According to Pernille Kok-Jensen, Trend Director at Dutch qualitative research agency Mare, there’s “no such thing as an online retailer or offline retailer anymore – everyone should be both.”
Consumers of today and even more so in the future will no longer see online retail as a convenience, but rather as an expectation. Due to the increasingly on-demand lifestyle and expectations of consumers to ‘have it all now’, retailers must be willing to adapt to the speed of products available to consumers as well as how fast it will be delivered.
Customers expect to receive ‘VID treatment’. VID stands for ‘very important data’, meaning that companies should be careful about the data they collect from customers and many customers have become suspicious of the content they come across and strive to filter the most authentic content.
For the millennial generation, giving back to society or the environment gives them status, which remains a primal need for humans as a society. Also, concept stores are a growing trend – you go in for a new pair of pants, but you leave with a new haircut – it is the process of discovering something new you did not know you needed.
Consumers are also less concerned with the result of a project or production and more concerned with the process – a brand being open and authentic about problems, failures and imperfections in processes is one that will receive a lot of positive attention from consumers.
One of the more straightforward trends is allowing the consumer to use their other senses, not just staring a screen. A perfect example of this was done by the brand, COS, which put sound to the way that its’ clothing sounds while being worn. There is plenty of room for experimentation – a raw tone that goes beyond everything we know. Japanese clothing brand Buyma featured naked dancers performing a piece from Swan Lake while drones strategically covered their intimate parts. All this with the final message: ‘buy clothes’
Time to think outside of the box people!