8 Huge Consumer Experience Trends In 2022
The Eight Biggest Consumer Trends in 2022 our world is changing rapidly, and so are consumer expectations.
Therefore, if your business wants to continue to add real value to you and solve customers’ problems, you will have to rethink your products and services to take account of the huge shifts that are taking place at the moment.
These shifts turn into eight transformative consumer trends. So let’s look at the consumer trends in 2022.
1- Channel digitization
Channel digitization and Expansion no doubt already embraced digital routes to connect with customers.
But in the past, the digitization journey has generally treated digital channels, websites, and social media.
Now the gear has shifted completely, and customers increasingly come to a business via their digital channels. Digital comes first, in other words.
One McKinsey Global Survey found that the COVID-19 crisis drastically accelerated the digitization of customer interactions by three or four years in the space of just a few months.
That means businesses must focus on building better digital first interactions with customers.
That means focusing on three specific areas of apps. Starbucks and how easy is now to order coffee on your app and also the integration into super apps like WeChat.
2- Channel experience
The second one is a smooth channel experience where customers can more seamlessly move between channels and still get a cohesive customer experience.
3- Digital product
the third one is new digital-only products. Think of digital-only clothing, for example. We now buy skins for video games.
That will continue to grow, so think about how your business can get ready for this. In the Codification of Products and Services, there is no escaping artificial intelligence.
AI and the intent of things IoT are inextricably part of our everyday lives now, as demonstrated by the increasing number of everyday products that are labeled smart.
This cornification of product, a phrase coined by Kevin Kelly, founding executive editor of Wired magazine, is being applied to a wide range of products, from fridges to cars to huge industrial machines in factories.
The shrinking size and cost of sensors can be made smart. But it’s not just products that are becoming more intelligent.
Services are also beefed up with AI capabilities. At the age, people want to feel special. They expect brands to understand and respond to their individual needs.
They want something unique to them, not the mass marketing strategies of the past. To put this another way, our customer your customers are craving a more meaningful connection with your brand, and they want it fast.
Today’s customers feel constantly bombarded with content, so they expect quick solutions.
The challenge and opportunity for businesses are to pinpoint those exact moments when customers are looking for a specific thing, be it a product, a piece of information, or whatever, and then quickly give it to them.
The window to give customers what they’re looking for may just be a few seconds. And this is what Google refers to as a micro-moment.
4- Subscription and Service
that is required for future trends. Driven by the increasing cognition of products and services, organizations of all kinds can now delight their customers with thoughtful subscription-based services and products.
This trend is based on a traditional business model where the customer buys a product or service according to need, and they sign up and get the service regularly.
The customer benefits from convenient auto-renewals and builds a deeper connection with the brand they love.
Meanwhile, the business generates predictable revenue because so long as you continue to provide value to the customers, they will continue to pay for it.
we’ve seen this in companies like Apple that are now moving to the service model or even cars. There’s a big move that we won’t buy cars in the future. We simply lease them or hire them as we need.
5- Disintermediation
Cutting out the Middlemen also known as disintermediation, the direct deal with consumer trends means bypassing traditional intermediaries in the supply chain, such as retailers, wholesalers, distributors, and advertisers to connect directly with end consumers.
Brands across all sectors are finding new direct routes to customers via online channels.
We see this in the mattress world, which is now almost exclusively sold directly, or companies like Jim Shark that sell gym clothing well, or companies like Nike or L’Oreal now also have powerful direct channels.
I believe all businesses must consider how they can build new ways to connect directly with their consumers and their customers.
For intermediaries organizations such as banks and retailers, that trend represents a significant challenge.
These intermediaries who have been quite powerful in the past, are now being pushed out of the equation, and we’ll have to rethink their business model accordingly.
The emergence of technology like Blockchain, for example, weakens the role of intermediaries even further.
6- B2C
So some real challenges here, from B to C to all to all, the consumer to consumer C to C economy where customers connect and other customers communicate or trade goods directly, has given rise to massive platform businesses like Uber, Facebook, Etsy, and Airbnb.
There is value in facilitating those interactions and transactions, and those platforms that can create a safe, easy way for customers to connect have seen this enormous growth.
It may be an opportunity to pivot to a platform model or introduce a new value-adding platform.
7- Impressive experience
Thanks to extended reality, technologies like Virtual Reality, VR and augmented reality AR brands can now impress their customers with engaging, immersive experiences.
The new book “Extended Reality” in Practice is about the use of XR across a wide range of industries.
Companies like Facebook and Microsoft are now increasingly talking about the metaverse, a shared digital world full of amazing experiences. Think Ready player one if you’ve watched the movie.
Today consumers increasingly prioritize experiences over material goods, particularly among millennials, where 75% say that they value experiences over things.
That means brands that want to stay relevant must turn the customer journey, whether this is online or offline, into a thoughtful, memorable experience. And XR can help you do this.
8- Conscious
Conscious consumption driven by the increasing impact of climate change and the devastating consequences of exploiting our planet, we’ve reached a tipping point in environmental awareness.
And with this growing awareness comes a desire for more eco-friendly and sustainable products. Certainly in my family, we are regularly asking questions such as is this fair trade? Was this farmed sustainably?
We are trying to become conscious consumers. In other words, seeking to understand the wider impact of our purchases and, whenever possible, choose more responsible alternatives.
So rather than gaining status from opting into conscious consumerism, there’s now a shame around opting out of it. That’s a clear sign that conscious consumption is going to be mainstream.
Reimagining your business to take account of all of these consumer trends takes courage, especially as many involve cannibalizing your existing business model.
Just think of Apple’s focus on the iPhone and Apple Music. That essentially made the iPod obsolete.
It requires humility to look at other industries and organizations and identify what they are doing better.
To learn more about these and other future trends check out my website and cut through the hype to present the key trends that will shape organizations of the future.
