Key Growth Drivers as Identified by Tesco CEO

Chief Executive of Tesco PLC, Sir Terry Leahy, recently identified six drivers for growth coming out of a recession. With global economies still in the picture this will be crucial in reaching consumers. Here are the drivers as posted by this article in retailwire. Enjoy!

Trust: Consumers will begin to shift to organizations that they trust during difficult times. Companies that show consumers that they are genuinely interested in doing better things will gain long term loyalty.

Information: Businesses must become transparent and hold nothing back from consumers.

Health: Products that focus on fitness, cosmetics, and fashion fulfill the need that consumers have of looking great and feeling great forever.

Convenience: Convenience stores like 7-11 and Tesco have thrived with more and more people having time constraints on a daily basis.

Simplicity: Consumers do not need 1,000 products but answers and solutions to the problems in their lives.

Climate change: Businesses must be able to adapt to changing times and different consumer needs as time goes by.

Global Consumer Trends: Individualism

Good trend-watching is about taking the bigger-picture approach. Adopting a broader global perspective to trend-tracking facilitates better decision making by overcoming 'category myopia'. Monitoring the broader FMCG environment will enable bigger picture learning that can be applied more specifically.

Today’s increasingly individualistic consumers place considerable value on self-expression and asserting their individual identity. This also includes exerting their power and control as consumers. The Individualism mega-trend represents consumers’ desires to be themselves and be recognized as having personal needs rather than being part of the mass market. Consumers seek products that make them stand out from the crowd and provide them with (or at least reinforce) a sense of personal and social identity. This mega-trend represents values such as “being me”, “trusting myself”, “finding my own answers” and “making my mark on the world” in a world of opportunity and liberating freedom where people can live their lives as they please. The desire for individuality is not new. It has just become more attainable for more people due to rising prosperity in society and the fact that technological advances facilitate easier, more cost effective personalized products and services. With rising prosperity there has also been a growth of post-materialist societies where values emphasizing self expressing and individuality have grown.

Individualism is one of 10 mega-trends Datamonitor has identified as having a substantive impact on the marketing landscape. An intuitive understanding of these mega-trends is fundamental because they set the pre-conditions for marketplace success. Use this report to understand global consumers’ individualistic and self expressive attitudes, behaviors and lifestyles and how this translates into marketing opportunities.