home : hartbeat : 2004-12-23

12.23.2004

“HartBeat” is The Hartman Group's FREE online newsletter, providing insight, analysis, information and strategy to give business leaders the knowledge and vision to build sustainable brands.

For more Hartman Group articles on TREND ANALYSIS, click here...

December 27, 2002 "Re-Thinking Our Traditional Notion of the Mass Marketplace: The Emergence of a New Paradigm"

December 20, 2002 "Re-Thinking Our Traditional Notion of the Mass Marketplace: What Happened to the Mass Market?"

April 12, 2002 "Seeing the Future; Seeing What's There" - Part II

April 5, 2002 "Seeing the Future; Seeing What's There" - Part I

June 6, 2000 Entering the Soul Age.

Wellness Lifestyle Insights:
Evolution of Consumer Trends in Health & Wellness

Sign up today to participate in this exciting new syndicated study to look at how wellness lifestyles have evolved over the past five years and explores where they are going in the future.

Click to browse through study details, deliverables and methodology.

Archives »
Click here for an archive of past HartBeat articles

digg
del.icio.us

reddit
twitter

friendfeed

StumbleUpon

Trends To Watch In 2005

As we enter 2005, people are leading messy lives as they try to reconcile seemingly contradictory elements of how they live, shop and buy. This aspirational goal of balance continues to grow in importance for consumers. Whether it's balancing the stressful rigors of work with high-quality downtime or balancing one's personal food indulgences with those of a more ascetic, health nature, the enlightened consumer relies on balance as a way of managing the realities of every day.

As part of this balancing act, many people are finding a need to live their lives more intensely and more authentically. This quest plays out in a number of ways, from the widely reported and renewed interest in religion and spirituality, to the stories about people changing their careers and giving up high-paying jobs to commit more time and energy to activities that are perceived to be of "true value."

How will this "true value" play out in the coming year? Here are The Hartman Group's 10 Trends to Watch in 2005:

1. Bringing Up Baby

Pet Pampering
Seeking objects on which to lavish attention, single and married but childless people are continuing to turn to their pets. But, Fido isn't getting mere table scraps as his "people food" anymore. "Mom" and "Dad" are often buying food for him at the same places they shop for themselves - and not in the pet aisle. Fido enjoys eating a BARF (Biologically Approved Raw Foods or Bones and Raw Foods) diet, vigorously munching away at raw meats and organic vegetables, that his owners spend quite a bit of time preparing every day. If Fido is lucky, he may get treats from the doggie bakery, or if he is a very good boy, he'll get a visit to the doggie day spa, for a trim and a massage.

Locations for Fido to get the royal treatment continue to pop up, and we're projecting faster growth in the number of specialized pet retail boutiques and pet service establishments in the near future.

2. Man in the Mirror

Reawakening of Male Grooming
Use of sophisticated, anti-aging hair and skin treatments is on the rise, especially among older men (35+) whose lifestyle persists in its orientation to youth. Regardless of marital status, modern men find themselves fighting their aging appearance in increasing numbers. The distension and fragmentation of the life cycle itself has broken the link between objective age and interest in one's appearance. Men no longer accept that getting older means leathery-skin, fat jowls and graying hair. Use of anti-aging skin creams, skin moisturizers and skin exfoliants all indicate an ongoing feminization of the collective male orientation to cosmetic appearance. The youthful, age-defying orientation of modern female consumers is spreading to their male peers.

Up-and-coming segment to watch in personal care: preteen boys.

3. A House Divided

Fragmentation of the Household Diet
Increasingly, we find that there is no longer such thing as a "family diet" in many American homes. The most divisive forces at play here are individualized food preferences that have forced primary grocery shoppers around the nation to develop complex shopping lists to satisfy divergent food preferences within their households. The most popular of these, divisive, individualized orientations to food are: 1) illness or symptom-based orientation to food (e.g., food allergy, heart disease, diabetes), 2) preventive health orientations to food (e.g., anti-cancer, anti-hormone, anti-additive, heart healthy foods) and 3) moralistic orientations to food (e.g., vegetarianism, environmentalism).

Marketing food to the family no longer works. Marketing to communities of food orientation does.

4. Bobos' Babies

Simplicity Goal Playing Out Among Youth
David Brooks describes Bobos as "the new upper class" in the America in his 2001 book, Bobos In Paradise. Bobos ("bourgeois bohemians") eschew vulgar consumption. You won't see them wearing gaudy fur coats, but they will get very spendy when purchasing Stickley furniture, granite countertops or the right kind of snowshoes for an expedition that may never happen. The Bohemian desire for simplicity and authenticity has combined with Bourgeoisie dollars and acquisitiveness to create the Bobo consumption pattern.

Younger people are latching on to at least part of this pattern, making authenticity a progressively more important driver in marketing toward them. Like their older counterparts, who often are their parents, younger Bobos want goods that bear information as to origins and legitimacy to ensure authenticity. They spend significant amounts of time figuring out what the genuine article is and reject marketing hype as a sign of the inauthentic.

We anticipate that the Bobo orientation will continue to gain influence in young adult markets.

