Consumer trend :: "NOWISM"

Dubbed 'NOWISM', this mega trend has, and will continue to have, a big impact on everything from your corporate culture to customer relationships to product innovation to tactical campaigns.
KEY trend drivers:

• focus on experiences, living in the now, instead of in the future, this lust to collect as many experiences and stories as soon as possible, is addictive. Take travel: these days, it's more of a basic consumer need than a luxury.
  
• In the still rapidly expanding online world, 'digital' has become synonymous with 'instant'. This is indirectly setting consumers' expectations for the 'real' world, too.
• lusting after (and contributing to) up-to-date info on other people, products, events, news and so on, they are thus obsessed with real-time publishing, real-time search, real-time reviews and price-comparison, real-time news, real-time conversations and more. Twitter is the current, deserved poster child for this phenomenon.
  
• Until recently, 'mobile' was NOWISM's missing link: everyone is now online when at home, in the office, or near a hotspot, it's hard to check or contribute to real-time information if individuals are offline while truly on-the-go.
  
• Alerting is the new searching. No wonder that real-time alerts aimed at stimulating impulse buys.
  
• SEE/HEAR/BUY thrives on (mobile) NOWISM technologies that allow consumers to quickly find out more about an item, a song, or anything else they hear/see, and then buy it.
  
• Due to the recession, an increased availability of affordable retail space has made it easier and more attractive to set up pop-up stores and manifestations in some of the most prestigious (and high-traffic) shopping areas around the world.
  

NOWISM enthusiasts will also point out that traditional, much praised preparing-for-the-future attitudes are often obsessed with avoiding any risk in (bourgeois) life. In many cases, the virtue of waiting is nothing but an effective way to kill any kind of creativity, joy, daringness and spontaneity. Which is not to say that NOWISTS don't care about the future, but future priorities may differ.

+  info...