My Top 6 Emerging Trends Predictions

After reading the latest predictions from the latest Trendsspotting predictions, I decided to contribute and share my personal predictions on the Top 6 emerging technology trends that are impacting consumer behavior.

As you read these trends and think about opportunities for new product development and/or opportunities to create a new marketing position for your product, keep in my mind that the greatest innovation as well as the major threats comes from the convergence of multiple technologies coming together to address the main human needs from the 2X2 matrix.

Convergence of technologies and interoperability across different services and platforms become key drivers for mass adoption and consumerization of emerging technologies across all consumer demographic segments.

1) Community Advice and Growing importance of Peer Review: consumer review sites like Consumerist combined with built-in peer review features on online retail giants like Amazon and BestBuy.com have emphasized the peer review functionality to the point where it is becoming integral part of the purchasing process. The same trend applies to financial services as investment sites like Cakefinancial and Tradeking allow for community discussion, advice, and even monitoring the investment behavior of top-performing peers.

2) Increasingly opportunistic purchasing: emphasis on peer networks for retail purchases has created a sub-market of deal sites like Slickdeals.net and Fatwallet.com where consumers aggregate coupon and discount offers. This interest could become a key driver for the acceptance of mobile alerts with discount offers based on GPS/geolocation.

3) Experiential marketing and new realms of Customization: technological improvements are offering solutions for online clothing retailers’ greatest challenge: the inability for potential buyers to try things on. Sites like Victoria's Secret offer the ability to change the colors and styles of featured swimsuits on demand, and places like myshape.com take it one step further and allow users to input measurements to customize clothing to body shape and size. Technological improvements at physical locations, for example with RFID technology being able to detect the clothing being worn in a dressing room, allow for customized suggestions for alternative colors/styles, as well as potentially complementary items and accessories.

4) Retail giants becoming more "mobile friendly": more emphasis on mobile experience as mobile technology improves and as consumers become more comfortable using mobile devices for reviews, store locators, price comparisons, and even purchases. Target and Wal-Mart have both made customized mobile sites over the last 6 months (m.target.com and m.walmart.com respectively). Next on the horizon are mobile payments.

5) Proliferation of video advertising: companies have been exploring the use of embedded video into their websites and now they are adding YouTube to their multichannel marketing strategy. An interesting question to ask is how the proliferation of user-generated video will impact advertising agencies? People find user-generated videos more engaging that traditional ads.

6) Adoption of Web TV: with broadband and 3D capabilities TV is coming back and growing in importance. Web TV will impact media ad consumption. Giants like Google, Apple and AT&T are investing in new TV technology. Adoption of 3D could bring a new impulse to the advertising.

Also let’s keep an eye on video gaming, the gaming industry is experiencing an explosive growth and during these times of economic crisis, gaming and virtual reality offer to consumers a way to escape from their “real life” problems.

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