Personalization

Trend - Hair brands are designing products formulated to avoid ingredients that may trigger or worsen acne, especially on the scalp, forehead, or areas where hair touches the skin. These products typically avoid comedogenic ingredients like oils, silicones, or fragrances that can contribute to breakouts.

Insight - Acne-prone individuals often search for products that do not negate their skincare routines, allowing them to maintain clear skin while also addressing their personal care needs. In response, haircare brands are recognizing the impact their products can have on skin health and are increasingly developing formulas to avoid irritating acne-prone skin. By understanding a product's benefits and potential drawbacks, brands can make informed development decisions that prevent losing certain customers.

Trend - As AI-generated content becomes increasingly prevalent across industries, brands are intentionally showcasing human messiness, imperfection and emotional authenticity in their marketing and products. This manifests through interactive retail experiences that encourage emotional expression, social campaigns highlighting real consumer mishaps, and products designed to celebrate human quirks.

Insight - The rapid advancement of AI and algorithmically perfect content has created a cultural tension where consumers feel disconnected from authentic human experiences. For many, particularly younger demographics, digital perfection has become synonymous with artificial and inauthentic. This is creating demand for brands that acknowledge and embrace human complexity, vulnerability and emotional authenticity. By celebrating imperfection, brands can help consumers reclaim and express their fundamental humanity in an increasingly AI-driven world.

Trend - Perfume brands are increasingly experimenting with skin scents—minimalist fragrances designed to complement human skin. These formulations enhance the wearer's natural scent, creating a personalized olfactory experience that is uniquely tailored to the individual's body chemistry.

Insight - Many consumers want to find their "signature scent" but struggle to find one amid a market dominated by overpowering and commonly worn fragrances. In response, brands are harnessing scientific innovation to create unconventional fragrances rooted in minimalism, aligning with recent consumer trends. This approach meets consumer demand for a more subtle yet personalized fragrance experience, fostering stronger brand loyalty and reducing production costs commonly incurred by complex formulations.

Trend - Banks and fintech companies are introducing services that help tenants report their rental payments to major credit bureaus like Equifax, Experian, and TransUnion. These services enable tenants to leverage their largest recurring expense—rent payments—to build or strengthen their credit profile.

Insight - Amidst rising costs, consumers seek tools to simplify credit building, especially as rent payments are often excluded from credit evaluations. Companies are recognizing the demand for rent reporting tools, as these services help tenants build or improve their credit scores by ensuring their payments are reported to major credit bureaus. These consumers understand that building credit doesn’t mean taking on more debt; instead, they leverage existing payments to strengthen their financial history.

Trend - Social media has sparked a trinket-collecting craze among Gen Z, and food brands are leveraging the allure of these items by pairing their food and drink items with blind box collectibles. Spanning mini figurines to themed keepsakes, these collectibles aim to drive sales and encourage repeat visits.

Insight - Faced with societal pressures and environmental challenges, many younger consumers turn to spending as a coping mechanism, seeking the dopamine hit that micro purchases provide. In response, F&B brands are launching collectible collaborations to appeal to Gen Z's desire for personalization and social sharing while delivering a unique experience. By positioning themselves as unofficial suppliers, brands can foster deeper engagement and encourage repeat purchases of their themed or branded products.

Trend - Computer peripheral brands are increasingly investing in partnerships with professional esports players. From branded mousepads to mice, these products claim to provide players with the same enhanced capabilities as their favorite players without years of training and practice.

Insight - Aspiring esports professionals often aim to elevate their competitive skills but face challenges finding dependable gear for practice. To meet this need, peripheral brands are teaming up with professional esports athletes, drawing on their insights to create high-performance peripherals and products tailored for aspiring players. These brands understand their audience's desire for tools that allow them to emulate their favorite pros and are aligning with this to incentivize repeat visits.

Trend - The traditional benefits of Mini PCs are low costs and low space requirements. Brands are now adding modularity and swappable components to this list, with mini PCs focused around upgradable RAM, SSDs, CPUs, and more, gaining popularity on the consumer-focused side of the industry.

Insight - When choosing a personal computer, customers are faced with a wide array of options for form-factor before they even consider specifications. Form-factor options include laptops, full-size desktops, mini-PCs. Customers that opt for Mini-PCs often do so because of the compact, portable design, the low cost of entry, and the greater performance when compared to a laptop. However, one drawback that prevents more consumers from choosing mini-PCs are their short lifespans and non-upgradeable parts.

Trend - Dietary health brands are increasingly focusing on gut microbiome health. As research in this field continues to showcase the importance of balanced microbiomes, these brands are releasing personalized meal plans for consumers looking to prioritize gut health.

Insight - Health-conscious consumers are becoming increasingly aware of the importance of a balanced gut microbiome. These consumers now note that, not only are diet and exercise crucial to healthy living, but also that even minor imbalances in the gut can cause problems throughout the body, such as weight gain, headaches, and more. These consumers desire dietary solutions that lead to solve gut imbalances, with a preference for those that integrate seamlessly into their lifestyle.

Trend - Brands in the custom meal space are using science and consumer-provided data to curate diets specifically for each customer. Through simple surveys, these brands create a diet that suits the nutritional needs and dietary preferences with healthy ingredients.

Insight - Consumers often find eating balanced diets to be a difficult task. Particularly when life obligations stack up, such as work, school, or other challenges, finding time to carefully plan a diet is often out of reach. However, many busy consumers would eat healthily if given the opportunity, leading to a desire for more simplified ways of acquiring balanced diets. Brands are responding to these consumers with science-backed, customized meal kits that suit their busy lifestyles.

Trend - Startups are using advanced AI algorithms to modernize the process of tarot card reading through advanced interpretation. These AI tools take into account necessary information from the user, as well as the implications of each tarot reading, to provide detailed readings and feedback.

Insight - While one consumer may doubt the legitimacy of spiritual readings, such as tarot cards or fortune telling, another consumer may be heavily invested in this field. Consumers interested in spiritual readings often do so either for peace of mind, for guidance when they are unsure of what to do, or for mere recommendations in complex situations. However, tarot readings are often expensive, and may not fit within these consumers' budgets. Brands are responding with AI-powered tarot card readers.