7 Product Trends for The Changes Ahead
Article
Why are today’s products still not keeping up?
What would have taken years of progress happened over a few months in the pandemic, setting expectations for catalytic change. Consumers saw their daily slowed, birthing new behaviors and expectations that are here to stay. However brands are struggling to fit the old narrative to the new ways, heightening once again the need for a larger strategic reset.
These 7 universal trends were born from a research assessment I led on emerging consumer trends, kickstarted early-pandemic. First focused on emerging tech in the skincare beauty industry, Rachel Etheredge (co-researcher) and I have cross-checked findings across industries since, expanding the trends lens for all product owners to consider.
First, understand that trends steer the direction of our experiences, and without your perception of it, there is no experience. This is why I write them.
Second, remember that many ‘indie’ product lines are also owned by the giants in the landscape. This is no taboo, but if I can’t relate (or even find) the face behind the product, I’m already directing myself to another experience.
Third, in an effort to define ‘beautiful’ experiences today, I empower you to use your voice in and out of your industry to share your perspective — without it we’d have already allowed someone else define our ways.
7 Product Trends
A Return to the Small Boutique Culture
Skintellectuals; the Rise of Self-Aware Knowledge
Demand (not Desire) for Transparency and Authenticity
Euphoric Buying, Still Alive Virtually
Kind to Me and Kind to the Planet
Self-Care has Become a lot Less Selfish
Exfoliating the norms away
We conducted our own investigation of behavioral interviews with both consumer and industry leaders in our network to reflect the societal changes hidden under the ‘metaverse’ buzz. Our POV hinges around raising awareness on the universal needs, wants and wishes that cross-generations are still craving in today’s rapidly evolving tech landscape.
Can your product achieve an authentic balance in-between?
1. A Return to the Small Boutique Culture
Farewell to mass sales, stereotyping and common-shelf… the shift to hyper-personalization depends on the detail your brand has invested so far in both tech infrastructure and marketing strategy transformations.
It is no longer an arduous feat of the imagination to visualize a digitally-enabled small boutique shopping experience, both in its 3-dimensional twin replica or fantastical substitute. Consumers enjoy targeted newness, at the same time they pick you for your brand consistency. Look past new launches to trusted classics, revisiting old favorites from heritage brands, and honing down the cabinet to contain a new definition of “essentials.” If I can’t get my usual order of orange fizz from my local-made beverage parlor, I might stop going there altogether.
Achieving hyper-personalization is a fine balance, in all its data gathering consumers are permission-fatigued and attention spans are shorter than ever. “How can you curate for me without making me feel like you’re invading my privacy?” We all know we’re being watched. Every permission given, access granted (even if declined), word said, consumers are still shown an ad for it, an algorithm parsed through it. However privacy and the desire for privacy are often confused… their difference is where the opportunity lies. One thing’s for sure, privacy doesn’t exit in a vacuum, it has dependencies. Consumers just need a really good reason to share their location, face, voice, etc. and if that withdraws more energy than it feeds, you might as well have designed an “opt-out” button.
2. Skintellectuals; the Rise of Self-Aware Knowledge
May ‘skin’ here denote the cover on a book, the face on a flesh, or any 3-dimensional texture a product bears (and wears) face.
With the additional time spent cocooning, new informed habits have been engrained. Consumers know how it’s made. They’ve had enough time to cross-compare and do a brief analysis to determine the right product for them. The rise of the do-everything-yourself (DEY) culture has put pressure on consumers to take personal control of what comes in contact with all layers of their energetic field, from the inner-most (heart) to the widest aura, across the mental, spiritual and physical layers.
Realistic 3D visualization brings a more visceral ‘realness’ to how consumers react to appearances, coinciding with the increased time spent gazing at a screen, a window’s reflection or one another. They understand they are the product just as much as the bottle, cream or appliance is.
Noting here that ‘real’ doesn’t mean perfect, does your product have styles that satisfy the expectations of varied audiences? Authenticity is a thin see-through veil, and the consumer’s call to action relies on how your messaging addresses their changes in behavior, motives and triggers — the reactions that go beyond looks and appearances.
3. Demand (not Desire) for Transparency and Authenticity
The rise of self-driven knowledge is a blessing of awareness, one that goes against the history of engrained ‘triggering’ consumers into a purchase. The reality is consumers have done their homework, they know their triggers, attachments and while they are not perfect to stand by them each time, they are much more careful today where they lay their trust and display loyalty purchases. “Trust” for young consumers is no longer coming from traditional brand pages, instead social and mobile focused platforms like TikTok are dominating.
Non-traditional platforms like TikTok continue to grow communities against misleading information, and while that still exists everywhere, the same applies as when we used to say “don’t trust everything you read on the internet,” in this case “everything you watch.” It is much easier however to determine when someone is inauthentic via video than hiding behind words (including AI-generated content). This is where imperfection holds a shining spot, a real reflection of humanity.
