Trends 2013The Future Foundation

For more information please contact:Karen Canty

Email: karenc@futurefoundation.netDirect number: +44 (0) 20 3008 6107

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2013 : 10 trends to watch

Trends 2013: Key trends and narratives

Cheap Treats

New Cult of The Home

Ish!

Society of Sobriety

Native Marketing

The Hyper Individual

Gen Y4G

De-Globalisation

Graphene Nation

Pension Half-Board

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CHEAP TREATS

Trends 2013: Key trends and narratives

Cheap Treats references the escapist consumer’s response to austerity in interaction with the ability of inexpensive products to redefine themselves as agents of reprieve and indulgence.

While many of us might delay spend on luxury items and major purchases, not all quality-rich indulgences are rendered unattainable in the current sober economic climate. Pleasure can be found and legitimated in the smallest of things.

Source: nVision Research | Base: 1,000–5,000 online respondents aged 16+, GB, 2012

Focus for 2013 : The demand for Cheap Treats will shape consumer shopper habits as spending power remains weak - we expect there will be more trading across and within categories rather than mere trading down. The creative re-positioning of products once seemingly unexceptional will stimulate innovation and offer consumers ever more opportunities to find day-to-day moments of fun and release from the burden of austere living.

Key facts : 6 in 10 agree “It's really important that I can treat myself when I want”. 40+% are buying cheaper groceries as a result of the downturn.

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NEW CULT OF THE HOME

Trends 2013: Key trends and narratives

The New Cult of the Home remains one of the UK’s most epoch-defining trends. The home continues to hold deep cultural, social and psychological meaning for the UK consumer : at once an investment, leisure venue, familial cocoon, network hub, a refuge from a fraught labour market. Austerity reinforces the trend, as doing things at home remains cheaper than going to the cinema, dining in restaurants, drinking in bars.

Source: nVision Research | Base: 1,000–5,000 online respondents aged 16+, GB, 2012 / Council of Mortgage Lenders 2012

Focus for 2013 : Economic realities will seriously energise the New Cult of the Home in many respects. The numbers of young people unable or unwilling to leave the family home at a once conventional point is a significant social phenomenon now; teenage bedrooms are morphing into adult pods. Meanwhile, the family becomes an ever more vital source of financial solidarity as pensions weaken and tertiary education stays expensive.

Key facts : Today a first-time buyer can be asked for an advance 3.2 times their income. Over 80% of ABs agree it is important they own their own home, cf 55% of DEs.

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ISH!

Trends 2013: Key trends and narratives

In Ish! we focus on evolutions in human relationships - identifying that these days the lasting success of any intimate union is much more performance-conditional.

The trend explores the commercial analogies of all this : how consumers are becoming ever more promiscuous in an age where there are fewer pressures / obligations on us to stay with brands which are no longer giving satisfaction or with contracts that last forever.

Source: nVision Research | Base: 1,000–5,000 online respondents aged 16+, GB, 2012

Focus for 2013 : At heart, Ish! is a debate about the nature of contract, subscription and tariff in modern UK - a debate which will intensify in 2013 and beyond. Just what will it actually mean for a brand to have a “relationship” with a customer? Ish! invites all consumers to ask : just what is my loyalty to my mobile supplier/insurance company/utility actually bringing me and should I start to de-clutter my lifestyle and stay free of commercial entanglements?

Key facts : 3 in 10 claim to regularly switch between different financial products and providers. 77% want to be switched automatically to the cheapest utility tariff.

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SOCIETY OF SOBRIETY

Trends 2013: Key trends and narratives

Under the Society of Sobriety trend we examine the creeping preference for moderate living among modern consumer tribes.

In the face of so much health information, advice and regulation, can it be that consumers are slowly self-disciplining against excessive indulgence and bad fun? Is sin-free living gaining a cultural vibe? A number of related trends converge to make it so.

Source: nVision Research | Base: 1,000–5,000 online respondents aged 16+, GB, 2012

Focus for 2013 : Austerity on its own stimulates sober lifestyles as consumers curb frivolous spend. At the same time, we do not expect the momentum behind the promotion of healthier lifestyles from Government to dissipate. It is these days barely realistic to claim that one does not know how many calories are in a hamburger or how may alcohol units spell binge. Excess is just not funny any more, not attractive, not conducive to social success.

Key facts : The banning of cigarette displays in all shops is to be complete by 2013. A majority of people now agree it is responsible to limit Xmas gifts for kids.

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NATIVE MARKETING

Trends 2013: Key trends and narratives

Native Marketing examines how brands are making psychologically rich journeys for/with their customers, narrating their presence into the heart of their social spaces.

Brands become lifestyle accessories, engaging us with intelligent content and creative distraction. In this world, there is no vulgar discussion about price and value-for-money; the brand is no longer a product in any 20th century sense.

Source: nVision Research | Base: 1,000–5,000 online respondents aged 16+, GB, 2012

Focus for 2013 : The release of 4G networks across all major mobile networks in 2013 will widen consumers’ access to high-level content on-the-go, leaving the platform for Native Marketing wider and more accessible. One can expect too more brands setting out to DJ culturally valuable experiences for all stakeholders - even those who are not (or not yet) actual consumers of the branded product.

