By 2030, more and more consumers will be deploying personal data assistants to manage their relationships with brands, creating a new power paradigm, a consumer vision report by dentsu international revealed. Titled ‘The Age of Inclusive Intelligence,’ the report charts the long-term consumer trends that will shape the next decade. Eight out of ten people globally say they would like more control over the personal information they share with companies and new AI-enabled services will emerge to help them do this.
According to the report, by 2030 consumers will select specific brands to be their main lifestyle partners, becoming an integral part of their commercial activity and everyday lifestyle. In China, four in 10 consumers would by 2030 consider using a single company for all their lifestyle needs, such as shopping, financial services and healthcare. Super-functionality will be a primary driver of brand loyalty, with customers assessing the holistic benefit to their desired lifestyle.
Furthermore, by 2030, securing long-term health and well-being will be an increasingly central goal in purchase decision-making for many consumers. Nearly half of people globally believe that over the next five to ten years they will use technology to predict what will happen to their physical health. In 2030, every brand will have to become a health brand and all companies will be expected to help consumers enhance their wellbeing through the brand’s products and services, the report stated.
On climate change, 77% of UK consumers say that Covid-19 has made them more aware of the harm caused to the environment by global travel. Longer-term, this is fuelling greater consumer activism with purchasing decisions increasingly based on social issues. Two-thirds of UK consumers say that by 2030 they will not buy goods that they know have a negative impact on the environment.
The report added that in the next decade, technology will be leveraged in increasingly innovative ways to foster human connection, forging togetherness despite distance or solitude, and democratising friendships and intimacy. Today, one-third (32%) of consumers would consider allowing AI to care for an elderly relative unsupervised. In 2030, robot companions will become more commonplace as a way of helping the elderly and disabled, providing in-home care more effectively. For brands, technology’s potential to enable new emotions and sensations will provide new ways of communicating with and engaging potential customers, through senses beyond sight and sound.
Moreover, with more people staying at home during lockdown, the growing popularity of eSports and online gaming has accelerated. As global awareness of eSports is expected to reach two billion by 2021, the way we look at sport in general will continue to evolve with ‘real-world’ sports and activities being forced to innovate to keep up.
Building inclusive intelligence starts with superior consumer understanding — The time is now for brands to take charge of their own future narrative by developing pre-emptive efforts in getting to know and predict end-user behaviour, rather than play catch-up with the speed of their consumers, Ashish Bhasin, CEO, dentsu Asia Pacific said. “Brands, especially those in our region, will also need to be more open, more transparent, in the way they work and be comfortable collaborating outside of their organisations as they are within them. This is especially key in their dealings with clients, agency partners, NGOs, governments, communities. We all need to work even more seamlessly with one another, to make meaningful progress together,” he added.
