Women are the biggest market on earth but they are largely ignored – because most of the world is run by men. Nevertheless, we’ve already got women only floors in hotels, women only nightclubs, women only gyms and women only department stores. Given that women buy 65% of cars and make 81% of financial decisions, how long before we see women only garages and women only banks?
Radio Frequency Identification Devices (RFIDs) are essentially glorified barcodes – tiny microchips with an antenna attached which retailers can use remotely to manage inventory and stop theft. They can also be used to trigger promotional messages when you pick up a product in store (like in the Prada store in New York). In the future RFID readers could scan your bags as you leave a store and automatically take the money from a suitably enabled mobile phone (or a tiny chip located in your forearm or teeth) which is linked to your bank or credit card. RFIDs have a myriad of other uses too, such as remote monitoring (healthcare) and baggage tracking (transport). In Japan a school even used RFID readers to tell parents that their children have arrived safely at school. Expect a major surge in RFID adoption in 2007+.
“24-hour banking, who’s got time for that?” Like most good jokes this one, from US comedian Steve Wright, is close to the truth. People are leading increasingly hectic lives. Back in 1900 people slept for 9.0 hours every night. Now it’s just 6.9 hours. This is driving trends like drive-by dining, mobile banking and it’s also killing giant malls, which take too much time to shop. Equally, people are getting increasingly bored with the same brands in the same places, which in turn is driving ‘pop-up’ retail and ‘limited time only’ products and offers. Also links with the ‘Zara effect’.
In the UK consumer expenditure on premium foods is predicted to increase by 27% between 2003 and 2008 (datamonitor). A good example is the gourmet and boutique chocolate trend, but you can find premium expressions of even the most mundane everyday food items.
Slow food might be flavour of the month for the fortunate few, but for the rest of us it’s business as usual – only faster. Think of micro-waves mums, hectic households, fast casual, portability and drive-by dining (eg McDonald’s ‘McGriddle’ sandwiches). Indeed, if they can’t eat it fast, consumers won’t swallow it. As someone once said, the future will be just like present, only faster and more expensive.
In the future all information (content) will be free. Users will only pay for functionality (e.g. search) or personalization. We will see more newspapers becoming free to read (e.g. Metro) or free to place ads (e.g. Loot) although a substantial proportion of ad revenue will move online where it will be customized. Paradoxically, we will also see more high end media charging readers for pure information (ad free content).
If you’re reading this there’s not much point in talking about the blogging phenomenon apart from to say that they can boost your business or destroy it almost overnight. In the last few years no less than 8 million blogs have been created and one survey estimates the number of blogs currently being created to be about one every 3 seconds. Admittedly most of these blogs seem to be written by sixteen year old girls talking about Britney Spears but there’s also a serious side – tens of millions of people potentially talking about bad experiences with your product (or good experiences). One micro-pundit has even suggested that companies should employ someone whose job it is to put the word ‘sucks’ after their brand name and enter it into google to see what people are saying. The best known example of how a swarm of bloggers can ruin your company is Kryptonite bike locks. In the space of just 10 days a posting on a blog saying that the company’s product was defective was spread virally and seen by 1.8 million people. The result was a crippled reputation together with a forced product exchange that cost the company US $10m. On another occasion bloggers claimed the scalp of a CNN executive who allegedly claimed that the US was targeting journalists in Iraq. These examples are interesting but the bigger picture is fascinating – people are getting fed up with what’s on offer from the mainstream media so they’re creating their own. Traditional media, and ‘expert sources’, will thus lose their monopoly on content as ordinary individuals go online to express their own news and opinions. We could therefore see vast numbers of people checking blogs before buying anything or going anywhere (they already do). What are the consequences of this for traditional media, retailers and manufacturers?
It looks increasingly likely that we will be able to model biological systems and processes using computers and then use computerised models and simulations to design and test new drugs. It currently costs around US $900 million and fifteen years to design and launch a new drug, so the cost savings could be significant. Some observers put potential savings at around US $200 and three years. How far are we away from this? Most experts say at least 10-15 years given that we still don’t know how many physiological processes work.
Once upon a time people used credit cards for big purchases like holidays. Not any more. Now you can buy a 99cent song on i-Tunes with your credit card or charge your hamburger at McDonald’s to your plastic. In 2004 the average credit card transaction in the US was $67.81. Back in 1999 it was $72.83. Add to this the possibilities created by contactless payment, stored value cards and pre-pay and you have a recipe for radical change in the financial services sector.
Look out, the Chinese are coming. Whereas it took 30 years for Japan to reach 17 million outbound trips, China has reached this figure in just 5 years. According to the Pacific Asia Travel Association (PATA), the Chinese took roughly 800 million internal trips during 2003. That’s about the same number taken by the rest of the planet in 2003. So imagine what would happen if even a small proportion of this number decided to travel abroad? — You’d have to ration access to tourist sites and even whole countries. Similarly, India is another country with a rapidly emerging middle class with money to spend on travel. In 2003 four and a half million Indians travelled abroad which caused the country to lose millions in foreign currency due to the imbalance between inbound and outbound tourists.