Consumer behaviour: Changing trends

 

Market turbulence and consumers’ ever-changing needs are forcing marketers to ‘speed up’. Consumers are focused on reducing personal debt, rather than buying new goods. Accountants are in charge of th ...

In the post-credit-crisis world, consumers are wary of bank brands’ claims, and trust the recommendations of peers far more than corporate messages. Advocacy as a measure was widely ignored by financi ...

The economic crisis has transformed the way consumers view their finances. The ‘spend now, pay later’ culture has been replaced with one in which consumers are focused on saving money and paying off t ...

The paper discusses the findings of research in three countries (US, UK and China) into the changes now occurring in people's values, which underpin their attitudes to consumption and brands. The prin

In the recession people are turning to cheaper products, and often finding that they are as good as, or even better than, the more expensive versions (example: Aldi and Lidl, the discount stores). Suc

This article discusses the key findings from the latest European Entertainment Futures report from the Future Foundation research consortium, which explores the trends impacting on European consumers' ...

This article discusses the pressing need for change among marketers, media companies and advertisers. It is based on a presentation given by Christopher Vollmer, of Booz & Co., at the Association of N ...

Traditionally, marketing focuses on individual needs and motivations. This article, however argues that humans are social animals, and learn and adapt by copying others. This copying can be essentiall

This paper deals with collective consumer resistance - that is, organised forms of reaction against the market. In detail, it describes BookCrossing (BC) as an alternative mode of book exchange. This ...

Over time, as brands and outlets have increased, companies have learned the importance of customer satisfaction, product and service quality, and timely and cost-efficient production. But this made ac ...

After years of benefiting from emerging markets and cheap products through cheap foreign labor, most Western countries are now facing the negative effects of globalization: jobs keep wandering around ...

What will society look like in 2015 and what can a product and service provider do now to prepare for such an unknown place? This paper seeks to address these challenges, in order to develop a view of ...

For the first time in human history, more people live in cities than live in the countryside. The 'Megacity' is the very embodiment of the new form of teeming metropolis, with a varied mixture of oppo ...

There has been a seismic shift in how consumers gain access to and leverage information. While the digital impact has been felt across many sectors, the shift has had a particularly profound impact on ...

In this article, WARC Online's James Aitchison and Geoffrey Precout discuss the main findings of the first day of the ESOMAR Congress 2008, held in Montreal. The areas considered include the impact of ...

In this article, James Murdoch, of News Corp and BSkyB, argues that marketers are operating in a fragmented media world on the one hand, and in increasingly interconnected societies on the other. In ...

In this article, WARC Online's US Editor, Geoffrey Precourt, discusses the major insights from the ESOMAR 2008 Automotive conference. These include the fact that different vehicles can reflect the per ...

A large number of people now live in 'megacities' - that is, cities with 10 million+ inhabitants (there are now 29 of these). This article reports on a study of the attitudes of people living in megac ...

This article summarises the book 'Microtrends: surprising tales of the way we live today', by Mark J. Penn and E. Kinney Zalesne (Penguin, 2008). The key premise is that modern societies are no longer ...

This article summarises the book 'Groundswell: winning in a world transformed by social technologies', by Charlene Li and Josh Bernoff (Harvard Business School Press, 2008). The book's central premise ...

In this article, Carlos Grande, of WARC Online, reviews Microtrends: surprising tales of the way we live today, by Mark J. Penn and E. Kinney Zalesne. As well as offering some background information r ...

This article considers current cultural trends, and argues that the world needs creativity and imagination if humans are to survive. In recent years technology has outrun our ability to adapt, forcing ...

This article reports on an annual survey (telephone and face-to-face) of 26,000 US consumers about categories and brands they use. For the first time in 11 years, 97% of the categories tracked have sh ...

Marketing is inevitably linked with levels of consumption, an unsurprising outcome given that the vast percentage of communications to date have been directed at increasing volume, share, profit and c ...

This paper explores how to research the lives of consumers in China using a mixture of ethnographic and online research techniques. An analysis of how young people in the country's behave online found ...

Content explosion. Multi-tasking. Spoilt for choice. These are the sorts of terms that sum up life for young people today. This paper seeks to gain a more detailed insight into the lives of this age g ...

It is a truism of market research that the sociocultural identity of the consumer is carrying more and more weight in the selection of products, brands or services. This rule applies particularly to m ...

The symbiosis of developers (business), government agencies, and consumer desires is entering a new era in the US market, bringing the consumer lifestyle to places it has never been, though possible o ...

Price comparison, category switching and 'social' online shopping could all increase as consumers reappraise their behaviour and choices in the downturn, while environmental concerns may become of les ...

Research can measure the effectiveness of women's empowerment initiatives in the Muslim world economies. It has a role to play in quantifying international program assumptions about Muslim women's des ...