everyday situations
situation change
situation ownership
situation loop
situation development
situation chains
life situations
shopping situation
consumption situation
gender situations
New dimensions in consumption
– perspectives on situational consumption
•
Contents
-----------------------------→
Member’s Report 3, 2002
Prepared by CIFS
This report is solely for the
use of members of the
Copenhagen Institute for
Futures Studies.
Reprinting prohibited.
Idea and text
Niels Bøttger-Rasmussen
(MBA Econ., project leader)
Søren Jensen (M.Sc. Econ.)
Gitte Larsen (M.Sc. Pol.Sc.)
Lotte Aabel Østergaard
(M.Sc. Pol.Sc.)
Klaus Æ. Mogensen
(B.Sc. Phys.)
Birthe Linddal Hansen
(M.Sc. Soc. Sc.)
Layout
Klaus Æ. Mogensen
Printing
Jungersen Grafisk ApS
The Copenhagen Institute for
Futures Studies
December 2002
www.cifs.dk
Foreword
3
PART I – New dimensions in consumption
5
Driving forces for situational consumption
5
Driving forces on the supply side
Driving forces on the demand side
The new situal and the new communities
5
6
8
Segmentation: The big stories about consumers
11
Lifestyle segmentation: The value-based consumption of the individual
Life phase segmentation: From chronological to situational
Gender segmentation in the future: Old roles and new situations
Life mode segmentation: The five life modes of the industrial society
Time perception segmentation: Past, present and future oriented
11
12
13
15
15
Segmented or situational consumption?
16
Conclusion: Situations as the driving force of consumption
17
PART II – Perspectives on situational consumption
18
Four situational approaches: How to sell to the situational
consumer
18
Approach 1: Anywhere, any when…
Approach 2: Shopping situation and consumption situation
Approach 3: The two million situations
Approach 4: Situation owner – from individual situations to situation
chains
19
20
24
Concept and situation development
28
Co-marketing and ‘package deals’
Multichannel distribution in order to catch the most situations
Convenience: “whenever, wherever, whatever, however”
Custom-made for customers or for situations – or both?
28
28
29
30
Marketing and situational consumption
33
Notes
34
26
THE COPENHAGEN INSTITUTE FOR FUTURES STUDIES
Foreword
Situational consumption is the great new dimension in consumption, and in this
member’s report we present a new chapter on the development of the work with
situations and consumption.
We hope that the report will provide most of our membership organisations
with a number of good reasons to think in terms of situations in consumption,
shopping, concept development, product development, and marketing. We
additionally hope that the report can give the Copenhagen Institute for Futures
Studies cause to keep working with the subject. We definitely think it is worth
focusing on.
Situational consumption supplements storytelling, which is the other of the
great new dimensions in shopping. While storytelling focuses on the emotional,
situational consumption focuses on both the emotional and the functional.
Situational consumption also supplements the third great dimension in
consumption, namely traditional lifestyle segmentation, because it views
consumption through situations and ‘situals’ rather than through consumers and
individuals.
The basis for this report is the interest more and more people show in
situational consumption and the need for a supplement to the traditional lifestyle
segmentation.
We have dealt with the subject in earlier members’ reports, both Atomism
(1998/4), which was about the zeitgeist of the new millennium, and not least The
Consumer in the Future (2000/4), where we first presented situational
consumption.
A man, a product,
a brand, a
situation:
”I live off darkness”
Poul Henningsen,
Danish designer of
lamps
New dimensions in consumption
The first part of the report focuses on the overall perspectives for situational
consumption. When we change – as people and consumers, when our everyday
life and everyday situations change, then our needs and desires will also change.
Read about the driving forces for situational consumption and about the consumer
and the situations of the future.
The fundamental and traditional premises when we talk about consumption
are consumers and consumer segments. Some experts think that the power of
explanation of especially lifestyle segmentation is growing while others think it is
shrinking. We will go into that discussion at the end of the first part of the report.
We think that there is a need to understand the strengths and weaknesses
of the segmentation models – not least in relation to future consumption – and that
there is a need to broaden the horizons. When the desire is to create new growth
markets, companies, products, concepts, and brands, it is just as much a matter of
creating and implementing new ideas as it is to categorise the consumers. Instead
of solely being consumer-oriented there is a need for ideas for how you
continuously can work with renewing your relationship with your consumers.1
Situational consumption is such an idea. In this report, CIFS provides
inspiration for thinking in situations rather than in consumers and provides a
number of ideas to how you can work concretely with situations in relation to
consumption – and in relation to product development and marketing. The second
part of the report contains four different ways to structure situations and in addition
a number of examples of a more practical approach. The conclusion is that you can
develop both concepts and products for the situation and develop (new) situations.
The consequence is that marketing in the future must become a more integral part
of product development.
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3
The structure of the report
PART I
New Dimensions
in Consumption
- new and more situations
generally
We don’t just act
individually, but
also differently
from situation to
situation.
PART II
Perspectives on
Situational Consumption
- new and more situations
in consumption
New consumers
Many people in the marketing business experience that consumers become more
and more unpredictable and that the consumers not only have become less loyal
and more often change brand, shopping place and opinions, but that their
behaviour also increasingly is characterised by paradoxes. They say one thing and
do another. They ‘zap’ between the different lifestyles according to mood and
situation.
When the modern consumer acts, is the primary reason habit, tradition,
knowledge, or emotions? Is emotion in reality a very rational tool for making
decisions? How much do sudden impulses and pure coincidence mean?
It gets more and more difficult to sort people into groups and assume that
they stay there. All things are possible and all things are open to choice. Job,
family, faith, body, identity, time, and space, and there are more and more
opportunities for instant gratification in the shape of immediate satisfaction of
needs.
If the consumers act differently according to the situation, what stage they
are on, and what role they are currently acting out, and if the consumers
additionally become more mobile and more often change between situation,
undertake more changes of stage and assume more different roles, this must
necessarily result in situational consumption.
Consumption no longer accommodates a single, practical use; it must fulfil a
long range of different qualitative criteria all at once. In addition to price and basic
quality, and number of ethical, social, psychological and environmental
considerations come into it. The rank and order of these criteria aren’t fixed once
and for all, but change according to mood, situation and the present resources. We
don’t just act individually, but also differently from situation to situation.
There are many fields in situational consumption and the situational way of life that
could be interesting to do more work on. This report presents a number of
approaches to developing new products, new marketing and new situations in
relation to private consumption. But perhaps the basic idea, which is the move
towards a situational lifestyle, can also be used for developing public expenditures,
the HR field and new company concepts? One general example may be optional
personal goods that can be compounded according to the life situation of each
employee.
4
M E M B E R‘ S R E P O R T
THE COPENHAGEN INSTITUTE FOR FUTURES STUDIES
PART I – New Dimensions in Consumption
In this part of the report we open the field for situational consumption.
First we look at the most important driving forces for the development of
situational consumption on both the supply side and the demand side. We focus a
bit more on the demand side by also having a section about the modern consumer
where we have focused on the new situal and the new communities; i.e., the new
conditions for being a human being and being part of a community. The conclusion
is that situations as such are increasingly important for the way we think and the
way we live our everyday lives.
Secondly we summarise the most commonly used ways of segmenting
consumers today. We present a number of the segmentation models, and at the
same time we point to especially two overarching types of situations, which are and
will be decisive for situational consumption in the future. These are the new phases
of life, where the point is that it especially is the shift between phases of life that
creates new consumer situations, and the new gender situations; i.e., that women
and men live increasingly similar everyday lives and that there hence are many
new consumer situations in e.g. putting men on equal footing with women in
consumption.
Thirdly we have a section where we debate segments versus situations,
where we give voice to the different opinions. The section is based on interviews
about future consumption, which we have conducted for this report, and on recent
literature on the subject.
The conclusion for this part of the report is that the great tales about the
consumers are important in order to understand the consumers, but that it isn’t the
consumers, and hence only to a limited degree lifestyle segmentation, that are the
driving forces in the development of future consumption. It is first and foremost the
situation and the new situations.
Driving forces for situational consumption
The most important driving forces for the development of situational consumption
can be found on the supply side and the demand side, respectively.
Driving forces on the supply side
New technology gives more choices
New technology gives more and often better alternative choices for covering
consumer needs. Better means of transportation, teleservice and other relational
technology (= communication and transportation) give access to a broader supply
and more information about possibilities, quality and price. There is e.g. a
possibility for location-based services through the mobile phone and activitydetermined services through internet and interactive TV. There will be more
possibilities for choosing between ‘do it yourself’ and service, e.g. in the cases of
food and realtor service. We may choose the multifunctional communicator with
built-in internet, mobile phone, personal digital assistant, built-in camera, etc., or
we may choose a specialised device, e.g. a one-use camera or a luxury camera.
Increased accessibility
Supply is characterised by increased accessibility. More make use of multichannel
distribution, e.g. different types of shops, the internet, catalogues, call centres, etc.
More and more convenience stores see the light of day. More stores stay open 24
3/2002
5
hours a day, 7 days a week. More shopping centres crop up that offer ‘one-stop
shopping’. We see a slide of the trades where the focus lies is consumer needs
rather than production considerations.
Service and solutions
Supply is moving from raw materials and ingredients towards finished solutions,
results and transformation. Better logistics give the opportunity for service based
on ‘just in time/just in place’. Physical and virtual centres in the shape of key nodes
and network technology do theirs to create new solutions adapted to situations.
The supplier must become more deeply involved in the consumption situation in
order to create solutions.
Money is time: Time versus
consumption
A significant relationship in classical
economic theory is the choice of time
versus consumption; i.e., how much
you want to work/earn and hence
how much you can consume. A
second car will e.g. cost about 15
extra hours of work per week, so do
you want the car or use the time for
something else? Time versus total
consumption may become an
important and decisive question in
the future.
Among other things it depends on
whether the labour market becomes
more flexible and whether the
changes in attitude towards
careerism, the family and the desire
to live ’the good life’ are realised. As
we become richer and our basic
needs are fulfilled more easily, we
will get more choices, and the range
in consumer diversity can become
far greater.
Commercialisation
All are potential consumers no matter what they do. Business
life has an interest in turning as many (life) situations as
possible into situations of consumption/shopping/attention.
Boundaries are dissolved
When the old boundaries between types of activity, e.g.
between work, leisure time and education, are dissolved, new
consumption situations are created. When the traditional
boundaries between forms of communication, e.g. between
entertainment, information, advertisement, and teaching, are
broken down, new situations arise where messages or products
can be sold to the consumers. The same is true when
boundaries between channels of communication are dissolved.
