According to the 2014 Trendwatching.com report, the coming year will be all about environmentally responsible aspiration, crowd-sourced web services and using apps and phones to monitor stress and happiness as well as steps taken.
Guilt-free status
According to Trendwatching.com, brands will be focusing on enabling environmentally and socially aware consumers to indulge without grappling with their conscience. One of the reasons for electric car company Tesla's seemingly overnight success is that it is offering an exclusive, luxury product -- a sporty, attractive, aspirational executive car -- but one without the global warming and pollution issues that usually accompany such a purchase.
Trendwatching.com believes that it will be such an important trend over the coming year that new products and services hoping to appeal to the wealthiest of consumers will "need a guilt-free story that the owner can tell others," if it wants to succeed.
The trend isn't restricted to personal mobility; fashion brands are also expected to push any sustainability or ethical claims front and center as part of their marketing campaigns over the next 12 months. According to the BBMG, GlobeScan and SustainAbility, October 2013 study, 92 percent of aspirational consumers have a strong desire for responsible consumption and 58 percent trust their favored brands to act in the best interests of society.
Crowd shaped
Crowdfunding is already all but mainstream thanks to the success of Kickstarter to get everything from smart watches to feature films produced, but this is just the start. The crowd is also destined to provide the fuel for powering new goods and services. Consumers' appetite for social sharing will help build better preference engines -- think about how good Amazon is at suggesting recommendations and apply that to everything in life.
Mychiatry
Health and activity trackers and smartphone fitness apps are just the beginning. Over the course of the next 12 months the smartphone and 'appcessories' will infiltrate other areas of consumer life, from monitoring mental health to helping their users combat stress.
The internet of caring things
2014 will be the year when consumers start to embrace connected devices that are neither tablets nor smartphones, in other words, gadgets designed to automate household functions, from lighting to heating and much more. However, Trendwatching.com believes that it will be products like the Nest Learning Thermostat, that simplify a complex operation -- i.e., managing a home's temperature -- while simultaneously reducing environmental impact, where the initial growth will be.
As the report says: "Anything exceptional that ‘connected objects' can do for consumers, whether that's monitoring or improving health, helping them save money, getting chores done, will be warmly welcomed next year and beyond."