5. Do Over

Fragmentation of the Life Cycle
With both careers and marriages subject to frequent annulment, more and more Americans have forsaken the confines of any traditional, human life cycle (birth, adolescence, obtaining work, marriage, child-rearing and retirement). Instead, both careers and marital partners are beginning to change at least once per lifetime. Consumers allow themselves the right to "start over" at any point in the course of life. The current trend is toward periodic self-reinvention, including the altering of one's social identities, peer groups, key lifestyle activities and, obviously, consumer preferences. These alterations of the self may or may not accompany changes in marital partner (but often do). Yesterday's six-figure-earning investment banker may get divorced, grant custody of her children to her husband, spend a year traveling the world and become today's re-married, "childless" nurse. This journey involves dipping back into adolescence and trying the life cycle all over again. It's sort of like re-winding a kitchen timer before it runs out.

Increasingly, this means that age-based marketing no longer works, except in obscure, targeted areas where cultural patterns are relatively stagnant.

6. I Do...Later

Distension of the Life Cycle Due to Delayed Marriage
While some consumers are experiencing multiple marriages in one lifetime, others are delaying marriage into their late 30s or simply not getting married at all. This results in distended life cycle journeys, in which adolescence gets prolonged in one's personal life regardless of one's career orientation or public veneer of adulthood. These perpetually single consumers tend to have graduate school educations, financial safety nets and prefer living alone to having roommates. They develop highly individualized consumer preferences in the absence of social forces that would otherwise make them compromise.

This growing consumer base dislikes mass marketing according to anachronistic cultural stereotypes, especially family-based marketing of at-home consumer products. They are the essence of lifestyle, niche consumers who detest convention and marketing to it.

7. Pills to Pins

Acupuncture as Mainstream Pain Management
As part of a long-term, general trend toward alternative healing, acupuncture - a traditional Chinese medical practice of inserting tiny needles into specific points in the body for pain relief - will continue to grow in popularity, becoming mainstream in the area of pain management. The primary reason for this is simply that it works; acupuncture has proven effective at treating chronic pain, such as muscle pain, headaches, and back and neck pain; and it can be effective in treating pain that does not respond consistently to other treatments.

Today there are increasing numbers of people living with chronic pain, and a growing reluctance to use drugs - particularly given recent drug recalls - for long-term pain management. Acupuncture lacks the side effects of drugs, and there is no issue of a tolerance build-up. Finally, health insurance coverage has improved, with approximately 50% of health care plans now including acupuncture.

For these reasons, we see acupuncture becoming an increasingly attractive pain management option in the mainstream healthcare market.

8. All for One...

Exercising Collective Buying Power
Consumers are increasingly exercising their "right to know" where their dollars are being channeled. This is not evangelistic, campaigning behavior, but mild sentiments expressed rather passively through small changes in consumption patterns. We find more conscious and consistent purchasing of products and services from companies that openly communicate where revenues are going. In fact, it rarely matters exactly where the money is going as long as consumers believe that it is going somewhere outside of corporate revenue streams.

These interests range from intimate community support to general charity donations to aligning with one's political leanings. For example, brands such as Newman's Own that donate heavily to charity have become household names and staples among moderate consumers who repeatedly express the virtues of the brand as "charity driven." Or consider more community-based efforts such as community-supported agriculture (CSA) networks. Once thought of as something for "fringe co-op shoppers," loyal mainstream grocery shoppers are now joining such networks in order to bypass mainstream channels and support local farmers. Even online sites like BuyBlue.org arebeing passed back and forth among social networks as consumers participatein easy ways to make informed buying decisions that coincide with theirvalues and beliefs.

9. The Gift of Giving

Gift Giving Emerging as a Driver
Gift shopping is one of the emerging cultural occasions with a marked ability to drive impulse purchasing, product experimentation and other spontaneous shopping behavior. Simply put, when consumers are engaged in shopping for others, both their price sensitivity and inhibitions tend to fall by the wayside, leading to "spur of the moment" shopping - for others as well as for themselves. Although, consumers once constrained gift giving to major holidays and cultural occasions, nowadays they (especially women) are increasingly using gift giving in spontaneous ways throughout their everyday lives (e.g., random gifts for the husband, special treats for the kids, treats for themselves). This tendency has led to ever more spontaneous shopping binges.

Playing into this pattern, an increasing number of retail channels have responded by bolstering their offerings in key categories such as candles, incense, greeting cards, specialty foods, home decor, personal care, etc.

10. Dinner at Eight

"Healthier" Options on the Menu
While obesity is an issue that many fast food restaurants are trying to address, the trend is well beyond fast food. More and more restaurants are offering so called "healthy options." Interestingly, many of the healthier options may not necessarily be all that healthy. For example, salads with high-calorie dressing, high-fat fresh sandwich options (with all the toppings), etc.

We're seeing this same makeover in vending machines and institutional menus such as school, university, hospital and even corporate cafeterias.

Carry-Out Gourmet Meals
In 2005 we'll see the continued growth and proliferation of home meal replacement companies offering prepared entrees that are fresh or chilled, NOT frozen, giving the perception of "fresher" or "newer." Consumers are turning to carry-out gourmet meals, some of which are now available in your local grocery store. Located in the perimeter of the store next of items like fresh dairy, these simple heat-and-serve meals offer convenience as well as the perception of being "healthy" and "wholesome."

Comment »