They are often complimentary rather than alternatives.
Slide/dissolution of trades is another example of the breakdown
of boundaries resulting in an increase of situational
consumption.
‘Segment owner’
The suppliers are mainly interested in loyal consumers and try
to tie these to them. This is generally thought to be the most
profitable because of fewer marketing and transaction costs.
Attempts are made to hold onto the consumers through
branding by introducing loyalty programs and through contracts
and subscriptions that bind the customers. There is an interest
in becoming ‘segment owners’ and hence divide the segments
between the suppliers. But there is an increasing awareness
that this is far from being cost-free, and the effect is questioned.
The driving forces of the demand side
Less planned and more flexible and spontaneous consumption
Seen from the demand side the increased supply means that more and more
things are open to choice. Free choice from all shelves. The consumers live more
mobile lives. There are more opportunities for combining time, place, activity and
role. The many possible combinations aren’t planned ahead or covered by
personal preparedness, but people still expect to be ‘on top of the situation’. The
infrastructure, base of support, network or service providers must ensure this.
At the same time fewer things are certain because others have the same
multitude of choices. This increases unpredictability in situations that typically are
shared with others, e.g. dinner. All in all we will see more unplanned, unforeseen
and unpredictable events with associated consumer needs. The consumers live a
life with increased needs for flexibility, and hence situational consumption.
6
M E M B E R‘ S R E P O R T
THE COPENHAGEN INSTITUTE FOR FUTURES STUDIES
Increased affluence
Increased affluence creates a demand for adventure, including adventure shopping
and impulse buying. The growth in affluence also means increased focus on
comfort and life quality in all situations: at work, during transportation, when
shopping, at home, and it thus opens for convenience offers directed at the many
different situations.
In many cases convenience or adventure is going to influence consumer
decisions more than a close examination of many alternatives. If you can get to the
consumer in the situation, he or she is often going to choose the product even if it
isn’t optimal based on his or her criteria. This is especially true for low-involvement
consumption. For a typical consumer, generally only a small portion of the
consumption is high-involvement consumption while the main part is lowinvolvement consumption where parameters like cost, convenience and trust are
decisive. With the growth in affluence the products go from being luxuries to
becoming banal products. For many people today this is the case with e.g. cars
and dishwashers. Low-involvement consumption has more in common with work
and effort than with the enjoyment we normally connect with consumption. If price
and trust are okay, it is convenience (saved time) and the desire not to spend
mental energy that become decisive.
The growth and evening-out of affluence and ideas of equality mean that
signals of economic status gain relatively less weight. By far the most consumption
takes place in the middle class. Hence there will be less focus on signalling wealth
through consumption. It may even be considered vulgar, except for discrete
signals. This may be why shops like Aldi, Matalan and Netto can thrive side by side
in wealthy neighbourhoods. These shops aren’t so much based on segments as on
everyday situations.
The consumer and private consumption
We often think of consumption as what we buy in shops, but the consumption of food, beverages and clothes
only accounts for about 20% of our private consumption today compared to about 40% in 1966. In return the
consumption connected with the home constitutes 34% today compared to just 19% 35 years ago.
A far greater part of our consumption, actually about a third, is more or less fixed in the shape of subscriptions,
insurance, season tickets, memberships, and the consumption of electricity, water and heat in our homes. This
part of the consumption is often not in the consumers’ focus and is experienced by many as being forced
consumption. The consumption that can be moved around today is thus only a small part of the total
consumption, but this may change in the future. With liberalisation the market is opened and changes our
perception of ‘free’ and ‘forced’ consumption. This can create new consumption situations.
Distribution of private consumption in Denmark % 1966 and 2001 (rounded figures)
1966
Food
19%
Beverages (alcoholic) + tobacco
13%
Clothing and footwear
10%
Housing
10%
Electricity and fuel
4%
Home equipment, home services, etc.
9%
Medicine and other medical expenses
2%
Purchase of vehicles
5%
Communication and other transportation
9%
Hobby equipment, entertainment, travels
8%
3/2002
7
2001
11%
6%
5%
22%
6%
6%
3%
3%
11%
10%
The new situal and the new communities
When the world
changes, so do
people. We have a
tendency to think
that the individual
has been the
same at all times
and that it thus
mostly is a matter
of how the
individual persons
relate to the
changes they meet
and see.
When situations have become more and more decisive in consumption, it is not
least because of the changes that take place in the individual people’s ways of
being people. New situations and many different situations have simply become a
greater and more crucial part of our everyday lives.
When the world changes, so do people. We have a tendency to think that
the individual has been the same at all times and that it thus mostly is a matter of
how the individual persons relate to the changes they meet and see.2
We at CIFS make a claim that modern man changes and develops from
being an individual to better being characterised as a situal. It is an expression of
that we move away from fixed roles and functions to some that are more fluid and
situational. The next many years we are going to be both individuals and situals,
existing side by side.
The individual, being a product of the industrial society’s clear division
between work and family/home and hence between production and consumption,
quite simply has a hard time of it in a situational world where diversity and
changing situations are the rule rather than an exception. This is perhaps illustrated
best by the relationship between the old gender roles and the new gender
situations, to which we will return.
The individual had a need for a cohesive self. The situal doesn’t to the same
extent because it lives in a world characterised by changes and (new) situations. In
such a world a cohesive self may be both unhealthy and unpleasant.3
The basic personality of the individual derives from an ‘I’, a core self or soul. The
identity of the individual is based on inner/outer conflicts of interest – e.g. in the
relation between work vs. leisure time/home, public sphere vs. private sphere,
strategic pretence vs. honesty, and norms/conventions vs. personal feelings and
opinions. The individual is controlled by frameworks, planning and discipline.
The basic personality of the situal derives from a ‘we’, a context or a network. The
identity of the individual is based on there being no difference between the inner
and the outer – e.g., work is leisure and leisure is work, the home is a workplace
and the workplace is home. Pretence isn’t profitable for the situal, and it doesn’t
hide its emotions. The situal is controlled by connections, relations, flexibility, and
choice – of situations.4
Roughly speaking, where the individual takes its basis in itself, the situal takes its
basis in the situation. The individual acts from a solidly defined world, while the
situal is created in the world and the situations it finds itself in. For the individual, it
is a matter of finding itself, while for the situal it is a matter of placing itself – and it
prefers to place itself in meaningful rather than meaningless situations.5 The situal
is a large-scale consumer of (good) stories, but not in the same manner as the
individual. Where it for the individual is identity and lifestyle that is crucial, for the
situal it is the situation. Depending on what situation it is in, it acts and consumes
differently. The family dad may buy economically and child-friendly, but as a
sportsman he may be a consumer on a market where the price isn’t all-important.6
The worlds of life of the industrial society consisted of work (boss,
colleagues, subordinates), home (dad, mom, children) and club (president, fellows
and perhaps opponents) – and they existed as separate and clearly divided worlds.
In our post-industrial world, in the new society, it is more correct to speak of
spheres of life since there are a lot more and because they overlap both as
spheres and for each person. The spheres of life are e.g. work, home, family,
communities of interest, friends, and consumption. While the individual feels
divided between the many post-industrial spheres of life, the situal glides
effortlessly into the different contexts.
8
M E M B E R‘ S R E P O R T
THE COPENHAGEN INSTITUTE FOR FUTURES STUDIES
The new communities and situational consumption
Identity is tied to both a personal identity and a social identity in close interplay.7
The personal identity is tied to personality characteristics and close personal
relationships with the family. The social identity derives from groups which the
individual are formal or informal participants in or members of – e.g. in relation to
work, education, leisure time, nationality, gender, age, or consumption. Both sides
of the identity play an important role in how we see ourselves as individual persons
and as people in different communities.
“People also get identity from consumption of products and brands.
Consumption is actually one of the activities that in many ways is the epitome of
lifestyle today,” Henrik Vejlgård writes in Cool og Hip Marketing. According to him,
modern man has several identity-providing traits that change and are prioritised
differently according to the situation.
Situational consumption is a supplement to traditional value-based
segmentation and to storytelling and branding. Situational consumption looks at
both the purely functional and general human needs and on values and lifestyle.
Situational consumption also takes place in situations where emotions and signal
value plays an important part. But it is an expression of that the consumer or situal
acts on a number of different stages, has different roles and hence is going to need
props for different situations (see figure).
“People also get
identity from
consumption of
products and
brands.
Consumption is
actually one of the
activities that in
Situation – self-image and choice of brands
many ways is the
epitome of lifestyle
Perception
of others in
the situation
Situational
self-image
Comparison of
brand-image
and situational
self-image
today.”
Individual’s /
situal’s
repertoire of
self-images
Comprehensive
view of
brand-images
for a product
Choice
of brand
Based on Schenk & Holman: A Sociological Approach to Brand Choice: The Concept of Situational
Self Image, Advances in Consumer Research, Volume 7, 1980, and on CIFS’s own work on the situal.
3/2002
9
We are moving
from one
community – from
worlds of life that
were based on
more or less fixed
values and on
individuals with
core selves – to a
new community
and a new kind of
human being – to
new spheres of life
that mainly
consists on fluid
and overlapping
situations with a
self that depends
on context or
situation.
Formerly communities – from which you
got your personal and social identity – were
based on a common locality, a common
activity and a common mentality. Today a
community needs just one of these
characteristics to function as a community.
This e.g. means that though communities
today may be more fun and more varied,
they are also ‘weaker’ or unstable and
more transient.8 The new communities,
which can be based on one or more of the
traditional basic elements of communities,
are at the same time more situational. You
e.g. take the Underground in the morning
and read Metro, and the only thing you
have in common is the locality – the
transport situation.
Today each individual person, the situal,
mainly gets its identity from the new
communities. Vejlgård mentions that the
social identity has become more important because the individual person has more
opportunities for entering several groups or communities.9
And this is precisely how it is for the situal. It is the participation in the many
formal and informal groups or communities that define and create the situal – and
at the same time it is also the situal that defines and creates the
groups/communities. What the person does and what society does are intimately
connected – they are two sides of the same coin, and the two sides create each
other.10 The consequence is that the situation and situations become overall more
important – and this is also true for consumption.
It thus isn’t solely one group that you belong to, according to lifestyle or
consumer segmentation that provides identity and direction in everyday life and
consumption, but equally much the concrete situation you are a part of. And the
situation or community you are in may solely be based on one of locality, activity or
mentality.
