Marketing Consumer Insights

Trend - Established food brands are partnering with candle companies to venture into the home goods space. Offering decadent scents and premium ingredients, these collaborations aim to inject the brand's identity into everyday life, providing consumers with a new way to experience its products.

Insight - Consumers often seek novelty in their purchases, gravitating to exclusivity and the opportunity to engage with brands in a fresh, unique way. Brands are responding by teaming up with leaders in adjacent industries, leveraging their shared reputations to attract consumers drawn to their designs or signature scents. Leveraging partnerships allows brands to expand into unconventional sectors, connecting them with consumers who may not typically interact with their products in the grocery store.

Trend - Retailers across various industries, such as home and garden, crafts, and even electronics are launching with an emphases on DIY projects. By focusing on DIY, these retailers mainly provide base components rather than prebuilt items, often leading to significantly lower prices than competitors.

Insight - Many consumers prioritize saving money over saving time. When shopping for furniture, for example, consumers opt to buy more affordable DIY furniture rather than more expensive pre-built options. These priorities are now extending to other industries, with consumers in adjacent spaces opting for more engaging DIY solutions in search of both a hobby and a method of saving money. In order to appeal to these consumers in a broader sense, specialized retailers with a focus on DIY are opening.

Trend - Gen Z is transforming the pickle market with a fresh, trendy approach that combines unique flavors, clean ingredients, and eye-catching branding. Good Girl Snacks epitomizes this trend with vibrant, Y2K-style branding and engaging social media presence. This demographic's obsession with pickles is reflected in the massive engagement on TikTok, where hashtags like #pickle and #picklesnack boast billions of views.

Insight - Branding plays a critical role in capturing Gen Z's attention, particularly for everyday pantry items. This generation's food choices extend beyond mere culinary preference, often serving as cultural statements that reflect identity and values. Take, for example, the resurgence of the pickle. Similar to past food fads, Gen Z's current fixation has elevated this familiar snack into a cultural touchstone, with brands capitalizing on its popularity through creative marketing strategies.

Trend - Oral care products are increasingly drawing inspiration from iconic brands and well-known names across the fashion, pop culture, and consumer packaged goods industries. These products often include toothpaste, toothbrushes, mouthwash, and floss, all designed to resonate with modern fan bases.

Insight - Social media platforms have connected younger audiences around shared interests, allowing them to engage with products in ways that reflect their digital habits. In response, brands across various industries are opening themselves up to cross-industry collaborations, aiming to attract fans of established brands and convert them into loyal customers. Businesses that effectively tap into current social media trends and influences are better positioned to capture the attention of young shoppers.

Trend - Toiletry companies are launching eco-friendly product lines with recycled and organic materials. Utilizing post-consumer recycled plastics, papers, and bamboo, these products further reduce the environmental footprint of single-use disposable papers, while only marginally increasing prices.

Insight - Environmentally-conscious consumers find pride in using products from brands that align with their personal values. These consumers are far more likely to purchase products with recyclable packaging, recycled materials, and without single-use plastics. These consumers believe in voting with their dollar toward products that make progress toward a genuine greener future. As a result, brands from typically unsustainable industries, such as toiletries, are now turning to recycled materials.

Trend - Packaging brands are creating tech-based solutions for traceability. These enable consumers, and partnered businesses, to trace packaging back to its source. Often via scanning a QR code, NFC touchpoint, or blockchain ID, it is easy for any user to verify stated sustainability claims.

Insight - While many brands claim their packaging solutions are sustainable or recyclable, making claims such as "76% recycled aluminum,' there is no convenient way for the average consumer to verify most of these statements. While some packaging solutions, such as paper-based ones, are more clearly sustainable, some may be more difficult to ascertain. However, consumers who desire to live eco-friendly lifestyles would appreciate further assurance, leading to brands adding traceable packaging solutions.

Trend - Brick-and-mortar storefronts are adding elements of gamification and entertainment to improve the in-store shopping experience. These 'retailtainment' initiatives add immersive experiences and interactive elements to increase consumer engagement and pull the focus away from simply spending money.

Insight - It is undeniable that the convenience and accessibility of online shopping leads to more consumers opting to simply shop online each year. While some who prefer in-store shopping value being able to physically touch, or try, an item before purchasing it, others are attracted to the social aspect of in-store retail. These features alone do not add enough value to pull online shoppers back to physical stores. This is leading to 'retailtainment,' brands debuting immersive in-store experiences.

Trend - Brands are creating passive pop-ups, such as billboards or signposts, that beget consumers to engage with only a brief action. These are more engaging than regular billboards while not requiring much time from consumers. Additionally, brands do not need to staff these pop-ups, thus reducing costs.

Insight - The average person living in a major city faces hundreds of advertisements a day. To this extent, most simply filter out regular ads, leading to brands not leaving a lasting impression. While some brands try to launch full-scale pop-up events that invite consumers to explore a detailed activation, not all consumers have spare time for such activities, leading to brands finding a middle ground for pop-ups that beget enough interaction to leave an impression, but do not intrude on daily schedules.

Trend - Postcard-making workshops are becoming a popular feature at pop-up events, offering guests a creative, hands-on way to connect with the brand. These interactive sessions allow participants to create a tangible, personalized product that delivers a message and introduces a new brand to the recipient.

Insight - Consumers seeking unique shopping experiences are increasingly drawn to events that facilitate personal connections with brands and encourage sharing the experience with loved ones. In response, brands are designing pop-ups that allow consumers to create personalized keepsakes for those in their lives and invite these individuals to experience the brand. By focusing on consumers' desire for shareable moments, brands can attract an audience that values community throughout the product journey.

Trend - Game developers are implementing live billboard advertisements into their games. These advertisements are non-intrusive, meaning they exist in the game world but do not inhibit the players' interaction with the games. This is a value-add for advertisers while adding legitimacy to the game world.

Insight - When working with partnered clients, it is important for gaming brands to strike a balance between meeting the needs of advertisers while not hindering the experience of its players. While many free-to-play games result to timed video advertisements that interrupt gameplay, this is a negative experience for most players, as it interrupts the flow of the game, causing a negative perception of the ad. To more seamlessly advertise to players, developers are turning to seamless in-game advertising.