Mintel has announced seven trends set to impact global consumer markets in 2021, including analysis, insights, and recommendations centred around consumer behaviour, market shifts, innovative brands, and opportunities for companies and brands to act on in the next 12 months:
● Health Undefined: An awareness of wellbeing is at the forefront of consumers’ minds,
but a playbook doesn’t exist. Brands have a responsibility and opportunity to set new
rules.
● Collective Empowerment: Consumers around the world are making their voices heard
loud and clear in the push for equity, agency, and rights.
● Priority Shift: Consumers are seeking a return to the essentials, with a focus on flexible
possessions and a reframing of what ownership actually means.
● Coming Together: Consumers are coming together in like-minded communities in order
to connect with and support each other, driven by the impact of the global pandemic.
● Virtual Lives: Physical separation due to the pandemic, increased need for escapism,
and improved technology are driving consumers towards digital experiences.
● Sustainable Spaces: COVID-19 has subtly but significantly shifted consumer
awareness of our relationship with the spaces in which we live, accelerating demand for
sustainability.
● Digital Dilemmas: While there are many benefits to a more digitally-connected life,
concerns about its negative impacts are putting consumers in a predicament.
Matthew Crabbe, Director of Mintel Trends, APAC commented on how the trends were
developed, as well as how they will impact markets, brands, and consumers in 2021:
“As experts in what consumers want and why, Mintel is uniquely suited to predict the future of consumer behaviour and what that means for brands. Last year, we released our 2030 Global Consumer Trends, developed as a living, growing prediction model that will adapt with the unforeseen. The model supports the fluid acceleration or deceleration of the trends according to the reality of individual markets, allowing us to not only be more adaptive and reactive to change but to continue to allow us and our clients to focus on the futures we (humanity) want to invent— or avoid.
“Our new 2021 forecasts remain embedded within our system of Mintel’s 7 Trend Drivers and their supporting pillars. They also take into account the changes that have been accelerated by the COVID-19 pandemic—the subtle yet profound shifts in consumer thinking and responses from brands—and attempt to encapsulate the better future that consumers, globally, aspire to, and towards which brands can build their own strategic visions.”