Sociologist Henrik Dahl, a strong advocate of the segmentation models,
thinks that the result of the many choices today is that the conformity within the
group you have chosen to belong to is increasing rather than diminishing. “The
more free we become, the more we act like herd animals within the group we
belong to,” he writes.11
The difference is just that we no longer are individuals with a solidly
determined ‘I’ or ‘self’’ and a fixed membership of just one group, but more and
more have become situals that define our personality and identity recurrently and
according to the situation – to what contexts, relations, networks, spheres or
communities we are a part of. The big and important “who am I” question, which is
quite central to the individual, and to which there is only one answer for the
individual, doesn’t exist for the situal.
To put it simply, it isn’t possible to put the situal into boxes or segments, but
you can try to understand and describe the situations and connections they take
part in. This is in part what situational consumption is about – describing present
and future situations; situations that create new shopping and consumption
situations.
We are moving from one community – from worlds of life that were based on
more or less fixed values and on individuals with core selves – to a new community
and a new kind of human being – to new spheres of life that mainly consists on
fluid and overlapping situations with a self that depends on context or situation.
10
M E M B E R‘ S R E P O R T
THE COPENHAGEN INSTITUTE FOR FUTURES STUDIES
Segmentation:
The big stories about the consumers
Lifestyle segmentation: the value-based consumption
of the individual
Lifestyle segmentation of consumers is both widely used and much debated. The
method became popular 10-15 years ago and has since been used as a tool for
directing communication – and generally speaking, lifestyle segmentation can
explain at least 60 percent of the consumption. Some feel that they still are the best
tools on the market. Others maintain that the models aren’t as good as they used
to be, e.g. because the consumers have become lifestyle nomads, lifestyle zappers
or situational consumers (see the discussion in the section “Segmented or
situational consumption”).
Lifestyle is a matter of self-image, identity and status, but also of ethics and
aesthetics in the way we live our lives. As people we organise ourselves according
to what identities and symbols provide status in different connections.
”Life-styles are defined as patterns in which people spend time and money.
They are a function of consumers motivation and prior learning, social class,
demographics, and other variables.” (Engel et al 1986)
Lifestyle segmentation is
based on analyses of basic
values and opinions. Their
use for marketing depends
on there being a relatively
stable relationship between
the basis values, the derived
opinions regarding products
and advertisement
messages, and the following
concrete consumer
behaviour.
The lifestyle models, or the
psychodemographic models
as they are also called,
divide the population/
consumers into a number of
archetypes. Some may be
familiar with the simple
version from Minerva, where
each archetype has a colour
(see figure).
The Minerva model by AC Nielsen is one of the most used segmentation models
in Scandinavia. The Minerva model “Snapshot” sorts people on the basis of 100
life values – values that rarely are changed and which mostly are deeply rooted
in the personality of the individual. The Minerva model sorts people into four
segments based on the axes traditional/modern and idealistic/materialistic.
Green: Primarily idealistic and modern
Blue: Primarily pragmatic and modern
people with a small preponderance of
people with a preponderance of males and
females and public employees. A typical
private employees. A typical blue person is a
green person is a female managing clerk in
male yuppie in his mid-thirties who is doing
her mid-thirties who buys organic food.
well. Blue persons typically read business
papers and more often have degrees
Green people are typically interested in
Grey:
culture and more often have degrees
in business than in humanities.
The middle group
in humanities than in business.
that takes a bit from
the four others and
hence always is a
Violet: Primarily pragmatic and
Rose: Primarily idealistic and tradibit diffuse - even
traditional people with a prepondeditional people with a small prepondefor itself
rance of males and skilled labourers.
rance of women and skilled labourers.
A typical violet person is a craftsman and
A typical rose person is a hairdresser and
washes his own car every Sunday. Green
loves romance. Rose persons typically read
persons typically read tabloid newspapers.
tabloids and weekly magazines.
All the psychodemographic models are related and have roots in the so-called
VALS model (Values and Lifestyles) developed at Stanford, and in the European
pendant RISC.
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11
Life phase segmentation:
From chronological to situational
The life phase model is a simple segmentation model that has its basis in everyday
life and situations. It is thus first and foremost a matter of the combination of family
life and working life.
The Copenhagen Institute for Futures Studies has previously introduced The
New Phases of Life, which according to the figure are the dependent children, the
‘independent’ young, the free ones I, parents, the free ones II, and the elderly. The
main point is that since the middle of the previous century, two new groups of
people and consumers based on life phase have arrived: The free ones I (adults in
their 20s without children) and the free ones II (adults ca. 55-75 years old with
grown-up children).
Not only is consumption different in the different phases of life. It is just as
important that a change in phase of life causes very great changes in consumption,
and consumer decisions are made where the consumption is determined for a long
period – perhaps the rest of the life, considering that a lot of consumption is
contractually bound.
CIFS’s life phase model is an expression of a dynamic description that isn’t
tied to age for the individual. Within the last generation we have thus seen a shift in
the ages where people typically go from one phase of life to another, something
that depends on developments in lifestyle, education and attitude towards age.
This has of course had general consequences for the development in
consumption. CIFS plans to keep working with this model and detail it more, both
theoretically and empirically.
12
Elderly
Free ones II
Parenthood & career
Free ones I
Dependent
2000
Independent
The
1950
The phases of life are primarily
defined by how your life situation is
New Phases of Life
in relation to the combination of
family life and working life. The
assumption is that the situation in
which the individual finds itself is
crucial for the individual consumer
choice and that this is far less
determined by age that before. We
increasingly become unable to
predict what the individual thinks
and does on the basis of age.
E.g. take two women, both
35 years old. One hasn’t yet
established a family and lives as a
free one I. The other has an
almost grown-up child of 15 and is
in a few years going to become a
free one II. Another example of how life situation is more important than age is the
free ones II who choose to exchange the suburb house with a city apartment. Or
what about the weekend dad, who lives as a mix of free one I and II on weekdays,
but as a parent every other weekend and on holidays? How many 45 years old are
living as free ones I, and how many are free ones II?
It may be that the phases of life may come to be more life situations or
lifestyles that don’t really depend on how old you are, but on how you have chosen
to live. The phases of life are then no longer phases you live through in more or
less chronological order, but new types of life styles you ‘shop around’ in
depending on your life situation.
In relation to consumption this means that life phase and life situation are at
least as important for our everyday lives and doings as are our lifestyles or values.
M E M B E R‘ S R E P O R T
THE COPENHAGEN INSTITUTE FOR FUTURES STUDIES
Gender segmentation in the future:
The old gender roles and the new gender situations
It is commonly assumed that up to 75-80 percent of all consumer decisions are
made by women. Who consumes what for a large part still depends on the practice
of masculine and feminine values and roles in many cultures.13 The traditional
masculine and feminine values are still the same in survey after survey. Men
prioritise career, competition, fixed strategy, and results, and have the outlook of a
specialist, while women prioritise social/professional networks, community,
flexibility, and process, and have a comprehensive outlook.14
The value priorities of men has characterised working life and workplaces
until women entered the labour market and brought their values (those of home
and family) with them. In the industrial society, men and masculine values were the
basis for production while women and feminine values were the basis for
consumption. See the figure on the next page.
We can’t draw a similar picture of the new
society, information society or what we call it. The
picture isn’t nearly as clear-cut. The women have
The consumer is a woman
entered the labour market and part of the
production, and the men have entered the
It hasn’t always been that way. It wasn’t until
families. The relationship between production
the industrial age that the home and
and consumption has become far more fluid –
household became the basis for consumption
and nothing suggests that it will become any less
and sale. The women were in charge of
fluid in the future.
household consumption and still found it
What will be feminine and what will
possible to express themselves socially. They
be masculine in the future? This becomes harder
became professional consumers and they
and harder to answer because we see a
were/are ’GPAs’ (general purchasing agents)
breakdown of the traditional gender values, the
with responsibility for planning and
values that historically have been tied to work
decisions.12
and production on the one hand and family/home
and consumption on the other hand. In the future,
The high point was the department store,
production and consumption are two faces of a
which represented the ideal way in which
never-ending process – situations that probably
women could enter the public sphere in a
become less and less dependent on gender. This
socially recognised manner and in an
means that the market for male consumption will
environment oriented towards females. The
grow in the future.
’general attitude’ is that consumption is a
In other words: when women’s roles and
leisure time occupation, but the women see
functions have changed and still are changing –
consumption as more of a legitimising activity
when women enter into new situations, their
because it is a type of caring duty in the
consumer behaviour also changes. This is also
family and is part of being a woman.
the case for men – and this is probably where the
greatest changes in relation to consumption and
shopping situations will be found in the future.
The new gender situations derive from that our everyday life and everyday
situations become more and more alike. We share the work relating to children,
shopping, cooking, other duties, and home organisation. However, there still are
gender-specific differences between what women and men do at home. Overall,
the family or parent phase has also become more homogenous – the family has
become what we call ‘the standardised family’.15 In the standardised family both
parents work full time and more hours a week than others, the family lives in a villa,
has two cars and very little savings.
3/2002
13
”She Went Shopping While He Worked”
Production and consumption values in the industrial society
Marketing and
developing
consumer
situations for men
requires original
thinking in a
number of areas.
Production
& work
Consumption
& family/home
Masculine values
Career
Competition
Fixed strategy
Results
Specialist
Feminine values
Social/prof. networks
Community
Flexibility
Process
Comprehensive view
Put the man on equal footing in the consumption
Because consumption largely has been feminine and targeted at women, there are
good reasons to consider the masculine variant since the future will be different
from the past. We may even say: put the man on equal footing in the consumption!
He makes up 50 percent of the potential consumers in the future, and with the
changes in the old gender roles and the new gender situations, he will most likely
consume more in the future. And there are lots of possibilities – from the banal like
beer tasting in supermarkets to new shop concepts aimed at male consumers.
Marketing and developing consumer situations for men requires original
thinking in a number of areas. To give an example, you can look at almost any
department store catalogue today, and on the cover you will find a female-oriented
environment, followed by clothes and footwear for women, then clothes, footwear
and toys for children, then kitchen utensils and such, and finally things for men.
No matter what, women and men are increasingly going to be in the same
situations and will lead more and more identical everyday lives – at work, at home,
with the family and in consumption. But this doesn’t mean that some of their more
or less traditional values won’t influence their consumption. This is why we speak
of gender situation – the male and the female sides are probably going to make
themselves known in some way in various situations because we act and think
differently while the situations become more alike for both genders.
