Environmental Factors and the Future Consumer
I’m part way through a small research piece for an FMCG company that is interested in exploring the future consumer and what kind of environmental factors might influence their purchasing decisions. Interestingly enough toward the end of last year I had three FMCG firms approach me about a similar challenge, so ‘Future Consumers’ must be ‘flavour of the month’ (pun intended). When talking consumers, an Environmental Factor refers to the things that influence the consumer, especially at point of sale and delving into some of the emerging developments in this space is delightfully interesting.
Without giving too much away before I hand my report to my client, there’s a very distinct sense of change in the food sector that suggests a myriad of possibilities in the products space. There’s examples of how data is being used to engage with customers; examples of product stewardship; examples of functionality and more. But perhaps the biggest challenge is what appears to be a shift in price sensitivity over which OTHER factors are being layered. I won’t say much specific here but offer an example from a different but aligned sector: petroleum.
It appears that over the past 12 months, Petroleum has crossed the ‘must have threshold’. In otherwords, regardless of current price, people were going to fill their tanks. But recent Environmental Scanning has identified that the threshold has snapped. Simply put, a confluence of factors (cost per litre, down-sizing by companies leading to job losses, increased acceptability of genuine job flexibility location options and new technology among others) now suggests that consumers are actively choosing to reduce their need for fuel. The cost has become overladen with other factors that heighten consumer sensitivity to it. Environmental Factors are shifting consumer behaviour away from the incumbent.
This has a whole array of other impacts connected to it – less consumption increases prices charged increases less consumption. Higher prices lead to fewer car sales = slump in imports and on it goes.
Building the systems map for my FMCG client is showing some glaring change over the next five to ten years that will potentially capture many current brands by surprise. In summary, the Environmental Factors that influence consumer behaviour appear to be evolving. Opportunities and Risk abound!
Columbia University’s Earth Institute have just made publicly available their World Happiness Report, joining the expanding list of happiness reports emerging ultimately from Bhutan’s Happiness Index. There’s some interesting results in this one and some that you might expect were more obvious, like the idea that at a certain point, more money won’t make you…
Read More >Whilst the main thrust of Australian economic activity is said to be in the hands of the Federal Government, we should not overlook the significant role that Local Council Government’s can have. As the Federal Government wrestles with falling taxation revenues and an apparent inability to get the message across about distributing the income of…
Read More >Strategic Futurist Marcus Barber chats with Vicki Kerrigan on ABC Radio Darwin about the challenges facing the Northern Territory, the farming and mining sectors. In summing up the emerging signs of a clash between agricultural uses of land and land use for resource and mining needs, Marcus uses the phrase ‘Eat or Extract’ as the…
Read More >As most of you know I nominated this year as the 2012 International Year of Resilience because frankly, that’s what I reckon large chunks of the world need right now. The twitter feed is #2012YearofResilience. I sent a few of these tips out at the start of the year and have seen a few of…
Read More >A new city is due to emerge in Darwin over the coming couple of years and the key question is – what sort of attention is being paid to weather related disasters in the design phase? Paul Dale on ABC Radio Darwin chats with futurist Marcus Barber about planning and weather. You can download the…
Read More >Dorothea Mackellar’s poem ‘My Country’ is best known for its second verse – “I love a sunburnt country, A land of sweeping plains, Of ragged mountain ranges, Of droughts and flooding rains”. As vast tracts of Australia again face the prospect of massive floods I wonder if our Urban Planners ever consider the significance of…
Read More >Potentially the biggest area of untapped competitive advantage (and arguably one of the biggest areas where costs could be reduced) is within supply chains. Most approaches to Supply Chain Management are linear and isolated with one player trying to squeeze the other with no regard to the overall effect of the full supply chain. It’s…
Read More >There’s a shift underway in the mining industry that will likely catch Australian airlines out if they aren’t paying attention – the shift toward ‘remote’ mining. Remote mining is being pushed by the automation ability across all aspects of current mining technology, which at the basic level, means that fewer humans are needed on site…
Read More >Simple question really. Or is it? In this quick article I provide an overview of the difference between strategy that is D.E.A.D and A.L.I.V.E Think of it as a potential ‘do this’ collection for your Organisation You can download the article for free here – ‘Is your Organisational Strategy D.E.A.D or A.L.I.V.E?’
Read More >Lots of thoughts for the year already underway, with some covering a range of ideas from ‘don’t cut corners on relative incidentals when the project is significant for you’ to ‘you can’t change your approach if you keep thinking inside the same box’. But for now a reminder about planning for your future: If you…
Read More >