The importance of trends

17/01/11

This is the first in a series of articles by our partner Cate Trotter from Insider Trends. Cate is an expert in analysing consumer trends and regularly runs workshops in the Centre.

Her next workshop on 24 January 2011 is all about the over 65s market.
Find out more and book

Cate is also our January success story of the month.
See her story

The importance of looking forward

Every year, approximately 240,000 new products are recorded on Mintel’s New Product Database. The vast majority (50-80%, depending on the source of research) will fail, largely because their creators have not significantly focused on approaching change. Trendspotting is a tool that helps organisations discover how industries, technology, consumer interests and more will change over coming years. As the secret to success is so often in the preparation, trendspotting offers businesses of all sizes a much better chance of success – whatever the future holds.

With this in mind, here are 3 tips to kick-start your trendspotting activity.

Be aware of key trends

Satrt your trendspotting work by familiarising yourself with the large-scale key trends that will affect the majority of industries and countries over coming years. These include the ageing of the global population, the ongoing technology and connectivity revolution and increasingly urgent environmental issues. By understanding these changes and what they mean for society overall, you can bring a much greater level of insight to decisions that directly affect your business.

Make your own trend map

Next, drill down into the trends that will specifically affect your business. Start by looking for evidence of larger-scale trends manifesting themselves in your industry: for instance, if you are a food manufacturer, you might notice that the key trend for more sustainable living is causing consumers to demand products with locally grown ingredients, and that savvy manufacturers are declaring the carbon footprint of products on their labels.

You can spot trends regardless of where you are or what you are doing. Consumer insight reports and Google Search are definitely useful sources, but chatting to friends, reading a magazine you’d never normally pick up or browsing through stores can uncover useful nuggets by chance. Group the things you discover on a mind map or a list with bullets and sub-bullets. As you group your individual findings, you will notice important patterns emerging.

Listen to the facts you don’t want to hear

The truth is that, sometimes, the future doesn’t hold what you are looking for. Your trendspotting work may indicate that your most profitable product may be made obsolete by cheaper, more efficient alternatives, or that you’re slowly going to lose the customers who are currently bankrolling your business. At this point, you can choose to disengage and blindly hope for the future to be different, or you can decide that acting now may be painful, but it’s better to do it now than when the bailiffs are banging on the door.