A couple of examples of how the male and female sides make themselves known
in consumption today are:16
• Women are more process-oriented than men are. Women spend more
shopping – more time browsing, examining and asking questions. The more
time spent in a shop, the more purchases are made.
• Men are more result-oriented than women are. 65 percent of men who try
things on, buy them – compared to just 25 percent of women.
• Women take the comprehensive view. The majority of political consumers are
women. At the same time, 86 percent of women looks at the price tag –
compared to 72 percent of men.
14
M E M B E R‘ S R E P O R T
THE COPENHAGEN INSTITUTE FOR FUTURES STUDIES
Life mode segmentation:
The five life modes of the industrial society
The so-called life mode model consists of three general modes of life: The selfemployed, the career professional and the wage earner. The life modes are based
on values that permeate the person’s behaviour all the way through life, including
consumer behaviour. The method or model is developed by the ethnologist
Thomas Højrup. Since then, the model has been supplemented by two additional
life modes developed by his colleague Lone Rahbek: the housewife and the
backing-up woman, based on values in the hinterland of the labour market and the
family sphere connected to the home.
CIFS has used the life mode perspective in a project about how the elderly
perceive old age and how they participate in society with technology as a tool. One
aspect of the participation is consumption – and the study shows that there is a lot
of difference in how carriers of the various life forms experience consumption. The
project “The Elderly and IT – a structured life in the future” will be published in book
form (in Danish) in December 2002.
Time perception segmentation:
Past, present and future oriented
To better illuminate consumer opinions of a more dynamic character, the
Copenhagen Institute for Futures Studies introduced time perception segmentation
a few years back. Based on a number of questions regarding development and
change, we categorised a representative fraction of the population in three time
perception groups. The distribution was one-quarter in each group and a quarter
that couldn’t be placed.
•
•
•
The future oriented are ‘optimists’ and ‘modernists’. They think that the future is
full of opportunities and that it is better than the past. Things are developing in
the right direction, e.g. because they are able to influence it. They are
proactive.
The past oriented are ‘pessimists’ and ‘traditionalists’. They think things are
changing too fast, and that basic values are lost. They are very aware of
dangers and threats, and they worry, but do have opinions about the changes.
They are reactive.
The present oriented aren’t interested in hypothetical changes. They don’t think
things change all that much, and they don’t think they can influence it. They
don’t have an opinion about new things until they can try them out and use
them and see their function or advantage in their everyday lives. They are
passive.
The three perceptions are caricatures that should be viewed in relation to each
other, and we can harbour elements of all three. What matters are the focus and
the priorities.
The Copenhagen Institute for Futures Studies plans to do more work with the time
perception model in order to turn it into a tool that can be used both in relation to
understanding consumption, consumers and marketing and in relation to
developing employees and organisations.
3/2002
15
Segmented or situational consumption?
“The new consumer is roughly speaking characterised by that they defy
classification – which is why segmentation – which has been the cornerstone
of market analysis the last 70 years – often fails when you attempt to use it.”
“It used to be
that the ‘blue’
consumer wore
Boss suits and
could be found at
the trendy cafés;
you knew exactly
where he was at.
He worked a certain body part off.”
Thus writes the author of the book The Soul of the New Consumer and owner of an
international research firm specialising in consumer surveys, Consultancy. David
Lewis is one of those who believe that situational consumption will gain ground and
challenge the segmentation models. According to Lewis we are dealing with an
entirely new kind of consumer that spans age boundaries, ethnicity, and to some
extent also income level.
But there is no general agreement among researchers and practitioners
about whether the traditional segmentation models really are losing their value.
Some, like the authors David Lewis and the Danish lifestyle researcher and writer
of the book Cool og Hip marketing, Henrik Vejlgård, think that the ‘nonsegmentable’ situational consumption will be the result of increased
individualisation.
Conversely, Henrik Dahl, one of the main people behind the segmentation model
Minerva, thinks that the self-same individualisation leads to a greater need for
social belonging – and hence also more predictable consumption patterns.
According to Henrik Dahl, modernism and the hard-won freedom has carried
mankind into an ocean of choices that easily can lead to uncertainty and paranoia.
Increasingly, people navigate like others in order to conquer the uncertainty. Hence
the result of freedom and individualisation very much is that the freer we become,
the more we act like herd animals within the group we belong to. The result is that
it isn’t going to be harder to categorise people and make tenable segmentation
models (see also the section “The new situal and the new communities”).
According to Henrik Dahl, the segmentation models have greater powers of
explanation today than before, although they are also less transparent. The point is
that when it no longer becomes possible to categorise the population according to
geography, age and income, it becomes necessary to instead relate them to
values, as they are expressed in lifestyle segmentation.
Situational factors as a new approach
Irene Iversen, junior executive at AC Nielsen/AIM and responsible for the
MINERVA survey, thinks that the segment-based and situational approaches with
advantage can supplement each other. She thinks the value-based lifestyle is the
core. Our lifestyles change, but it happens slowly as a part of the general evolution
of society. When you have a set of values, you don’t go against it just because the
situation urges you to do so. This is why the situational lifestyle is lying on top of
the value-based lifestyle. It is important to be aware of the value-based lifestyle in
order to map the situational, Irene Iversen thinks, and for this reason she thinks
that the value-based and situational approaches to the consumers supplement
each other.
It is true that you have to break it up, thinks Linda Frøkjær from the advertisement
bureau Republica: “It used to be that the ‘blue’ consumer wore Boss suits and
could be found at the trendy cafés; you knew exactly where he was at. He worked
a certain body part off.” It is no longer certain that the ‘blue’ consumer behaves this
way, says Linda Frøkjær, so we have to keep refining our methods.
Professor Søren Askegaard, the University of Southern Denmark, author of e.g.
“Life Style Research: Towards a Theoretical Foundation”, doesn’t think that the
value-based lifestyle models are particularly useful to explain consumer behaviour.
16
M E M B E R‘ S R E P O R T
THE COPENHAGEN INSTITUTE FOR FUTURES STUDIES
The reason is that they are just as ‘monolithical’ as the classical sociodemographic
variables. He doesn’t think that there is any scientific evidence to support that the
segmentation models have achieved a better degree of explanation – and until
such evidence exists, as Søren Askegaard puts it, he would like permission to
doubt the claims that they do. However, Søren Askegaard thinks that the models
still with advantage can be used to think the market, as long as you don’t assume
they can be used to predict consumer behaviour.
A part of the explanation of why situational consumption is a better basis
than the segmentation models is that we have become more pressed for time and
that the market’s supply has increased. This means that there logically may be
more situations where situational factors are more important – simply because our
everyday lives and the market supply have changed. The only catch, says Søren
Askegaard, is that it may not be the behaviour that is changing. Perhaps we are
just becoming increasingly aware of the impossibility of having these very general
models; this control idea about being able to control the market by categorising it.
Perhaps the consumers have always been situational, but the special view of
science and the way we conduct market analyses may have meant that we haven’t
had the language or decent tools for handling a different approach. For this reason
we may have chosen to ignore it and attempted to solve it through other artifices.
Anders Høiris, CEO of IC-Companys, doesn’t doubt that consumer behaviour has
become more situational and a lot harder to predict with segmentation models. This
is primarily because people have become more sophisticated, individualistic and
affluent. He also points out that segmentation is pointless if you can’t reach the
segment through e.g. the right medium. According to Anders Høiris it isn’t enough
to be able to form the segments – if you also have to be able to reach them, it can
become a complex puzzle. Because of this he thinks that from a practical
viewpoint, you will profit more from other approaches than the segmentation
models.
“Consumer
behaviour has
become more
situational and far
harder to predict
with segmentation
models.”
Anders Høiris,
CEO,
IC-Companys
Conclusion:
Situations as the driving force of consumption
The familiar big stories about the consumers are expressions of traditional
segmentation of consumers, which may be based on another time, another type of
society and another type of people than in the present and particularly the future.
It is important to understand the consumers, and here lifestyle segmentation
is good as one of several possibilities; but the consumer can’t be the driving force
in the evolution of consumption. If so, we would never have had www, mobile
phones or many other things.
We have in this part of the report looked at three basic types of situations
that are and will continue to be influential for consumption in the future – namely
the new situational communities, which has wrought and is being wrought by the
situal, the new gender situations, and the new phases of life.
Segmentation models are about categorising people and consumption on
the basis of values, opinions and actions – on the basis of lifestyle. Situational
consumption casts a light on why and when situations, rather than values and
lifestyle, is decisive for our consumption.
In the next section of this report, we focus on situational consumption.
3/2002
17
PART II – Perspectives on Situational
Consumption
In this part of the report we deal with situational consumption with a more marketoriented approach. We cast a light on the situational consumption and provide our
currently best ideas of what the game of the situations may look like in the future.
This takes the shape of a number of perspectives on situational consumption.
Situational consumption is a lot of things, and it includes everything from
low-involvement shopping over impulse purchases and functional purchases to
high-involvement shopping. We have attempted to systematise all these situations.
We first present four approaches to situations; different ways of
understanding and defining situations in relation to consumption. Each can be used
independently as a basis when you try to sell to the situational consumer. But they
can also supplement each other and be tailored depending on product and
situation. The four approaches are presented as ideas for and input to tools that
make it possible to work with situational consumption.
Following this we have a section on concept development and situational
development. The section provides examples of how you can work with situational
consumption in relation to the development of concepts for situations and the
development of situations. This may e.g. be through ‘package deals’ for specific
situations, through multichannel distribution, through convenience solutions or by
tailoring to customers/situations.
At the end we have a short section on marketing and situational
consumption, where one of two points is that you can choose to base yourself on
individualised one-to-one marketing or on situational marketing. The other point is
that if you take situational marketing seriously, then product development and
marketing must be integrated a lot more in the future.
Four situational approaches: How to sell to the
situational consumer
At an overall level, situational consumption is about using the life situations of the
consumers as the basis and thus create a number of situations for consumption,
shopping or awareness. The basis isn’t consumer needs, since these on the
contrary often grow out of, or are created by, a situation. The supplier does his part
to create the need, just as the consumer plays his part in ‘producing’ the
satisfaction of the need. The supplier also has an opportunity to influence the
‘script’ that characterises a situation and turns it to his own advantage, e.g. when a
railway line advertisement has a picture of a traffic jam accompanied by the text:
“On the train, you also have the time to sit back and relax.”
