For some, 2021 is a year best forgotten. But from a marketers and researchers perspective 2021 certainly revealed some interesting insight into changing consumer behaviours and demands.

Here we have compiled the best of our trend reports and guides from 2021 all in one convenient place.

This report is specially designed for companies looking to grow their presence in Asia and is based on the analysis of local experts across Kadence International’s eight Asian offices.

DOWNLOAD the full report here

Getting the Most from your Research Budget

We developed a framework for getting the most out of your market research budget, which could be useful as you plan your projects for any year.

DOWNLOAD the full report here

The Ultimate Guide to New Market Entry

This guide covers when to consider entering a new market, how best to approach the research you’ll need to support you as well as practical information on the different market entry strategies available to you. 

READ the full guide here

Segmentation in Uncertain Times

The pandemic has caused people’s behaviours, wants and needs to change. Segmentation is an important tool to understand your target better, but also to help identify new or emerging expectations from brands.

WATCH the full 12 minute video here

Harnessing Augmented Reality

In this groundbreaking package testing research, we partnered with Asahi and their signature brand Fuller’s London Pride using augmented reality to garner feedback on new product labeling. This innovative approach resulted in great data, a satisfied client and numerous awards within the research industry.

LEARN more about the test and watch the video here

If there was ever a year when health and wellness was at the forefront of consumers minds, 2021 was it. We looked at some key global trends that are emerging, and the behaviours and expectations fueling these trends.

DOWNLOAD the trend report here

As soon as you think you understand market research, something brand new comes along to challenge everything you thought you knew. With the rapid evolution of technology, those moments seem to be happening more than ever.

Today’s market research campaign looks very different from how it would ten or even five years ago, and technology is one of the major driving forces behind the evolution of market research. Every year brings a slew of new tools, techniques, and platforms built to make research more accessible and more effective.

In this article, we’ll take a look at some of the most important things that have changed in market research due to technology, and we’ll also explore what new changes could be lying in wait in the near future.

Market research technology: what has changed?

Over the last several years, there have been several significant technological changes that have impacted market research. 

Technology has changed how industries operate, and market research is no exception. Advancements in technology have seen a rise in the self-service model, where brands can implement their own short surveys. But perhaps the most significant impact technology has had on the market research industry is agility. Market research technology allows researchers to quickly test, measure, and pivot projects.

Technology allows traditional research briefs to move past online surveys. For example, eye-tracking technology enables researchers to observe shoppers exhibiting their natural behaviours while walking around a real or virtual store, making note of fixation and gaze points. This can be highly revealing in usability studies, product and package testing, and shopping research.

Here are some of the main forces driving the evolution of market research.

Social media

It’s hard to believe that social media has only been around since the early 2000s. In the two decades since its inception, social media has transformed our lives, and market research is no exception.

Social media platforms like Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, and more offer unique insights into your market and customers. These platforms are home to enormous reservoirs of data on your audience, providing unfiltered and direct feedback around how they’re feeling, what they want, their pain points, and hopes and desires. It’s also easier than ever to share surveys and questionnaires, collect attendees for focus groups, and much more.

Another benefit of social media is more accessible competitor analysis, allowing you to gain an easy glimpse into what other companies in your space are doing and saying, what marketing techniques they are using, and what’s working.

Observing customer behaviour

The explosion in personal technology devices like smartphones, IoT gadgets, Alexa, smart cars, and wearables make it far easier to observe the behaviour of your audience members and collect valuable insights in real-time. Even mobile apps can collect customer data and establish behaviour patterns.

Wearable technology is one of the most recent developments in this area. Gadgets like the Oura Ring, Fitbit, Apple Watch, Rayban stories, and much more allow researchers to observe customer behaviour as it takes place naturally in the real world. This gives a unique insight into how customers behave that can never be truly replicated in experimental conditions and can pick up on responses that customers themselves might not even notice.

Automation

It’s never been easier to analyze data and draw valuable conclusions, thanks to the vast leaps made in automation technology in recent years. The growing amount of audience data available to marketers can now be processed and analyzed much more efficiently, allowing you to gain valuable insights and learn as much as possible about your customers and how they behave.

