... a “think tank approach” to their findings, which were unveiled at the FMI's professional development conference in Olando Florida.

During the conference FMI president/ceo Leslie G Sarasin presented an overview of the FMI's future analysis in her address which posited a sobering reality - yet one poised for market possibilities, offering data analytics from interviews with CPG executives and retailers.

Although consumer demand has remained flat, which is modestly disproportionate to the population growth over the past 15-20 years, the industry has witnessed an explosion in its capacity.

Ms Sarasin suggested that retailers will be evaluating alternative ways to address consumers’ need for value, convenience and safe foods by focusing their growth strategies on the overall shopper experience.

Discussing the FMI report's future vision, Sarasin said: “The leaders in our industry kept coming back to three key words to describe the future food retail experience: Personal, Digital and Virtual.”

A broad range of key drivers will determine the success of instore marketing and merchandising programmes over the next decade. Today, price and convenience continue to trump other consumer trends in garnering shopper attention in store.

Outside of health and beauty care and pharmacy, health and wellness–based themes are the third most common platform for displays, behind price-only and snack/meal solutions.

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... strong demand in China to offset weak sales in Europe.

According to Trolin, teledining has become popular with people who don't want to lose time traveling between megacities to eat with friends or business colleagues.

Teledining enables one group eating at a restaurant in one city to connect with friends in a different city via teleconferencing.

Another trend, currently peculiat to China, is young people's preference for voice messages rather than texting or e-mailing.

Says Trolin: "A voice message is more lively than a text and can be listened to at the recipient's convenience, while a call could come at an inappropriate moment. He himself has become accustomed to using his phone primarily to send and receive voice messages.

He declined to say what BMW will do to tap into these trends, but history shows that the automaker is willing to cater to Chinese tastes. 

An example of which is the preference of Chinese customers for long-wheelbase versions of mid-sized and compact sedans.

"Not because they are chauffeur driven but to offer more legroom to their friends and family members as a sign of high respect," explains Gerhard Steinie, director of the Shanghai studio of BMW Group's DesignWorks subsidiary.

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... although the report relates solely to the USA, the halcyon days of near-exponential growth for social media elsewhere in the western world are trending sharply downward.

The Experian data indicates that, proportionate to other online activities, the time US consumers spend on social media sites is actually in decline.

However the report qualifies that apparent decline: "Blindly chasing fans or followers has rightly lost credence as brands realise that social sharing and referring has the biggest impact. As a result, simpler and more effective tools to measure social sharing will allow brands to refocus on creating meaningful social media campaigns."

By contrast, time spent shopping online grew year-on-year. In fact, US consumers spent 9% of their web time shopping in 2012. After analyzing US browsing data for mobile devices, email accounted for the largest time spent on average.

Overall, email made up 23% of time spent on mobile devices during the first quarter of the year, while social networking accounted for 15% of consumers’ mobile time.

Consumption of news content also increased among US consumers who devoted 4% of their online time to news.

Although the data refers solely to the US market - the western world's largest - the report's implications are equally valid within the UK and European Union.

All pales into relative insignificance, however, alongside the Chinese  social media market vis a recent report from Forbes.com.

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... viewed in context with people's economic status. 

The Great British Class Survey posits that defining (and understanding) classes as "amounts of different types of 'capitals'" help us to view class across a number of dimensions.

The French sociologist, Pierre Bourdieu first developed this approach in 1984, suggesting there are different types of capitals which give people an advantage in life.

Economic, cultural and social capitals may overlap but they are different. Using this approach, the survey distinguishes between people with different amounts of each of the foregoing three capitals.

It's been difficult to test this approach in Britain because comprehensive questions on cultural and social capital are rarely asked in national surveys. Sociologists need large amounts of data to unravel the complicated way the different capitals interact with each other, in many different people.

Mike Savage from the London School of Economics and Fiona Devine from the University of Manchester say they were "excited to test this approach for the first time" by designing a survey with BBC Lab UK.

The survey's results identify a new model of class with seven classes ranging from the 'Elite' at the top to a 'Precariat' at the bottom.

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... who recalled seeing the last ad remember seeing it online.

The survey conducted in December 2012 analyzes responses from US-domiciled consumers of all genders, ages, income and education levels. The study's key findings indicate that:

• Relevance remains a key challenge, and 36.5% of respondents who remembered the last ad they viewed did not remember the context.
   
• About 80% felt the last ad they saw was not relevant to them.
   
• Only 2.8% of respondents said they thought the ads they saw met their needs, either to answer a question or provide more information.
   
• The findings also reveal that only half of users ever click on online ads, while 35% click on less than five ads per month.
   
• Among online ad viewers, 75% saw the ad on their computer, while the remainder viewed the ad on their phone or tablet.

The study notes:"There are similarities between the way the US Transportation Security Administration's airport security screeners glaze over liquid-filled bottles in carry-on luggage and the banner ads that consumers searching for information never see.

Infolinks ceo Dave Zinman believes improving the 0.1% click-through rates on banner ads requires choosing nontraditional and memorable ad locations to increase the recall by consumers typically bombarded with messages.

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... drive positive benefits. But, if ignored, could fuel social exclusion leading to communities becoming less cohesive.

"This can be a positive force, exemplified by the solidarity seen in the London 2012 Olympics or a destructive force, for example the 2011 riots," says the report.

