MEC Forecast: Emerging Markets Grab Brand Attention, Health Apps Key

Fewer cash payments and more haggling over transactions are among the big consumer trends that global media shop MEC, a unit of WPP, has identified in a new consumer marketing trend report for 2012. Chinese consumers in particular will be the focus of special attention by brands around the world, given their rapidly increasing spending power and the desire of marketers to tap into it.

“Brands [will be] going out of their way to shower Chinese consumers with tailored services and perks,” the report predicts. With consumers worldwide ever mindful of their health, and increasingly using digital platforms to access health-related information, MEC predicts another key trend this year. The development of apps and other devices that will enable consumers to “discreetly track and manage their own health.”

On the shopper front, per the agency, price tags will signal the start of negotiations.

“Securing the best deal is now accepted, if not admired by one fellow consumers, a significant shift in consumer attitude,” the report states. Recycling programs will also pick up steam this year, it predicts. “Brands will help consumers recycle by taking back old items and doing something constructive with them.” Cashless payment systems will also take off, spurred by rewards, loyalty programs and offers.

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Brands will also start paying significantly more attention to the hundreds of millions of low-income urban consumers in rapidly emerging markets like Brazil and India, which the report calls a “huge opportunity.” MEC predicts that the so-called “screen culture” will accelerate.

“Life will take place via ubiquitous, personal, immersive and interactive screens.” The continuing emergence of materialism in developing markets will drive “a new wave of frank and risqué campaigns and products in traditionally ‘conservative’ markets,” the shop predicts.

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