Chatbots are another example of the power of automation in market research. These tools can ask questions and conduct basic surveys from social media apps and websites, allowing you to communicate with customers and collect valuable information in seconds without relying on time-consuming manual work by human staff.

Increased reliance on video and remote collaboration

Spurred on by the pandemic, video collaboration tools, and remote meetings have skyrocketed in popularity and ease of access. There are many advantages to this for market research, such as a shift away from in-person focus groups. 

Researchers no longer need to hire a venue, convince large numbers of people to take the time out of their day to attend, employ multiple staff on the ground, and do all the other logistical tasks involved in a physical interview. Instead, the whole thing can occur via a Zoom call, saving enormous amounts of time and resources for both interviewer and interviewees. This also allows you to contact a much broader sample of participants without being bound by geographic location.

Reach much larger and more diverse audiences 

Not so long ago, market researchers were confined to methods like postal surveys, local interview sessions, and phone calls. Technology — specifically the internet — has allowed researchers to radically expand their horizons, reaching audiences in far-flung parts of the country and even distant parts of the world.

It’s now easy to conduct real-time interviews and focus groups with people several timezones away, allowing companies to gain a much bigger and richer picture of their audiences. This is especially important for international market research but is also helpful to achieve a complete understanding of your audience as a whole.

Build richer buyer personas

As it becomes increasingly easier to collect data from your audience and analyze it in vast amounts, it becomes possible to build much richer and more detailed profiles for your audience members.

The buyer personas of the past were often vague, two-dimensional things, often built around vague generalizations and assumptions. The small amount of data available to researchers decades ago made it challenging to construct genuinely accurate and useful personas.

Today, with the enormous amount of data made available by technology and the internet, you can learn a lot about the people in your audience and build genuinely valuable and richly detailed buyer personas to inform your marketing decisions, product development, and much more.

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What the future holds for market research technology

As time goes on, market research will likely continue to evolve, driven by entirely new advancements in technology. Some of these developments will come as a surprise and may be unexpected side-effects of existing or planned technology. We can also predict some future trends based on what we already know.

Tools like AR and VR

Virtual reality and augmented reality open up a whole host of exciting new possibilities for market research. Both tools allow for much more interactive research where participants can use products and experience services in a completely immersive way without leaving their homes.

This makes it much easier to gauge responses, observe behaviour, and collect meaningful feedback without shipping large amounts of physical products to participants’ homes or asking them to travel to a research site.

One example is how Kadence worked with Asahi, using augmented reality to research a new packaging design. Participants used AR to generate models of beer bottles, allowing them to visualize what the bottle would look like in their own homes and provide more accurate and detailed feedback around specific details.

More use of voice assistants

Today, voice assistants are already popular, with tools like Siri and Alexa quickly becoming a central part of people’s everyday lives. These voice tools allow a unique insight into customers’ daily experience and behaviour, and if this data can be collected ethically, it has excellent value for market researchers.

More agility

Increased agility is a fascinating prospect for market researchers as technology advances. In the past, researchers were forced to take risky gambles instead of using a more flexible approach and making adjustments as needed.

With the ubiquity of data in today’s world, businesses can now take a more agile approach to market research, making quick and frequent changes and course corrections in response to the feedback they get from various channels. This trend could mark one of the most significant changes in how we conduct research over the coming years and suggests a step away from over-reliance on guesswork and individual opinion.

Technology has had an enormous impact on how businesses conduct market research, and as time goes on, that impact is likely to increase. The best thing market researchers and companies can do is be open-minded and prepared to embrace new technologies as they evolve.

At Kadence, we can help you harness all the newest and future technologies to conduct market research most productively and effectively, gaining valuable insights into your audience and getting ahead of the competition. Find out more.

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Like virtually all aspects of modern life, the market research industry has undergone an explosive change in our COVID-19 pandemic era. While most of the principles of market research remain intact, brands worldwide have had to refine and modify their research methods as part of this “new reality.” 

Generally speaking, market research starts with a “wide-angle” look at the spheres of influence upon a market (including new and changing customer behaviours, emerging industry trends, etc.), then zooms in on specific nuances within a target audience. 