From low involvement to high involvement
Situational consumption consists of a wide range of consumer situations, from
banal and random low-involvement purchases to consumer situations
characterised by high involvement with regard to both the functional and the
emotional.
1. The sudden, unexpected need, e.g. for buying an umbrella or a raincoat.
2. Low-involvement purchases, where there is a basic need, but the choice of
shop or product is ruled by circumstances or situation, typically based on what
requires the least resources in the shape of time, money and mental energy.
3. The impulse purchase, where you are tempted by the shopping situation to buy
a product that you didn’t realise you needed.
18
M E M B E R‘ S R E P O R T
THE COPENHAGEN INSTITUTE FOR FUTURES STUDIES
4. Targeted situational consumption, where you buy a product that is functionally
tailored to the situation. It may be the product itself that is specialised, or it may
be the way it is delivered: ‘just in time/just in place’ distribution. It may also be
package deals in the shape of combinations of standard products that help
make a situation possible or perfect.
5. High-involvement purchases, where different situations e.g. are different
scenes with different audiences, in which the consumer requires different props
(products). The consumer isn’t an individual, but rather a ‘situal’, which isn’t
just different from others, but also from itself, depending on the situation.
Situational consumption can be many things. When you want to handle situational
consumption, you can distinguish between various types and groups of situations –
e.g. “anywhere, any when…” (situational approach 1), “The shopping situation and
the consumption situation” (approach 2), “The two million situations” (approach 3)
and “Situation chains” (approach 4).
Approach 1: Anywhere, any when…
Situational consumption is not least a result of a
number of the factors, which we used to take for
granted, having become variable. This is e.g. the case
with time and place.
Consumer situations consist of those temporary
environmental factors, that form the context within
which a consumer activity occur at a particular place
and time.17
“Situation variables are all those factors particular to a
time and place of observation, which do not follow from
a knowledge of personal (intraindividual) and stimulus
attributes (choice alternatives).”18
Planned or unplanned situations
Situations can be planned (expected or scheduled), or
they can be unplanned, where you act on the basis of
what you feel like here and now and what is currently
possible.
The rigid structures of the industrial society are
in the process of being dissolved.
Concepts like office hours, opening hours, meal
times, and closing time will disappear. The same is
true for the physical divisions between e.g. shop and
restaurant and the familiar zone divisions, e.g.
between outdoors and indoors and between public and
private. Combined with forces on the supply side, e.g.
compound trading, this pulls in the direction of far more
choices and hence more unplanned situations where
consumption choices are taken in and determined by
the situation.
3/2002
The appointment book – everyday
life becomes less predictable
More and more is squeezed into the
appointment book, and this means that
each individual is forced to plan and
prioritise his time spending more. In the
past, it was common that ‘unexpected’
guests dropped in for coffee in the evening
or Sunday afternoon. This doesn’t happen
anymore because time is no longer set
aside for unexpected visists. The
unexpected guests risk interrupting the late
dinner, the fitness programme, important
preparations for the next day, the ‘do-ityourself’ task that you’ve finally decided to
do something about, or an important TV
series. Instead, visits are planned months
ahead. In return, the evening meal isn’t
decided until after 4 p.m., depending on the
situation. This development implies a shift
and new order of priority in our planning
pattern. Working hours and meal times
used to be fixed and scheduled. Today all
the things we don’t have to lay down are
kept open as long as possible. Meetings,
deadlines, leisure time activities, where we
depend on others or where others depend
on us, get first priority in the appointment
book. These appointments can be
scheduled at any time.
The digital, intelligent relational
technology of today and especially the
future gives us tools to become more
flexible and spontaneous.
19
Approach 2: Shopping situation and consumption
situation
It is also important to distinguish between the shopping and purchase situation and
the consumption situation, since the two situations often are separated in time.
Sometimes there is a close connection between the purchase situation and
the consumption situation. A soft-ice or snack on the street is an example of this,
but typically purchases are made for later consumption or storage. If the suppliers
can remove or shorten this time lag, there is a great potential.
Consumption cycle
Shopping
Approach
•Experience
Intention of purchase
•Inspiration
•Learning
Situations
Needs
Replacement
purchase
Departure
•Disposal
•Ordering
•Consumed
•Payment
•Discarded
•Delivery
•Storage
•Personal
•Gift
consumption
consumption
Purchase
The figure shows a consumption
cycle that can be used to analyse
and handle the different consumer
situations. Some situations
become more important while
others lose relative importance
with advances in technology and
the logistics systems, etc. It is
important to look at the whole
picture and on what can be done
to optimise sales or the experience
of quality in the individual links in
consumption and not least look at
how the interplay between the
different consumer situations in
this cycle changes.
The supplier that can shorten the
distance (temporal as well as
Consumption
mental) between the different
situations has a competitive
advantage in a changeable world
where it becomes harder and
harder to plan your needs and where unexpected or changed needs arise. The
product or service must be present when the consumer feels the need. ‘Just in time
& just in place’ is hence a key concept. Ideally, you should be able to postpone
ordering the product and have it delivered until you actually need to use it. ‘Just in
time’ is also a part of the concept of convenience, see later.
The first condition is that the consumer has access to the product in the situation.
This is partly a matter of awareness and knowledge of how you get the product in
the situation (pull). If you additionally have the opportunity to stimulate the
customer optimally (push), there is an even greater probability for turning a latent
need into a sale. The customer will often not be aware of having a need until
exposed to the proper situational stimuli.
Pre-shopping situations
These are all the everyday situations where the suppliers have real opportunities
for getting to potential customers with a message or stimulus, which in the best
case may lead to purchase or the intention of purchase, or at least to positive
attention (mindshare). This includes advertisement, including general brand
building and ‘education’ of the consumers. It becomes more important to create a
direct opportunity for the potential customer to immediately take the next step in a
purchase process.
20
M E M B E R‘ S R E P O R T
THE COPENHAGEN INSTITUTE FOR FUTURES STUDIES
“Permission marketing” is about getting to
situations where consumers are receptive to
consumption messages. This can e.g. be when
your situation changes, and with it your needs.
When an everyday situation invites to a
shopping situation
It becomes a matter of combining concrete
everyday situations with relevant needs and
products that meet the needs on the spot.
• Utilise the increasing number of
opportunities for creating a connection
between awareness/message and the
opportunity for concrete action (purchase).
The consumers have to be able to transform
an impulse to consume/buy into actual
purchase (ordering), e.g. through easy
access to internet ordering or the telephone
number to a call centre, etc.
• Use packaging and products more actively
as messengers. In the future more and
more products will be online or have built-in
possibilities that make online access easier,
e.g. microchips. This e.g. provides
opportunities for buying accessories and
upgrades.
• Branding through encountering the product
in everyday life (the message is the
product). Product placement is one way to
do this.
Meaningful messages
Due to ‘information overload’ it becomes
increasingly important to ensure that messages
are experienced as relevant by the customers. We
must expect a certain advertisement fatigue,
which may harm the currently used methods for
brand building. The consumers have become so
skilled at selection that the messages often only
work when they have direct relevance for the
consumer’s present situation. Firing broadsides is
too expensive; it waters down the message, and
you may even teach the customers to ‘shut off’,
e.g. when a TV commercial triggers a channel
change.
The messages must be meaningful.
Detatched stories are often meaningless stories
(unless you are in the entertainment business). In
front of the television, the consumers are often in
a beta situation, characterised by low involvement
and passive entertainment. This may well be the
reason why this advertisement channel at times is
totally dominated by commercials for ‘beta
products’ like music and snacks.
In spite of the advertisement crisis it is
interesing to note that supermarket flyers and
local weekly newspapers are used a lot by
customers (by 60% and 80%, respectively), and
that the experienced relevance of both has
increased from 1999 to 2001.*
We must expect an increased focus on
stories with real content. What can the product do
for me – is it newer, cheaper, better? When the
company has something new to tell, or when the
situation the customer presently is in makes the
customer more impressionable.
Use ‘idle’ situations in people’s everyday life
to create attention, needs and preferably
also purchases:
• Waiting time in shops, waiting rooms and
cars
• Transport time: the radio is suitable for
*): Gallup for Mediaedge:cia Denmark, according
transportation
to Berlingske Tidende
• Toilet breaks: increased use of
advertisement in toilets?
• Vacation time: unlike everyday life, there is plenty of time for trying and
experiencing new things
We must expect that the future will have more ‘idle’ situations. We must expect
increased commuting and less predictability in the everyday due to a less
structured work pattern and more appointments, and hence also cancelled
appointments. For instance, a third of all patients don’t show up for scheduled
operations.
Our prediction is that more marketing activity in the future will be moved from
general image commercials to concrete everyday situations. This may be in the
shop, but also through (mobile) internet and mail order. Sales flyers are really a
form of mail order catalogues. Why not order the article on the internet and pick it
up in Salisbury’s convenience department, which in the future even may be at the
nearest filling station?
A pre-shopping situation that will be especially interesting is when a supplier
offers something relevant to the situation before the consumer himself has become
aware of his need.
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21
The shopping situation
The actual shopping situation is the next link in the chain – where consumer and
supplier meet.
A shopping situation is something else and more than a purchase situation.
The shopping situation will depend on a number of personal and social motives.
There are opportunities for impulse buying, sensory experiences, learning, killing
time, etc. Many actually leave the store again without having bought anything. This
key figure may be just as interesting a parameter as the daily turnover. In stores for
durable goods, it is often as high as 50%.19 Many studies show that 60-70% of the
articles customers leave with are different from what was planned, or they weren’t
planned at all.20
A shopping
situation is
something else
and more than a
purchase situation.
Many actually
leave the store
again without
having bought
anything.
In the retail trade there is a polarisation in shopping malls on the one hand and
convenience stores on the other hand. In the shopping malls, it is partly a matter of
one-stop shopping for families that handle the grocery shopping for the week, and
partly about spending exciting time together. In the future we will likely see an
additional division between the more routine grocery shopping and durable goods,
where the ‘excitement’ primarily is about fashion, home, music, etc.
The two types of shops won’t necessarily thrive side by side in the future. It can be
tempting to say: excitement is one thing, grocery shopping something else.
The traditional anonymous supermarket is under pressure and must choose to go
the way of convenience or the way of the mall.
In the field of speciality goods, there is also a polarisation between one-stop
shopping on the one hand and lifestyle or concept shops on the other, which takes
its basis in consumption situations and/or lifestyle segments.
