The Five Big Trends for 2007
4. Trysumers
Hate the name, love the trend. TRYSUMERS incorporates transient, experienced consumers who are becoming more daring in how they consume, due to a myriad of (sometimes) unrelated societal and technological changes.
Here’s the beta-definition:
TRYSUMERS: “Freed from the shackles of convention and scarcity, immune to most advertising, and enjoying full access to information, reviews, and navigation, experienced consumers are trying out new appliances, new services, new flavours, new authors, new destinations, new artists, new relationships, new *anything* with post mass-market gusto.”
To get you going, here are some observations on what's encouraging a growing number of consumers to morph into TRYSUMERS:
Living in a world of abundance means there’s actually loads to try out, and it doesn’t hurt that millions of members of GENERATION C(ONTENT) are adding to the pile of unique, original niche content and products. Niche of course being the new mass, as consumer societies are now about standing out, not conformity, which in turn means an encouragement to explore one’s often broader-than-assumed taste.
As saturated, experienced consumers can draw on plenty of past experiences, and knowing many more will follow, it's easier to cope with possible disappointment stemming from trying out the unknown. For example, if one’s weekend trip is spoilt by bad weather, knowing that another seven trips will follow just this year will make it more digestible.
Not only are more consumers making more money than ever before, lots of products and experiences essential to a TRYSUMER lifestyle and infrastructure have actually become cheap as hell. Asia Air, EasyJet and Virgin Air: need we say more?
Navigation is the new laissez faire. It's less risky to try out new destinations, paths, routes, or neighbourhoods when equipped with a Garmin or TomTom. Sales of personal navigation devices (PNDs) in Europe and the US have doubled to 10 million units between 2005 and 2006, and with the online world and GPS slowly converging, anywhere/anytime navigation will eventually be a given for adventurous TRYSUMERS. You figure out the ramifications for the world of leisure, but may we humbly suggest that off the beaten path will never be the same?
In the same vein, aforementioned TRANSPARENCY TYRANNY is another engine behind the rise of TRYSUMERS. Reviews on anything, anytime remove the risk of buying a lemon, and will entice TRYSUMERS to explore the Long Tail with confidence like there is no tomorrow. (Ha, and you thought the Long Tail had disappeared into 2006's chronicles.)
Since advertising is as trusted as a certain prime minster with six months to go, trying out and sampling is the new advertising. An entire TRYVERTISING infrastructure, from 30 second samples on iTunes to firms specializing in relevant product placement is now in place, enabling consumers to try before they buy.
The list of observations goes on:
Quality is hygiene these days: even TV sets or irons from obscure brands found at WalMart work flawlessly. Another incentive to try out the unknown.
An entire generation is growing up as gamers, and games are nothing but invitations to be daring, and try, try, try until you find a solution and succeed.
