Last five years have been of tremendous growth with entering of millennial (Gen Y) in the work force. A generation that has grown with internet and with most child centric environment, and has changed the way transactions happen. After all change is an agent for civilizations to flourish.
Lets take a look at the new trends that will shape the lives of global citizens in coming decade!
Contents
Social Media (The obvious one)
We are observing social media marketing growing up and being part of almost every brand’s marketing strategy. Anticipate a growth in special offers to consumers who "like" you or your products. Facebook "likes" are loyal consumers and should be provided with insight into new products and special offers in times to come. Imagine you getting a message where facebook suggests you what to gift your girlfriend of her birthday.
QR Codes
What is QR Code?
A QR Code (Quick Response Code) is a matrix barcode (or two-dimensional code), readable by QR scanners, mobile phones with a camera, and smartphones. The code consists of black modules arranged in a square pattern on a white background. The information encoded can be text, URL or other data. – Wikipedia
QR Codes storing addresses and URLs will start appearing in magazines, newspapers (if they don’t die soon), on signs, buses, business cards, or on just about any object about which users might need information. Users with a camera phone equipped with the correct reader application can scan the image of the QR Code to display text, contact information, connect to a wireless network, or open a web page in the phone’s browser. This act of linking from physical world objects is known as a hard link or physical world hyperlinks.
Google’s mobile Android operating system supports the use of QR codes by natively including the barcode scanner (ZXing) on some models, and the browser supports URI redirection, which allows QR Codes to send metadata to existing applications on the device.
Imagine your business card as an offline hyperlink to your achievements, linked-in profile, twitter account. Newspaper advertisements converting into a small QR code holding immense information when you click it from your smartphone.
ROI
Business will be able to track their returns on advertising and promotions investments, which is a complex process today; this not only includes digital media but also TV and print advertising through QR codes and other technologies. Marketers would know how much to spend to get x sales through most favorable mediums and prone the inefficient mediums.
Cloud Computing
Services on cloud are getting fancier and affordable. SMEs can now think of implementing CRM (to start with) only because it is helping them build better relations and reasonably priced. Not only CRMs but basic utility software’s are on cloud where companies and even individuals do not need huge storage space and computing power at desk.
Google has already released a Operating system which completely resides on the cloud and that is the future where some or the other part of your computing needs will be hosted on Cloud
Mobile
Are you mobile? Because that’s the next big thing! Not only social networking is getting mobile but your business will require you to be mobile! Gadgets like iPads and Tablets will be substitute your laptop, kindle to your books and a smartphone will be as essential as your limbs.
Location Based Services
The convergence of Social Media, Mobile Technology and Location based services will continue to increase and become more sophisticated. Companies will get better at creating and distributing immediate offers, to specific individuals, who appear on site at a specific location, or nearby, at a specific time, thereby influencing on site consumer behavior and creating real time demand. These individuals will then share immediate offers out to their social networks, through their mobile devices, resulting in individuals actually meeting up, in person, to take advantage of those offers. It will move part of the social experience off the web and back to an in-person experience. This will deliver the true one on one marketing experience, originally promised in Web 2.0, but until now, not truly delivered. The likes of Foursquare and Gowalla are already paving the way for it!
Social Liquidity
The impact of social media over the last 24 months has been a dramatic increase in social liquidity. More people touch more people. But those touch points are often very light.
Are there any trends toward platforms that offer deeper, more emotionally powerful relationships online? Have any of the big dating platforms done anything profound with social media?
If we consider social liquidity to be comparable to market liquidity for any other commodity, then perhaps we should ask whether we will be facing a friendship bubble? With increase in liquidity in economy we face inflation, what do we relate social liquidity to? – Credibility of recently popular people!
A market bubble usually occurs when there are more trades taking place than are justified by the underlying asset values. Are people engaging in more social connections than the actual value of the friendships they have?
This is difficult to answer, just as it is in a financial market, because you cannot strip out the impact of each trade, each of which, in theory, adds to the well of aggregate value. But if I ask myself "Do I feel friendlier now than I did few years ago?" I think the answer is probably "No."
What would a friendship bubble look like when it bursts? Are we going to see this in coming decade? And how would social media platforms react? A race to the bottom is usually followed by a flight to quality; another reason to expect deeper social engagements!
Cookie Magic
Privacy is not what it used to mean. Imagine a technology that can upload all your cookies once you visit an ecommerce site. A software can analyze your past purchases and interests; this can tell about your purchase potential and share of wallet for products on the site. And once sellers know how much are you ready to spend and how money you have in your wallet (or mind – to spend), best of deals and alternatives can be provided. Isn’t it scary? But good enough tool for e-commerce sites.
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India
One thing that is common in all points mentioned above is “Technology” but this. The second most fastest growing country is now growing at a pace to which rest of the world can only drop its jaw! It will be the decade where the eyes of the world will stop at India and China not only because of sheer numbers but also because of diverse needs for very basic to most sophisticated products and services. s
The new decade will bring about lot many other changes which cannot be limited to an article. Do post in your prophesies! Waiting to take the conversation forward…
Did I miss out on some important trends that you think will define next decade ?