Especially in the case of durable goods, but in the future also for groceries,
we can expect more concept shops. Not just ones that are based on a lifestyle
segment, but also some that use situations and solutions as their basis. One
example is furniture stores that are organised as models of fully furnished homes.
Examples from the field of groceries are www.aarstiderne.dk, www.igourmet.com
and www.bonappetit-int.com. These shops sell fresh and healthy raw materials,
inspiration, surprises, and simplification.
In the supermarkets we can imagine the articles categorised according to
consumption situation, e.g. by type of meal rather than type of article. Some
supermarkets have experimented with this model. The disadvantage is that in
parallel with that, they also have to operate with the traditional arrangement. This is
partly because most consumers, at least for the next many years, categorise this
way in their heads, and partly – and perhaps more importantly – because the
possible combinations become increasingly numerous as the familiar patterns and
categories are dissolved. A breakfast product can also be used as a snack, and
vice versa.
Category management and merchandising are disciplines that CIFS isn’t going to
touch on here. We will simply conclude that situational consumption suggests that
these fields will be even more important in the future, and that things have to be
combined across traditional business fields, categories, and value chain links. For
instance, with the growth in affluence, ‘impulse buying’ will come to include
increasingly expensive products.
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THE COPENHAGEN INSTITUTE FOR FUTURES STUDIES
The purchase situation
The purchase itself, where the deal is closed, is naturally the concrete goal of the
supplier. For the consumer, it is a matter of a transaction between the ‘shopping’
experience and the actual ‘consumption’. For the consumer, this transaction should
preferably be as frictionless as possible. It can take place by phone, through the
internet, or automatically. In the future, the consumer will be able to move around
in the physical or virtual shop as he prefers, and ‘shoot’ the articles into the virtual
shopping bag with a digital ‘pistol’. Others, perhaps in a warehouse, will pick up
and pack the articles and make sure they are transported to the exit, the car, or the
place of consumption. Payment is handled automatically.
The consumption situation – optimal satisfaction of needs
Even though many consumers see shopping as an experience in itself and see the
purchase itself as an opportunity for ‘making a good deal’, it is generally the
consumption situation itself that is the most important criterion. In most
consumption situations the supplier has long since lost his hook in the consumer –
‘mission accomplished’. However, the real moment of truth is the consumption
situation itself, so the supplier can with advantage show greater interest in this.
What are the possibilities for a replacement sale or additional sales? Can the
product possibly be used in other situations and other ways than usual? How do
you increase the customer’s satisfaction with the purchase he has made?
Consumers are generally very susceptible to this form of self-confirmation.
The real moment
of truth is the
consumption
situation itself, so
the supplier can
with advantage
show greater
interest in this.
The replacement sale situation
The replacement sale situation is probably the most profitable consumer situation
of them all: the situation where the customer has run out of the article or worn it
down and wants a replacement.
The normal assumption is that loyal consumers are the most profitable, but it
is a truth with modifications. A study21 from USA shows that almost 20% of loyal
customers typically aren’t high-profit. This is in part because of expensive loyalty
programs, and in part because of customers who make demands in return for their
loyalty, e.g. lower prices and better service, and perhaps in addition make many
small (costly) transactions. There are also many customers who aren’t loyal with
their hearts, but return because of location, indifference or coincidence. Even if
these situational consumers aren’t the best ambassadors, they can still be quite
profitable.
Except for this proviso, there is no doubt that it as a rule is far more
profitable to retain than to attract customers. Automatic sales, e.g. subscription
arrangements, are an obvious opportunity for winning replacement sale situations.
In an increasingly mobile world, it is also more likely that you find your favourite
shopping spot in a Mecklenburg farm, a French chateau, or a cigar-maker in
Havana. The internet offers the obvious opportunity for ensuring replacement sales
to the mobile and busy consumer.
In the replacement purchase situation there is also an opportunity for
upgrading to a more expensive product or version of a product, and it is important
that the customer is made aware that this opportunity exists.
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Approach 3: The two million situations
How do you capture and handle the increasingly diverse consumption situations?
In a number of marketing situations, consumption can’t primarily be explained by
age, gender, income, values, lifestyle, or personality type. The situation is the main
determinant for consumption across the other parameters. For this reason it is a
matter of identifying situations and optimally covering the associated needs.
Consumption situations are various states that the consumer can enter, defined by:
• Role
• Activity
• Locality
• Time (e.g. of day/week/month/year)
• Resources
• Emotional state
They are situations that change over the course of the day, week, month, and year.
Phase of life is not part of this definition, because it, like gender, is covered by
consumer segmentation since it is more long-term. In segmentation models,
phases of life are called ‘lifecycles’. However, changing from one segment (e.g. life
phase) to another can be considered a situation. It is not least during such changes
that the opportunity exists to change consumption patterns.
The developments in society cause the types of consumption situations and
the number of possible combinations to grow towards infinity. If you want to use
situations as a basis, it becomes necessary to develop a systematic tool to this
end. This tool could e.g. be a database of situations that gives a structured
approach to the many actual and potential consumption situations, and hence to
the market.
Consumption situations can be described as a combination of a number of
variables within the 6 categories below:
Role
Activity
Locality
Time
Resources
Emotional state
Employee, parent, spouse, friend, citizen
Work/leisure/learning, alone/with others, online, commuting
Place, surroundings, weather, means of transport, out/in
Time of day, day of week, season, festival, pay-day, deadline
Economy, time on hands, knowledge
Mood, energy level, ill/well, alpha/beta
Out
Fast Food
Grab & Go
Dispensers
Restaurant
Café
With others
Alone
Cooking
Ordering in
Snack
Convenience
Home
24
The situation database is basically a checklist of
situation descriptions, which ensures that you
get around to all relevant aspects in connection
with a situation. On the basis of the checklist, all
irrelevant sets of alternatives are discarded.
Among the relevant sets of alternatives,
you choose those with only a single relevant
outcome, and which thus enter as a parameter
in all the consumption situations. If there also is
a relevant alternative, it helps to widen the
spectrum of consumption situations for a given
product.
The range of consumer situations can be
illustrated in the same way as scenarios. Here
is s grid that shows a victual product that can be
placed e.g. in ‘out/home’ and ‘alone/with others’
situations.
M E M B E R‘ S R E P O R T
THE COPENHAGEN INSTITUTE FOR FUTURES STUDIES
You can also approach consumption situations through an analysis of situations in
a typical consumer’s daily/weekly schedule in which a product has actual/potential
possibilities of use. This can be both purchase situations and consumption
situations.
The situations that it is important to get around to, are described e.g. through
images of the future. This may be the following types of situations:
•
•
•
•
Important (big) situations that the product is a part of
Situations in growth
New situations
Other situations where the product has unfulfilled potential
Megatrends can be used as an approach to illuminating new situations and
situations in growth.
Examples of analysis of consumer situations in growth
Megatrends
Consequences
e.g.
e.g.
Globalisation
Borders and zones dissolve
Digitalisation
More online
Networks
UFO work (undefined floating
objectives) and PeSCI work
(Personal Service & Care Industries)
Mobility
Individualisation
Demographics
Immaterialisation
Focus on health
More alone
Desire for own/personal
More single parents/stepparents
More young elderly
Adult offspring living at home
Scarce resources: time, space,
location, quiet, attention
Consequences/situations
e.g.
Multi-tasking possibilities
Being apart together
Overtime, tele-working, working Sundays
Flexing between zones, e.g. out/home
Commuting
Away from home
Meals alone
Dating
Child/grandparent relations
Dream society
Combining health and other activities
The situation description may be combined with the various consumer
characteristics (phase of life, gender, lifestyle) if these are important parameters in
the situation. The situations can also be placed in dream universes (adventures
and sensory experiences, care, who-am-I, peace of mind).
The work with the situations can in the most fortunate case lead to redefining some
consumer situations and hence perhaps increased sales. This can be a new ‘script’
or storyboard for a situation where the supplier has the opportunity for placing
himself in a central role in the solution of the customer’s needs and perhaps even
for becoming ‘situation owner’.
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Approach 4: Situation owner – from individual
situations to situation chains
Shopping in a single shop is a simple example of a situation.
In the same way that you can market and sell ‘package solutions’ for e.g. a specific
lifestyle segment, we can view ‘packages of individual situations’ as a chain of
connected situations: a situation chain. You can develop, market and sell a
collection of products and services to such a chain as a sort of ‘package deal’.
Situation chains
’One-stop shopping’ in a mall or along the stores, cafés and entertainment offers
on a pedestrian street can be seen as a continuous chain of purchase situations –
a situation chain. Family members on a trip to the shopping centre typically buy
some things on their own, other things together. We thus have several situation
chains that meet and diverge.
Situation ownership, ownership of the situation chain, and
situation changes
It is around
situation changes
that the battle or
competition for the
customers is being
waged.
A skilled supplier will if possible try to get a ‘hook’ in the consumer. Rather than
being the owner of a single situation for the consumer, a supplier will obviously
prefer to have a ‘leash’ on the consumer by being owner of the entire near-future
sequence of situations; i.e., owner of the situation chain. He can e.g. attempt to
achieve this by having a good offer just before a situation is closed and another
situation is about to start. We thus have to look at situation changes. It is around
situation changes that the battle or competition for the customers is being waged.
Situation change and intermodal situations
A situation can – seen from the viewpoint of a potential buyer – be characterised
by:
• Locality (place, whereabouts, time, possibly travelling from A to B: a mobile
situation)
• Mentality (mental state + emotional state, what does the individual
immediately feel like, etc.)
• Activity (physical state – what is physically being done)
The situation, which suppliers have to work with in connection with the situation
changes, is characterised by states/parameters in these three dimensions. The
supplier must consider all his opportunities for repeatedly giving the consumer new,
attractive offers she can’t refuse.
Intermodal situations are situations where the consumer effortlessly/naturally
changes from one type of situation to another. In other words, changes from one
link in a situation chain to a concurrent link in the connected situation chain. (The
idea is taken from the traffic sector, which operates with the so-called intermodal
nodes. These are places where you can change effortlessly between many modes,
perhaps almost any conceivable mode, of transport (bus, train, car, plane, and
ship).
The prerequisite for making the situation change happen effortlessly is that
one or more of the dimensions locality, activity or mentality can be changed without
effort. A situation where several dimensions can be changed effortlessly at the
same time, may be called a multi-intermodal situation.
