Nearly every business has the same goals at the start of the year. From executives and product development leaders to sales and marketing team members, your team wants to stay ahead of the curve and predict where your specific market category will head. Paying attention to and leveraging consumer trends can be significant to your future plans and your bottom line. As trends tend to start small, they can be hard to spot without research and analysis revealing its emergence.
Keep your eyes on the horizon, and partner with a market research firm who regularly conducts market research studies on consumer trends and more. This frees you up to capitalize on the trend, reposition your brand, develop new products, or simply adjust your messaging to reap the rewards.
Quick Links
- What Are Consumer Trends?
- Why Do Consumer Trends Matter?
- Consumer Trends: Minimalism Hits The Market
- How 360 Market Reach Stays Ahead of Consumer Trends
What Are Consumer Trends?
Spotting trends is a fairly complex process. Consumer trends are marked by significant changes in behavior, decisions, choices, and/or lifestyle that change the shape of an existing market and consumer demand. However, trends typically start with small incremental changes or within smaller market segments and then expand beyond those to impact additional market categories or a majority of consumers.
We’re not talking about viral sensations (though those can and do sometimes have a role in what’s trending) or fads, which are short lived phenomena that pass rather quickly and lack staying power. Fads tend to be a rather poor long-term investment whereas investing in a trend at its onset can have long term payoffs.
Why Do Consumer Trends Matter?
As consumer trends can mark the beginning of a demand or desire, companies that get in at the start can not only take advantage of the demand sooner, but can establish themselves early on as a leader and as a brand more in tune with their consumers. That kind of alignment with a consumer’s value builds trust and loyalty. Therefore, understanding and incorporating consumer trends should be an important part of your business strategy.
Further, because fundamental shifts in product branding or messaging or even product development lead times can be an investment, and are certainly not immediate, knowing where the market is heading, adjusting, and beating everyone else there is a significant competitive advantage in any market space.
Consumer Trends: Minimalism Hits The Market
Because consumer trends can be so important to businesses, especially the ones we currently partner and work with, and because it provides a great starting point from which to conduct additional research relevant to our market expertise, 360 Market Reach conducts a yearly study on consumer trends. This study helps identify new directions and establish what adjustments will be beneficial for businesses in the coming year.
One of the most profound trends we see emerging is the interest in minimalism across nearly every market segment and market category. Minimalist consumers and products tap into the desire to do more with less. Whether that’s simply purchasing a product with less packaging or buying higher quality items that last longer and therefore don’t or won’t need to be replaced, we’re seeing significant movements in this direction across multiple market categories.
Health and Wellness
When it comes to the health and wellness market, all signs indicate significant growth. In fact, by 2025, the market is set to be worth $6 trillion dollars with 50% of annual consumer spending being allocated or spent on health or wellness products and services. What does this mean for businesses? Simply put, it means there’s a growing market for products and services that contribute to overall well-being, from physical health to mental health.
While catchy slogans and promises on packaging have been considered helpful in marketing to these folks, new trends are emerging that suggest those gimmicks won’t be enough moving forward. In fact, from food and nutritional support to wellness tools, consumers want simplicity. When it comes to packaging, your promises won’t matter nearly as much as your ingredients. More specifically, consumers are seeking out food products with fewer ingredients as well as ingredients they can pronounce. Similarly, they’re looking for less packaging and less waste.
Travel and Tourism
Low-cost carriers have long been tapping into consumer trends in the travel and tourism market, but the minimalist trends we’re seeing right now are about more than lower airfare. We’re seeing this trend emerge in the luxury market as well. For years we’ve established that passengers are willing to pay for perks, but often those perks were associated with goods rather than service, with objects rather than value. The minimalism trend in the travel and tourism industry suggests we’re heading in a different direction when it comes to travel.
Lavish and opulent decors won’t dazzle travelers anymore. They see those as trappings. The value they want and will grow to demand isn’t as much about things as it is experienced across an entire trip. They’re seeking meaningful interactions with staff, stellar service when it’s delivered, and experiences rather than things. If you cater to tourists and the travel industry, considering your investments in 2022 may involve more than redesigning the lobby. Instead, you’ll want to maximize space and provide simple luxuries.
Beauty Products
Much like the health and wellness market, consumers of beauty products are looking to keep it simple. Not only are they looking for fewer ingredients in their beauty products, but they’re also looking for fewer beauty products overall.
A bathroom counter cluttered with makeup and hygiene products just doesn’t fit with a minimalist lifestyle or aesthetic and while baskets or organizers can help, they don’t decrease the number of products. Right now, less is the name of the game. In response, consumer trends suggest that consumers are looking to reduce the number of products they use and items like 3-in-1 products that work on lips, eyes, and cheeks will prove popular.
How to Stay Ahead of Consumer Trends
Each year, our research team conducts both qualitative and quantitative research to determine what consumer trends we should be following. Our goal is two-fold. First, we want to stay ahead of the market to ensure we’re steering our research in the right direction and to gather even more data on the markets and product categories relevant to our clients. Second, is the promise to our clients to provide them with valuable insights and information based on our research as well as our experience and expertise.
At the beginning of the year, we release a consumer trends study that includes some of our valuable findings related to specific industries and wider trends. It is, in part, an opportunity to share our work with you and help you prepare for the year to come. If you’re interested in downloading the full report, follow the link below. If you’d like to talk to our team about how our research can inform and drive your 2022 initiatives, get in touch with our team today.