Gartner research shows that buyers are coming to treat thrift as an aspirational virtue, openly resisting consumerism for self-improvement and similar motives. Gartner also detects a widespread trend called “norming” — essentially, searching for reassurance about personal behavior and attitudes by checking them against objective and community standards. Consumers also proved paranoid about unexpected and inconsistent costs and pricing.
In addition, 74% of consumers express openness to automated technologies including drone delivery and cashier-less stores. We spoke with Kate Muhl, Gartner’s consumer and cultural insigbhts expert concerning the significance of those findings. (The full report is offered only to Gartner clients.)
Wholesome thrift. A generation of “New Spartans” are embracing thrift, almost as a way of life alternative. Certainly, the impulse to get monetary savings is just not unrelated to the recent battle with inflation, nevertheless it seems to have taken on a broader significance. In the Gartner research, 88% of consumers reported embracing a number of underconsumption behaviors than they might have two years ago. Examples include:
- Using products longer reasonably than replacing.
- Choosing to purchase second-hand or DIY reasonably than already assembled.
- Fixing reasonably than buying latest.
Yes, prices are on consumers’ minds, but 68% cited lifestyle or self-improvement reasons for underconsumptive behavior, including:
- Decluttering and simplifying life (45%).
- Feeling higher about themselves (35%).
- Proving to myself and others that I could (28%).
- Environmental concerns (23%).
“I suppose I’m never surprised at a consumer’s ability to take something and turn it right into a technique to tell a story about themselves,” mused Muhl. “This is like taking something you might be forced to do and turning it into something you control and you could turn right into a ‘braggable.’” She noted that there have been no signs yet, despite the decrease in inflation, of returning to ’90s-style conspicuous consumption. “Perhaps we’ll see that in a 12 months or two. Right now, austerity is something you’ve got the strength or wisdom to embrace.”
Could this also be an indication of individuals selecting experiences over products? “Yes, I feel that’s fair,” said Muhl. “The long tail on an experience you paid for is a lot better than, like, a sweater.”
Are you norming? In an uncertain world, consumers are searching for objective (or a minimum of, communal) benchmarks for his or her actions and opinions. They say they’re searching for:
- Clearly established boundaries (76%).
- An ability to label and categorize things (64%).
- An understanding of themselves and their place in the world (57%).
- Some type of “playbook” for progressing through life (48%).
This is just not a brand new concept, said Muhl, nevertheless it has recently picked up momentum. Back in 2018, she said, there was a top trend in the research called “My Data, My Self,” because people had grow to be interested in the information trails they were abandoning that were unique to themselves. That’s counter to the thought of norming. “What we don’t know lately is how we fit into the entire,” she said. “You can’t see the forest for the trees, which is bad because you might be a tree in the forest. You need to know, am I tall tree, am I a small tree, what number of trees are in this forest?”
Paranoid concerning the price. Almost 60% of consumers lacked confidence in knowing the true, final cost of a purchase order. Reasons included:
- Service bill increased while usage didn’t (38%)
- Discrepancies between online and in-store prices (31%).
- Price changing in shopping cart (29%).
- Hidden or unexpected fees (23%).
Among the trends considered, this probably has the widest impact, said Muhl. Given the present rate of inflation, “consumers should be feeling okay,” she said. “And yet they don’t, or the repair of their feeling about cost is going on way more slowly than lots of our clients would love to see.”
Businesses like stability, she observed. They don’t like sudden surges in costs; they should be in a position to plan. “Why wouldn’t individuals be the identical?”
Why we care. There isn’t any shortage of huge datasets that tell us what consumers are doing — how much they’re spending and how they’re shopping. Tracking consumer behavior is virtually an industry throughout the holiday shopping period especially. And that’s all priceless.
What Gartner seeks so as to add, by cultural in addition to consumption trends, is an understanding of the deeper belief systems driving consumer behavior, and the challenge is to do that at scale reasonably than searching for to psychoanalyze shoppers one after the other.
(Note: The research on level of comfort with drones surely predates the present news cycle!)
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