Today’s leading global brands are coming under threat from competitors in all directions. Disruption has become a new buzz word signaling the end to business and consumer behavior as we know it. New opportunities, stemming from changes in consumer behavior, are increasingly being met by fast-growing insurgent brands, or even local businesses with a closer connection to their customers.
The best disruptive strategies do not spring from thin air. In fact, the most astute companies watch a set of key signals in order to identify opportunities for renovation, innovation, and disruption. These industry leaders seek to understand what is changing, what is driving these changes, and how they can be proactive in the face of an evolving environment.
Euromonitor has identified five key macro drivers that shape tomorrow’s opportunities: shifting economic power, technology, population change, environmental shifts and pressures, and changing values. These drivers (and their foreseeable evolution) represent undeniable truths about the world in which we will live and operate tomorrow.
What will happen tomorrow?
Flowing from the key macro drivers are megatrends: consumer reactions to the changes in the world around them. They provide a framework to answer the question, “What is happening?,” and more importantly, “What will happen tomorrow?”. A megatrend is not a short-term fad, rather it represents a long-term, fundamental shift in behavior that defines consumer markets. These long-term signals provide insight into what consumers will want and need in the years ahead – from the macro level down to the micro. For example, as we see environmental pressures rapidly impacting availability of natural resources, consumers are choosing more sustainable footprints and demanding more ethical practices from companies. Identifying, analyzing and acting on megatrends is essential for success in consumer markets.
Megatrend analysis allows companies to build a long-term strategy that is proactive, rather than reactive, making sense of where they stand today, but also ensuring they have a plan to remain relevant moving forward. Leaders harness these megatrends to identify pain points and react by offering the right solution at the right time through renovation, innovation and disruption.
Euromonitor International’s global footprint, cross-industry view and internal expertise enables us to identify and track megatrends. Through our own megatrend analysis, we have identified a comprehensive list of the 20 most influential megatrends set to shape the world through 2030. From this list, we isolated the eight that will have the furthest-reaching impact on industries and consumers through 2030. These megatrends are:
- Experience More: People are prioritiszing experiences over things in the pursuit of happiness. Brands are leveraging the latest technology to be authentic, local and immersive to find a key differentiator from their competitors.
- Middle Class Retreat: Middle class consumers are an important segment, so it is vital for businesses to understand how the retreat of the middle class has brought around long-lasting changes in behavior, values and priorities of the consumers and what opportunities it could bring in the future.
- Premiumization: Consumers everywhere are spending more on the products and services that matter most. As volume growth flattens (or even declines) in ageing developed markets, premiumization will be a vital part of strategy for all brands.
- Ethical Living: Climate change and plastic pollution have grabbed the world’s attention, raising consumers’ ethical standards and driving demand for sustainable products. Meeting these standards is no longer optional for companies and brands.
- Shopping Reinvented: Economic and technological shifts have rewritten the shopper journey holistically. Today, shopping is a journey, the purpose of which is not just buying, but relationship-building.
- Connected Consumers: Consumers are becoming increasingly connected. While connectivity first spread through developed markets, the growth of affordable mobile technology has enabled consumers in the developing world to come online as well.
- Healthy Living: The adoption of a more holistic and preventative approach to wellness encompassing spiritual and mental balance—alongside physical health—means businesses can harness a wider spectrum of opportunities to help consumers achieve their health and wellbeing goals.
- Shifting Market Frontiers: Changes in the global economy, population, technology and the environment are all influencing global shifts, shaking up consumer markets and opening new niches for companies to expand. In a rapidly changing global environment, megatrend analysis is critical for companies seeking to drive sustainable growth and remain relevant as competition increases and new ideas disrupt entire industries.
To learn more about Euromonitor International’s megatrend framework and the eight most influential megatrends for tomorrow, download our free white paper “Megatrend Analysis: Putting the Consumer at the Heart of Business.”
In addition to our megatrend framework and content, Euromonitor International partners directly with clients to help to quantify the current and forecasted impact of megatrends, prioritize which megatrends and industry/category level trends will create the greatest opportunities for disruption, and ideate the next steps towards growth.
