipsos.
In less than 3 years or so, people have taken new habits and ideals. A change that seems to be growing exponentially. When in the middle ages people were stuck in the same place for literally centuries, change is done overnight these days. Anyway, the study clearly specifies 7 new trends in today’s consumer.
First, people crave more and more material things, making them strive for something new desperately. Once they have it, their emotional void grows stronger. That is something that for my taste, is again, stating the obvious. Material things are cool, but people need people. I didn’t need a study to tell me that. Anyway, it moves on to say that thanks to globalization people have known abundance, but in crisis there exists moderation. Partly obvious, although globalization has indeed caused a counterpoint to typical scarcity in capitalism. If an item sells few articles, the price goes up. This still holds true, but at least there’s so much more variety than you’d ever think.
However, the next “findings” seem to make more sense and seem to be true new changes. There is no massive consumerism anymore. People don’t think too much is too much. Which brings us to their next finding: there are no rules to have a happy life or a successful one. It’s Darwin’s law out there and in every aspect in the world. Although in this day and age it has taken a major reinforcement.
In a world that is constantly changing as you sip your morning coffee, things have no stability or durability. As soon as you buy something, it becomes obsolete for something new and better is already lining up to fill store shelves. So, people are no longer attached to stuff. Thus, value resides on how quickly you can get your hand on the next best thing.
New social stratification is in order. At last, IQ and EQ combined have taken the spotlight. It no longer matters what you have, but what you know and what you can do with it.
Finally, there are three screens in today’s consumer daily life: TV, computers and their mobile device. In fact, according to this same article, 33% of internet postings are done through a mobile device. There is virtually no paper anymore, just ever changing screens in ever changing days. How fast can it get faster and will it ever stop?