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M E M B E R‘ S R E P O R T
THE COPENHAGEN INSTITUTE FOR FUTURES STUDIES
It will of course be obvious for developers, producers, salesmen, and
marketing functions – all the way through a product’s or service’s genesis and
lifetime – to try to influence the customers’ potential situation chains in order to
achieve the greatest possible profit for the seller/producer.
Examples of modal change in the situation chain
If you as a consumer are locked in a non-intermodal function, you are only able to
change within the same mode. For example, in most restaurants you can only
change within the modus called ’eating’. But if the restaurant is a dance restaurant,
there is an opportunity for a situation loop where you return to an earlier mode in
the situation chain: from eating to dancing to eating, and perhaps to dancing again.
At the family restaurant McDonald’s the children can frolic after the meal
while the parents talk, after which all meet for dessert. Here, the situation chains of
the children and the parents diverge and later merge once again. The opportunity
for this sort of situation loop can be a good sales argument from the supplier and
can be used in a lot of other connections than just family restaurants.
Places where you can change naturally and effortlessly between several different
modes or types of situations may be called intermodal situation nodes. An example
from the field of traffic may be a train station where you can change between train,
metro, bus, and taxi. Or, returning to the example of the restaurant, Las Vegas
offers establishments where you can change between eating, dancing, gambling,
and drinking in the bar, all under a single roof.
E a t in g
E a t in g
D a n c in g
D a n c in g
G a m b lin g
G a m b lin g
The point of the example is that it actually illustrates the development of the market
place in the last decade or two, especially the trend for large investments in
‘consumer mekkas’: enormous malls with an ocean of opportunities in the shape of
shops, restaurants and cinemas. Other examples are theme parks and the huge
growth in the sea cruise industry. On a cruise, the customer’s opportunities for
leaving the ship are limited, and she has to return to it. A cruise ship also has
significant opportunities for influencing the customers’ shore-side activities. With
the terminology used here, the point is to get to own and control the situation chain
and build in as many possibilities as possible for looping the situation chain within
the same concept.
The use in the future of mobile internet services can be seen as a tool for creating
virtual nodes, e.g. in the shape of portals, which can support situation chains and
loops. The portals can be combined with situational (locality-based) offers.
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Concept and situation development
In the future, product development is very much going to be a matter of concept
development where situations, products, distribution, and marketing are considered
as a whole.
Concept development in connection with situational consumption is first and
foremost a matter of access or availability. It has to be two-way access:
• The supplier has to be able to utilise concrete situations for creating an
‘admission ticket’ for the attention of the individual consumer, which generates
purchase impulses in the consumer.
• The supplier has to create access to a delivery system, which enables the
customer to effectuate the deal immediately, for immediate consumption
(instant delivery) or later consumption (order). “Just in time & just in place.”
It becomes more
and more
important to make
use of
multichannel
communication
and distribution in
order to catch as
many consumption
situations and
consumer cycle
phases as
possible.
Co-marketing and ‘package deals’
Increased use of co-marketing and ‘package deals’ is a good way to ensure that
your product isn’t just alone on the ‘scoreboard’ (attention) in a concrete
consumption situation, but also that there is an extended distribution apparatus. It
is a matter of alliances with other suppliers and bundling of products, which seen
from a production perspective may belong to two different worlds, but seen from a
consumption situation actually support each other.
Most consumption situations have both emotional and functional aspects.
Hence the supplier must decide whether the product is strongest on the emotional
parameter (brand and storytelling) or on the emotional parameter. Through comarketing and alliances with suppliers that complement your strong side, you can
ensure that you are strong in both playing fields.
A commercial on Danish TV for the ambulance service Falck, with the slogan
“Falck is always there”, is an example of how the supplier speaks to the emotional
need for peace of mind in all situations while also guaranteeing the functional; i.e.,
the communication and delivery systems that ensure that the customer always can
get through to Falck and that Falck always is able to react quickly.
Could we imagine that “Salisbury’s is always there”, not just on the weekly
planned shopping day, but as a partner in everyday life? Or what about the
transportation supplier? A relocation situation, a new-car situation or a ‘first child’
situation?
A service provider, e.g. a credit association, bank or insurance company,
can’t stake on that the customers of their own accord seek them out in the branch
office or on the internet. It must be possible to get a loan along with the products
that are to be financed, e.g. house, car or boat.
Multichannel distribution in order to catch the most situations
It becomes more and more important to make use of multichannel communication
and distribution in order to catch as many consumption situations and consumer
cycle phases as possible. Some customers shop around in the durable goods
store, but don’t make a purchase until later, e.g. through the internet or in a
discount store. Some shop around on the internet and go to the store when they
have made a decision, some shop around in the company’s catalogue or flyer and
make their purchases on the phone or the internet or by visiting the department
store or local shop.
When we talk about the functional, the customers must in the future be able
to choose between many more forms of communication. The choice is going to
vary from situation to situation and from customer to customer. In the electronic
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M E M B E R‘ S R E P O R T
THE COPENHAGEN INSTITUTE FOR FUTURES STUDIES
realm it can e.g. be ‘instant messager’, wireless PDAs, interactive TV, email,
internet chat with other customers, a ‘virtual’ or real service employee, a FAQ, and
last, but not least, service portals.
In some cases there will also be communication directly to the customers’
equipment, e.g. house or car.
Convenience: “whenever, wherever, whatever, however”
Convenience is a key term in connection with situational consumption, not just in
the shape of more actual convenience stores, but also because suppliers generally
think in terms of convenience.
The supermarket, the main segment of which is the family on the weekly one-stop
shopping trip, can in the part of the shop closest to the entrance arrange a
convenience section, which can function as fast food restaurant, tobacconist, café,
etc. by the local population and those who work in the area.
The need for convenience is growing because of several factors:
• Everyday life is unpredictable and pressed for time
• There isn’t the time, energy or will for long-term planning. The consumer uses
the convenience store as a replacement for the supermarket
• Low-involvement products take up more place in the everyday life of more
consumers than most suppliers and advertisement people care to admit. For
low-involvement products, convenience and price are the most important
factors. With the growth in affluence, more and more formerly luxury products
are becoming commonplace
• The consumer desires ‘the ready-made solution’ where others have made it
easy and time-saving for him or her
In the field of convenience we can imagine a development that goes in several
directions:
Example: General convenience stores targeted at weekdays and weekend.
We must expect increased sales from petrol stations, 24-hour kiosks and small
supermarkets with long opening hours that increasingly come to function as
convenience stores. Survival for many small supermarkets and groceries will lie in
convenience, where the old-fashioned idea of the general store is dropped in
favour of a convenience concept. For local shops without nearby alternatives, the
convenience concept may be combined with subscription-like deals for steady
customers about local one-stop shopping where special articles are ordered
electronically. The fresh leg of lamb, gourmet cheese and other ‘special articles’ for
special occasions are ordered. The local shopkeeper knows your special
preferences and makes the orders if he is guaranteed a sale.
There are really no limits to how these local service stations or convenience
stores in the future will be able to help the situational consumer. Convenience food,
administration of car-sharing pools, health services such as renting of
sphygmomanometers, collecting and delivering library books and rental videos,
pick-up of e-trade products, etc.
Closing and mergers of service shops (e.g. post offices, drugstores, libraries)
and smaller retail businesses will increase the need for such local nodes or service
stations. This not just because of more elderly and single people who might make
do without a car, but also because of more consumers that are pressed for time
and need service in the local area.
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Example: Special convenience stores
Besides the local convenience stores (the local neighbourhood shops of the
future), which are directed at everyday situations, there are also convenience
stores directed at special situations.
• Travel situations (airport, train station, hotel, picnic area, pedestrian street)
• Leisure (cinema, theatre, theme park, market, festival, vacation, hotel)
• Work, school, hospital (cafeteria, reception)
As children get more purchasing power, we can imagine that not just food and
drink, but also other products are sold in schools. However, the schools will
probably resists commercialisation of this zone.
In the future we can imagine a further differentiation of convenience providers.
• Mobile convenience shops that move with the need. Expanded versions of ‘icecream trucks’ with ready-made meals et al may be a possibility as we get more
elderly people.
• “Convertible” convenience stores that change their assortment over time, e.g.
over the course of the day. If the items on sale are ready-made meals or fresh
bread, then assortment, merchandising and perhaps even layout of the store
will have to change over the day. The customer base may change completely,
almost from hour to hour (like in underground railways), depending on when
there is an influx of student from the nearby technical school, lunch break at a
large lawyer’s office, guests from a neighbourhood hotel, or pensioners from a
local senior citizen’s home.
Custom-made for customers or for situations – or both?
Every individual is unique and every situation is something special. The ideal way
of obliging the situational consumer is thus the wholly tailor-made concept, adapted
to the unique individual and the specific situation. An example is a tailor-made
wedding-dress. But with most of our consumption, we have to compromise. It is
here not least a matter of simplifying the complex.
Seen from the supply side, the optimal is to get to as many individuals and
consumer situations as possible with your product. This means that the product
can be produced, marketed and distributed cheaper. For the consumer, this
increases the chance of getting the product no matter where he is, and at the
lowest price. Similarly, the demands to the consumer’s learning are smaller. At the
other end of the scale compared to the wedding dress, we have the entirely
generic products that can be used by anybody in all sorts of situations. Sugar may
be the clearest example of this, but even here there is product differentiation based
on the different situations for which the product is used.
Newspapers are examples of a product that becomes more and more
complex because there has been an attempt at making allowances for a range of
segments and situations, all of which have been put into a single mass-market
product. The same goes for some supermarkets and department stores. The
consumers want it all, and the suppliers want it all. The trick is to select and reject.
The suppliers are in the future more often going to have to choose what basic
concept they want to concentrate on, and then cultivate this concept to the utmost.
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M E M B E R‘ S R E P O R T
THE COPENHAGEN INSTITUTE FOR FUTURES STUDIES
Multifunctional or situation-adapted
products
Mass Market
A crucial choice in this connection is
whether you want to concentrate on
(Basic/common needs)
multifunctional (flexible) products or on
• Optimised for functions/situations
• Standard product
specialised (situation-adapted) products.
• Examples:
• Examples:
This is mainly a question of functionality
• Christmas trees, cameras
•
Sugar
(the horizontal axis in the figure).