Key facts : Coca-Cola’s Facebook page has over 53 million likes. As 2012 closes, ca 6 in 10 16-24s in GB follow a brand on a social network.

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THE HYPER INDIVIDUAL

Trends 2013: Key trends and narratives

The Hyper Individual is in control. Armed with efficient, intelligent data-monitoring services, 4G internet access and programmed algorithms, there is a modern consumer driven to run her life ever more purposefully and with relentlessly upgraded professionalism.

We reference here the New Maximising : a super-trend by which all tools of self-reliance and household management are sharpened in every direction.

Source: nVision Research | Base: 1,000–5,000 online respondents aged 16+, GB, 2012

Focus for 2013 : Saving money is a powerful agent for this story (in a time when inflation in household bills is specially acute). Meanwhile, consumer empowerment naturally intensifies as so much of living becomes efficient and automated under the wave of ever more portable/ versatile net-enabled products. Consumption, for some, starts to resemble an extreme sport.

Key facts : 4 in 10 GB consumers check and compare prices on a weekly basis. Hukkster notifies its users when garments they want to purchase fall in price.

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GENERATION Y4G

Trends 2013: Key trends and narratives

Gen Y4G explains the shift to an ever more entrepreneurial, do-not-wait-for-nice-things-to-happen lifestyle among the under-30s.

An extremely techno-literate tribe, Gen Y4G are tackling the unique challenges of their times - more living-at-home, a still vexed entry into career markets, much delayed household formation and home ownership, debt accumulation, pressured incomes - with an equally unique tool-kit.

Source: nVision Research | Base: 1,000–5,000 online respondents aged 16+, GB, 2012

Focus for 2013 : 2013 will further accelerate change to Gen Y lifestyles and the under-30s will be particularly spurred to utilise digital resources, personal initiative and peer- and family-networks to win in an austere climate. The realisation that the State is a poor provider will impel those that have them to exploit their degree-level skills to de-victimise their existence and to apply business model thinking to how they run their lifestyles and their futures.

Key facts : 6 in 10 Gen Ys agree they are prepared to take risks to get what they want in life. 70% of over-30s say Gen Y faces more financial challenges than previous ones.

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DE-GLOBALISATION

Trends 2013: Key trends and narratives

Discontent with the UK’s membership of the EU is such that a tabula rasa referendum is proposed by some. Even moderate voices express concern over the scale of foreign ownership of much loved UK brands and the encroachment of corporate acquisition from overseas.

Consumers continue to be moved to Buy British/Scottish/Welsh as a device for protecting local regional development and endorsing superior indigenous quality.

Source: nVision Research | Base: 1,000–5,000 online respondents aged 16+, GB, 2012 / Eurobarometer 2012

Focus for 2013 : As discussions about fiscal and banking union swell in mainland EU, so the UK - feeling relatively remote from the Eurozone Crisis - falls under pressure to declare its long term membership objectives. This will colour public debate in the UK, reinforcing a sense of national autarky and inviting a re-definition of our relationships with and responsibilities towards the rest of the world. Will Buy British flourish beyond recession? Accordingly, yes.

Key facts : Only around 20% of Britons have a positive image of the EU. Around 50% agree they are keener now to buy locally produced goods.

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GRAPHENE NATION

Trends 2013: Key trends and narratives

Objects and the processes which create them are almost completely unstable now.

The evolution captured by the term 3D Printing is paving new forms of product personalisation and customisation, while providing fresh invitations to individual creativity. Meanwhile, the revolutionary nano-chemistry of graphene promises radical improvements to touch screens and liquid crystal displays - as well as making everything bendable/foldable.

Source: nVision Research | Base: 1,000–5,000 online respondents aged 16+, GB, 2012

Focus for 2013 : So far, much of this story has been confined to geekish magazines and futurology’s wider shores. But it will be increasingly vital to see Graphene Nation as a social trend as much as a technological dream. This is a story about consumers effectively designing and using their own products and indeed their own brands in ways which both stretch their personal creativity and re-order relationships with companies.

Key facts : 70% of under-24s agree that it is important to be able to express personal creativity. The developers of graphene are Nobel Prize winners.

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PENSION HALF-BOARD

Trends 2013: Key trends and narratives

As the pension-age population rises, so the stock of pension finance declines : a function of rigour in state spending, dramatic reductions in final corporate schemes, permanently weakened annuities…

Thus (as is increasingly understood) many will be a) working beyond 70 b) depleting legacy assets c) drawing finance from younger family members. Society becomes ageless in new, dramatic ways.

Source: nVision Research | Base: 1,000–5,000 online respondents aged 16+, GB, 2012 / ONS

Focus for 2013 : In 2013, there will be topical debate about the special costs of living (eg utility bills, withdrawal of allowances) for those on fixed incomes. HMG’s state pension reforms (via the Hutton Report) will further stimulate the realisation that only dedicated lifelong saving will protect late-age living standards. Slow-burn so far, the issue is now explosive as those in their 20s are educated to save for their 70s while the whole notion of retirement dies.

Key facts : 1.4 million people are still in the labour market beyond state pension age. A majority now expect to work longer to fund old age.