Convergent technology and marketing strategies

Abstract

Einstein may have said: "I never think of the future. It comes soon enough," but this is a luxury that today's marketers cannot afford. For them, thinking of the future has to be second nature. Identifying the desires of tomorrow's consumer is the key to designing the profitable products and services of the next millennium. So who will the consumers of the 21st century be, and how will they behave? According to Foresight, the United States Government's own group of economic trend-spotters, about 25 per cent of the population will be over the age of 65 by the year 2020 [R3]. There will be a falling birth rate and more single-person households because of the rising divorce rate, the increase in life expectancy, women's growing financial independence and the tendency of both men and women to settle down later in life. The common denominator of most of the trends is that the perceived value of time has been on a meteoric rise with the new generation. Whereas the twentieth century was shaped up by the Information technology, the new century has been glorified by many as the century of the consumers. Rather than the people working for the technology, it is expected that in the new era, the technology will start working for the consumers. Both the consumers and the producers are on the look out for the next technology revolution that will satisfy the new consumer desires. As Andy Grove in his famed book "Only paranoid survive" states, the revolutions are seeded in a certain "point of inflection" [R4]. And the points of inflection are typically a result of convergence. As such, the convergent technology takes a prime position in the development of the "Century of consumers".