• Package deals, e.g. for a video night
• Metro newspaper
Another choice us whether you
• Often rented or “throw-away”
• Salisbury’s
want to concentrate on the unique
individual or on the mass market. Here,
Multi-functional
Specialised
too, function plays a role, but it is very
much also a question of the symbolic
• Consumer prosumer (adapts self)
value of the products contra basic
• Flexible (functions in many
• Tailor-made for situation and
functionality.
connections)
individual
A very important choice in the
• Ownership important: “part of
• Highly processed
future will be where to place yourself in
personality”
• Example:
this grid. The situational and mobile
• Examples: home, PC, digital agent
• Tailor-made wedding dress
consumer desires on the one hand the
One2one
greatest possible flexibility and freedom
(Identity-creating)
for combining things across familiar
categories. This could indicate that one
should be careful with ‘situational package deals’. On the other hand, the
consumer also desires ‘solutions’. This could speak for package deals consisting of
multifunctional and flexible standard products. The mealtime solution is not the
ready-made pizza or soup, but the possibility for quickly and easily being able to
combine various prepared ingredients for a meal.
Example: Focusing – cultivate a consumer situation
You can take your basis in a situation and develop your concept to optimise it for
the concrete situation (specialisation). A specialised product has high utility value in
the concrete situation, but isn’t particularly useful in any other situation. The more
tailor-made a product is, the higher the price, the smaller the market, and the
poorer the availability.
If you direct your product to much for a concrete situation, you risk that it will
be rejected in all other consumption situations where it might have been used,
either because it is too specialised or because the consumers emotionally connect
the product with a special situation.
It can be profitable to develop situation-adapted (specialised) products for:
• “Big” situations with a large market potential. This is not least common human
needs, e.g. oral hygiene products and toilet paper. Because the market is
large, there is room for both segmentation based on quality requirements,
lifestyle and values, and for product differentiation based on the situation. The
more common situation can be broken down into more specific, e.g. at home or
out. Changed lifestyles mean growth in new situations, e.g. toilet paper for the
mobile user.
• Situations concentrated in time and space, e.g. reading newspapers in trains or
busses.
• Situations that aren’t especially common/everyday or concentrated in time or
space, but where digital automation can make it cheaper to adapt, market and
distribute products to the situation. Increased use of the (mobile) internet
means that you can reach an expanded/global market for specialised,
situation-adapted services, e.g. all sorts of SMS messages.
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Example: Extend the use of your product to other situations
You can take your basis in your current product and the situations where it is used
and see if you, through small adjustments to the product or different distribution or
marketing, can extend the use of the product to some completely different
situations in order to get to a wider range of consumption situations. More fuzzy
boundaries in our everyday lives, and fewer customs and norms provide more
opportunities for placing products in new situations.
Arla’s ‘minimilk’ is an example of a product (milk) which was almost chained
to situations within a few yards from the domestic refrigerator. The new minimilk
can be bought anywhere in bottles suitable for drinking.
Since fresh fruit and fresh bread meet the needs of the situational consumer,
we can also in the future expect a strengthening of product development, market
development and concept development in these two product lines.
Fruit is a very flexible product that can fit into all situations over the day when
there is a need for a (healthy) snack, refreshment or a break. Though fruit can be
consumed at any time from breakfast to nighttime snack, it is apparently too banal
for concept development and advertisement funds. An exception is workplace
fresh-fruit subscriptions.
Fresh bread is also increasingly a part of meal situations over the day, e.g.
as a sandwich between meals or as side dish for the salad or soup that constitutes
the evening meal.
It isn’t just on the functional plane that there is an opportunity for extending
the types of consumer situations. Through brand extension and brand licensing,
the brand value is transferred from one product/situation to a range of other
products/situations.
Example: Concept shops for non-everyday situations
Non-everyday products are more often high-involvement products. These are
situations that matter to the consumer. Emotions have been invested in the
consumption.
It is likely that concept shops that take their basis in consumer situations will
be more common. Some examples could be:
• Seasonal holidays: The shop totally changes its assortment in step with
seasons and holidays.
• Gifts: a large and growing market that could be developed further. For
instance, why don’t banks sell gift-wrapped money gifts?
• Vacation: we must expect further development in the direction of portals where
the individual customer can combine his own packages rather than buying a
ready-made package deal. By using the portal, you design your own vacation
with built-in, flexible opportunities for adjusting the programme underway,
depending on the weather and on offers that are natural continuations of what
you’re currently doing, e.g. nearby restaurants and other activities. The case is
very much one of location-based services based on the mobile internet and
possibly the car’s online facilities, which provide the possibilities.
Change of life phase is a situation that triggers new needs. Newborn child, new job,
retirement, or a new girlfriend. Acquisition of a new home, car or PC are also
situations that ‘trigger’ a number of associated needs.
Situational consumption is also moving services, and in the future also more use of
‘handymen’ who can handle a wide range of situations in the home – not just in the
case of sudden needs, but also for normal maintenance of homes as we get more
elderly people who can’t handle ‘do-it-yourself’ tasks.
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M E M B E R‘ S R E P O R T
THE COPENHAGEN INSTITUTE FOR FUTURES STUDIES
Marketing and situational consumption
Ideally, product and marketing should be directed at both the individual customer
and the concrete situation. Segmentation models typically take their basis in the
consumers and their difference.
Conversely, situational consumption takes its basis in the situation rather
than the consumer; i.e., in the cases where it pays better to cultivate the situation
and the common human elements and hence attempt to strike as widely as
possible. In some cases, segmentation and too great a focus on consumer
differences may even be limiting. This is especially true in a world characterised by
a break-up of the familiar categories.
One reason why situational consumption becomes more relevant as a marketing
tool may also be that segmentation models become ever more complex in trying to
explain reality. If the reality is that we’re approaching segments of one, it will be
both too complex and too expensive to use the single individual as the focus of
marketing. Instead one may choose to use situations as a means to get to a range
of very different customers – a range of increasingly different customers that have
being in a concrete situation in common, either together or separately.
We may describe the development in marketing like this: first mass marketing
directed at undifferentiated (basic) needs, then focus on the consumer and division
into segments in order to cover the differentiated needs.
Since then, the complexity has increased because the consumers become
not just more different from each other, but also different from themselves from one
situation to the next.
In order to handle this complexity, marketing
may in the future develop in two directions:
• Based on the individual: One-to-one. The
focus is on tailor-made products and
individualised marketing. The internet,
digital agents and dialogue marketing are
examples of this.
• Based on situations: It is the situation that
is in focus, not the single individual that
‘randomly’ chooses to be in the particular
situation on a particular day.
It is one thing whether people actually are
becoming more different. Another thing entirely
is if marketing to a higher degree chooses to
focus on the differences that do exist because
this gives them better tools for differentiation
and communication. This is a large part of
what is happening.
Development
Mass marketing
Undifferentiated
Segmented
Differentiated on basis of groups
Individualised
One-to-one
Situational
Integration of product development and marketing
If you in the company’s product development and marketing want to base yourself
on consumer situations, it is necessary to work systematically with the many
situations in which your product can be used.
First and foremost, product development and marketing have to be more
integrated. Marketing will more become a part of the product, and the product more
a carrier of marketing. Product development in the future is very much going to be
a matter of considering situations, products, distribution and marketing as a whole.
3/2002
33
Notes:
1
Adam Morgan, “Eating the Big Fish – how challenger brands can compete
against brand leaders”, John Wiley & Sons, Inc., 1999
2
Estrid Sørensen, “Menneskets historisk foranderlige værensform – fra
middelaldermenneske over individ til situid”, presentation at Copenhagen Business
School, March 14th 2001
3
Estrid Sørensen, ibid.
4
The concept of the situal was invented by Estrid Sørensen and Tine Jensen. Tine
Jensen is a Master of Psychology and former employee of CIFS. She presented
the idea at a theme meeting in October 1998. Today Tine Jensen is a Ph.D.
student in learning processes at Roskilde University Centre and may be contacted
at [email protected]
5
Henrik Kristensen, “The Situal is a Large-scale Consumer of (Good) Stories”,
article on www.cifs.dk
6
Henrik Vejlgård, “Cool and Hip Marketing”, Nyt Nordisk Forlag, 2002
7
Henrik Vejlgård, “Cool and Hip Marketing”, Nyt Nordisk Forlag, 2002, chapter 4
8
Birthe Lindal Hansen, When Community Disappeared”, article on www.cifs.dk
9
Vejlgård, ibid.
10
As Estrid Sørensen writes, ibid.
11
“Når man ikke kan se skoven for bare træer: Segmentering i dag.” Af Henrik
Dahl og Henrik Andersen, Advice Analyse A/S (from the internet)
12
Maggie Andrews & Mary M. Talbot (ed.), “All the World and Her Husband –
Women in the Twentieth-century Consumer Culture”, 2000
13
Janeen Arnold Costa (ed.), “Gender Issues and Consumer Behavior”, Sage
Publications 1994
14
“Morgendagens kvinder”, 1997
15
“Working Families”, Member’s Report 2000/3
16
Paco Underhill: “Why We Buy”, Touchstone New York 2000
17
Mowen, C. J. & Minor M: “Consumer Behaviour”, 5/e, Prentice-Hall. (1998)
18
Russell W. Belk: 1974, Journal of marketing Research
19
Paco Underhill, ibid.
20
E.g. Dr. Robert Rugimbana, The University of Newcastle, and CIFS: “The
Consumer in the Future”, Member’s Report 4/2000
21
“The Mismanagement of Customer Loyalty”, Harvard Business Review, July
2002
34
M E M B E R‘ S R E P O R T
THE COPENHAGEN INSTITUTE FOR FUTURES STUDIES
3/2002
35
The Copenhagen
Institute for Futures
Studies (CIFS) was set
up in co-operation with
a number of visionary
companies and
organisations wanting
to substantiate their
basis for decisionmaking by means of
thorough studies of the
future.
CIFS is among the ten
largest of its kind in the
world and is
represented at
conferences all over
the world. Works by
CIFS are published in
international journals
and media. Due to its
size, its highly
educated staff, and
cooperation with other
international research
teams, CIFS is capable
of taking on very
different tasks, and
notably, very complex
tasks. Members of the
CIFS have direct
access to much of the
expertise developed by
the Institute. A
membership
includes the entire
company, all members
of staff are free to
participate in the
Institute’s meetings,
conferences and
presentations.
The current
programme of activities
is available on the
website
www.cifs.dk
Copenhagen Institute
for Futures Studies
Malmö:
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DK-1364 Copenhagen K
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36
M E M B E R‘ S R E P O R T