Brands need to balance the asks from their most niche audiences and their biggest value pools. You can’t be friends with everyone, focus instead on delivering personalized experiences with relevant messages to those who do care. That is how real influence happens, one where your brand’s ethos aligns with their own beliefs and choices, and vice versa.
Should you choose to show grounded truth, you might see consumers not only spend their money on you, they’ll also do the advertising for free. If they do so, pay them for being loyal brand advocates, and keep in mind that the word ‘sponsored’ may trigger an opposite allergic reaction.
4. Euphoric Buying, Still Alive Virtually
The buying euphoria behavior is simply one that helps us feel alive. The thought today is “might as well spend it on something that ACTUALLY will.”
Besides, we live an age where shoppers actually do try on products virtually, from browsing simple digital pages of a book, to placing a TV’s digital twin on their stand, to testing sunglasses on their face. While some of these are more progressive examples of interactivity (AR/VR, face recognition, virtual concierge, digital unpacking, etc.), consumers are quite accustomed to ‘Design for Distancing;’ by now it’s an expectation, not a gap.
The need for an engaging shopping experience, one where ‘connection’ is a building block not an outcome, is where you’ll “find my money circulating.”
5. Kind to Me and Kind to the Planet
Less is more, which means quality matters even more. “If I don’t understand the letters on the back of your bottle, goodbye.” And yes, consumers would much rather something that expires; it makes for a believable shelf-life embedded from the start.
Today’s cross-generations of shopping behavior comes with murky drops of awakened concern, one where senses are more heightened to the parlous ecological landscape.
‘Natural ingredients,’ including their packaging, are only truly if their waste can be used to feed the planet back. It’s less about the mechanics of recycling, it’s more about the intention being ingested and digested.
Can a product’s second life still include nourishment? Maybe. Remembering, the food you and the planet absorb is not just limited to the traditional tasting sense; food is also a message to read, a song to sing, a video to play, an activity to participate in (or not to). Food feeds the psyche, not just the body. Kind on all effects.
There is no industry-recognized definition for ‘clean’ and while the skincare beauty industry specifically has seen the term ‘clean-clinical’ (or ‘cleanical’) surface, it is a mixed bag of opinions and reviews on lab-made synthetic ingredients (claimed as safe as their natural counterparts, and possibly more sustainable to produce than sourcing from the environment). To question that claim defeats the point, neither is this a repository of brand products that claim well… just give your consumer a choice. This is a great place to implement circular feedback with your consumer.
6. Self-Care has Become a lot Less Selfish
As societies reach more balanced options for remote-enabled work, a greater emphasis has been placed on the everyday rituals consumers carry in and out of their homes, providing for the much-needed experiential ‘cocooning’ escape for deeper stress-relief, well-being and overall health. To bare true face is a liberating behavior that sticks — on and off the screen.
“We all know we still need to shop to meet our human needs and desires, so if your product is not helping my mind and heart see and feel the ‘care for me’ behind your profit, you are not helping me lessen the inner guilt I feel purchasing from your label.”
Consumers are feeding themselves that ‘care’ in more ways than just a one-time transaction; may that be an ability to connect with a health coach after a supplement purchase, or incentivized returns for sustainable product sourcing. More than ever before, care is translated as safety. Does the shoe fit? It’s not about walking a mile in someone else’s shoes, it’s about making sure consumers can travel the same road just as safely, in flip-flops.
7. Exfoliating the norms away
Norms start with gender, and go way beyond. Younger generations are redefining what ‘masculine’ products mean, with less desire for “manly rough-rugged” stereotypes and a greater focus on health and wellbeing rituals to accept ‘caring’ about their image.
Skincare, shoefit, or shavingblade, we all have hair that grows somewhere.
Neutral takes the spotlight, with gen-Z and millennials displaying greater awareness than previous generations around balancing their inner masculines and feminines — dualistic traits that all humans hold within despite their chosen gender label. Even more so, female-identifying consumers do allocate time to browse through cross-gender categories, making them more likely to click through more gender-neutral products that value the trends above (clean, safe, low-ingredient count, etc.), including a longer shelf-life and lower costs.
Historically, marketing for men shows cosmic worlds of difference from marketing for women; still is the unfortunate case for many brands today. The difference is gender fluidity presents a wider need to balance the stereotypical colors, shelving away the obsolete strategy that says men are less attracted to the “fancy” and women are not into “black & white.”
And with that, cheers to change!
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Reach out for questions, comments, requests.
Luciana Jaalouk: Lead Researcher and Author, Rachel Etheredge: Co-Researcher, Rori Duboff: Reviewer (interim)
Read also available on Medium
