Trendwatching Spots 12 Mini Trends for September

Trendwatching has recently spotted 12 mini trends of global consumers for business to track and inspire profitable innovations, as a result of global hyper-consumption and creative destruction. The mini-trends are accompanied by examples from Dubai, France, South Africa, the US, Brazil, the Netherlands, Indonesia, Kenya, China, Spain, Colombia, Japan and many more.

1.TECH DOMESTICS

Tech Domestics is about delivering better services to consumers using new technologies. For example, smart phone alarm clocks applications such as Winter Wake Up and Uniqlo Wake Up have been connecting with real time weather forecasts to enhance consumers’ wake up experience.

2.CUSTOWNERS

CUSTOWNERS are consumers who move from passively consuming a product towards actually funding/investing, if not owning a stake, in the brands they buy from. However, these increasingly business-savvy audiences are often looking for both a financial and an emotional return, and therefore only brands that are open, friendly, honest, trusted, transparent, and somewhat ‘human’ will find themselves able to attract enthusiastic CUSTOWNERS.

3.ONE TOUCH WONDER

This mini trend is about bring simplicity and convenience of ordering or paying with a single touch, swipe, tap or button press to consumers. The question brands need to answer: is what you offer integral or valuable enough to your customers to award ONE TOUCH WONDER status to?

4.TEENPRENEURS

For many, entrepreneurialism is a new status symbol, with tech entrepreneurialism at the top of the pyramid. Young people especially are hungrily going after entrepreneurial opportunities, as they're empowered by (and indeed, more proficient in) the online technologies that make it possible to both create and grow a business with little investment. In the years to come, expect plenty of budding teenage tycoons to take on traditional, serious, 'proper' yet often-out-of-touch businesses.。

5.BRANDED GOVERNMENT

Governments in the 'developed' world are (running) out of money, while in many 'emerging' nations and cities, governments can't keep up with the breakneck demand for their services. All this creates huge opportunities for brands that offer more than just products and services for sale.

6.NANNY APPS & 24/7 FEEDBACK

Online, there's no shortage of useful information and good advice. Indeed, there are few areas left where consumers are genuinely in the dark about what they should be doing. Of course, actually doing it is another thing entirely. Which is why consumers will welcome products, apps or services that (constantly) monitor, remind, prod and even force them to behave and perform 'better'.

7.JUICE JITTERS

In a world that is completely dependent on being connected, with ever-more powerful and exciting devices, it's now actually extended battery life and charging options that are the holy grail for anyone addicted to an online lifestyle.

8.SAFETY NET

The benefits to both accessing and contributing to the wealth of information appear to have no end. Indeed, far from simply making life more efficient and enjoyable, there are now a whole host of products, services and (especially) apps, that help keep people safe, right when they might need it most.们的安全。

9.TASKSUMERS

With more and more ways for consumers to make money, we're now seeing rapid growth of what we've dubbed TASKSUMERS: consumers who make money from carrying out small tasks, for other individuals or corporations. Amazon’s Mechanical Turks, and ShortTask already lead the way. PleaseBringMe is a website from Turkey, which enables users to request that incoming tourists bring hard-to-find items from outside their own country in return for a reward.。

10.SUPER-ECO

The quest for sustainable consumption continues, but with many consumers ever more skeptical of half-hearted eco-initiatives, or indeed seeking truly compelling eco-stories, eco-producers will have to step up a gear, and embrace SUPER-ECO, where every aspect of the product or service is unquestionably and utterly sustainable.可持续的。

11.REAL WORLD LIKING

Consumers’ desire to broadcast their lives on social media is truly unabated, and ‘liking’ things is an integral part of that. This mini trend is about helping consumers bridge the offline physical world with online liking.

12.ARTIFICIAL SCARCITY

If individualism is the new religion, then uniqueness is its goddess. Consumers stand out by doing, visiting, owning, wearing, eating, driving, enjoying those products and services that (most) others don't. Yet, with mass prosperity and mass access, that's becoming an ever-harder feat to achieve. So expect the ARTIFICIAL SCARCITY trend (even more products, services and experiences that take scarcity to a carefully crafted extreme), to continue to make waves for quite a while to come.