"Due to the development of smartphones, social networks and the trend towards (greater) connectivity, disparate groups can be more easily mobilised where their interests temporarily coincide."

For example: "A 'flash mob' can be mobilised between people who have not previously met".

Prof Beddington commissioned the study as part of the Government Office for Science's Foresight programme. It looks ahead to highlight emerging trends in science and technology with a view to informing policies across government departments.

"The most dynamic trend (in determining identity) is hyper-connectivity," Prof Beddington told BBC News.

"The collection and use of data by government and the private sector, the balancing of individual rights and liberties against privacy and security and the issue of how to tackle social exclusion, will be affected by these trends," he said.

"I hope the evidence in today's report will contribute to the policy making process."

The full report and its documentary evidence base can be accessed here: Executive Summary and Driver Review documentation. 

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... “to eliminate [traditional] surveys and instead focus on social feedback as their primary source for customer experience information.”

Moreover, claims the firm, clients will use consumers' online habits to discover how their competitors are doing by benchmarking competitors' social data.

They will also use that competitive data for product creation. NewBrandAnalytics predicts that more than a third of businesses will tailor their products explicitly to what their competition’s online customers are saying.

Also, social intelligence will make real-time performance evaluation common, as companies figure out how to assess their performance from online chatter, even to the extent of using comments - from employees, customers and consumers - to help make hiring and firing decisions!
 
Perhaps most significantly, the trend suggests that social media currents won't belong only to companies' marketing departments.

The firm predicts that 'buzz content' will infiltrate into the decision-making processes of operations, human resources, customer service, and product development.

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... Britons have become even more pessimistic about the outlook for the economy.

Says Moon: "While such a dramatic drop in consumer confidence over the last month might seem like very bad news, it must be seen in the context of a massive eight point rise in November – the seventh highest increase since the Index began in 1974.

"On its own, this increase suggested a real turning point in consumer confidence as we looked ahead to 2013.

"But just as with significant improvements like this in the past – in May 2011 for example – the surge disappeared as fast as it arrived. Despite last month’s rise, the Index is now only one point higher than it was in October 2012, indicating that consumer sentiment is still fragile despite the fact Christmas is less than a week away.”

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...  the ongoing recession.

“Previous recessions ‘bruised’ consumers, but they returned to their old ways once things improved,” says Mr Conroy, back-referencing Deloitte’s 2010 and 2011 American Pantry Studies, which comprise quantitative and qualitative consumer research across numerous FMCG brands and categories.

Opines Conroy: “This recession was different - it left a scar.”

Specifically, consumers expressed “tremendous guilt and remorse” about traditionally having engaged in “wasteful and indiscriminate” shopping habits - powerful feelings that, along with economic necessity, drove them to question the true value of national brands.

"They began to question whether they had bought into 'slick marketing' or bought brands out of force of habit, and whether their families might not respond to private-label brands just as well in many cases", says Conroy. Among the key challenges facing FMCG marketers in 2013 are ...

• Impacts of technology and proliferation of data:
  CPG companies have massive amounts of consumer data, but are behind some other sectors in terms of ability to glean actionable wisdom from that data, says Conroy. Social media and mobile devices have, of course, hugely magnified the data available, making it ever more crucial to find ways to harness this invaluable data -- and to provide consumers with brand-specific mobile apps and other tools that feed actionable brand knowledge.
   
• Growth of nontraditional channels:
  Consumers are exercising their ability to shop across many formats, including warehouse clubs, dollar stores and e-tailers -- each of which has different dynamics and customer bases. That is creating growing cross-channel conflict, and forcing product makers to adapt products and operations.
   
• Legacy operating models:
  Many CPG organizations are optimized to serve the traditional grocery and supermarket channel, but demographic shifts and changing consumer preferences have reduced the importance of these channels. Furthermore, many CPGs are organized based on more traditional product development and marketing channels, without adapting to the technologies that are shaping the future consumer.
• Multidimensional innovation:
  A now-continuous need for product differentiation and innovation, combined with price volatility, is challenging product makers to develop new products that are less costly to produce while also more sustainable and/or healthier.
   
• Serving multiple price points, while building strong household brands and a global presence:
  Consumer product companies are challenged with serving an increasingly price-aware consumer across a range of incomes with products at multiple price points. In addition, they are challenged with building and expanding their footprints across regions with different tastes and price points.

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... car-sharing services like Zipcar, carpooling by Gen Y-ers, bike sharing and “multi-mix forms of mobility”.

For instance, in a case study of consumers’ “post-green” mentality, the Ford report cites Portland, Oregon-based Depave - an organization that helped transform 94,000 square feet of concrete and asphalt into green spaces around the city.

In another exemplar of consumer influence, the report also cites an Indiana suburb that was redesigned to downplay auto traffic, including a new one-mile, walkable town center. Scattered among details of such trends are promotions for Ford’s energy-efficient models, in-car technology and sustainable manufacturing materials. 

According to Sheryl Connelly, Ford’s global futurist and author of the report, the automaker's goal is to be "proactive about the new ways people approach mobility, so it is unlikely to be blind-sided by changes in the world".

Adds Ms Connelly: "In the past, the company would base its strategy around building on our strengths and minimizing our weaknesses. Now we are looking at overall trends to see what we can control and what in the landscape we can shape."

Read the original unabridged AdWeek article.

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