The data collection and analysis gained from in-depth market research offer brands “a clear and detailed understanding of what your customers want, what they already like, where they conduct their own research, and much more.” Understanding the broader context of a market enables companies to:

  • Gain insights into how customers use their products or services
  • Differentiate their offerings from competitors
  • Lay the groundwork for successful product upgrades or launches
  • Identify new opportunities for growth

These insights gained can set the tone and messaging for a brand’s marketing efforts both now and in the year to come. 

Here’s a look at key trends in the market research industry today and what lies ahead on the horizon for 2022.

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Trend #1: Agility and Technology

Despite the changes wrought by the pandemic and other global forces, one factor remains constant: the continual evolution of technology underpinning advanced market research.

Advances in artificial intelligence (AI) and machine learning, for example, enable researchers to gather information from an increasingly wide range of distinct sources. These advances also contribute to a new emphasis on agile research and speed of insight. Various elements include:

Automation of routine research practices. Automating the more routine facets of research facilitates a speedier analysis and interpretation of findings. This helps researchers save considerable time and effort while winnowing down to what’s truly essential in their work. 

Shorter and smarter polls and surveys. Employing surveys that can be positioned and distributed quickly (and which take respondents only a short time to fill out) are a further boon to the speed of analysis and insight. This approach involves identifying a “mobile-reliant” population that will actively engage in a poll or survey upon request, and within a brief period of time. 

Ongoing research. Agile research equals ongoing research. In a global marketplace that’s continuously in flux, the insights garnered from one survey can dramatically change by the time a new survey is undertaken. In the same respect, researchers can expand on findings garnered from one survey to craft a new, more specialized survey that focuses on changing factors in the marketplace.

As we have stated before, “when you know your offerings suit current and emerging customer needs, your business will develop a reputation for being wholly customer-centric that your competitors can’t match.”

Trend #2: AI, Machine Learning, and Emotion

If 2021 is any guide, we can expect the avalanche of raw data to keep increasing in the year to come. The vast array of sources promises to generate more information than researchers can ever hope to compile and analyze on their own. That’s why AI and machine learning are invaluable for research purposes.

Emotion AI, for example, seeks to “decode” human emotion by analyzing voice patterns, eye movements, facial expressions, and a range of non-verbal cues—all designed to generate data that enhances a brand’s capacity for linking emotion to consumer behavioural patterns. By evaluating consumer responses to a proposed upgrade or new product launch, emotion AI can more precisely “read” human feelings and gauge the success or failure of a new venture.

As MIT Sloan notes, “New artificial intelligence technologies are learning and recognizing human emotions, and using that knowledge to improve everything from marketing campaigns to health care.”

Trend #3: Social Listening

Interacting directly with customers often yields the most pertinent data for marketing trends. But engaging in social listening can be an equally effective research method.

Social listening involves analyzing social media conversations and trends related to your brand to your industry. This extends beyond monitoring basic metrics such as “likes” or “mentions” or “followers,” with a focus instead on the buyer’s mood behind the data.

Customers frequently express their sentiments about products and services on popular social media platforms (Twitter, Facebook, Instagram, etc.). Market researchers can look at this as real-time feedback about customer preferences, brand awareness, the inroads made by competitors, etc. 

In this respect, social listening offers a beneficial way of gauging customer sentiment (what they like and don’t like about the purchasing experience, preferences regarding how a purchase is made, and so on). 

For effective social listening, research methodology can include the following actions:

  • Search on the most popular social platforms for branded keywords, phrases, or product names.
  • Explore customer review sections on platforms. 
  • Learn about customer sentiments regarding competitors.
  • Anticipate potential new trends using Google Trends or other social media listening tools.
  • Identify relevant or industry-specific social media influencers.

Social listening should be “a critical component of any company’s marketing strategy, as it allows you to react and respond to customer sentiment — and gather data to make improvements in the way your business runs,” notes Reputation.com. In essence, social listening is like “your very own perpetual focus group, rich with constantly updated and actionable business intelligence.”

Trend #4: Longitudinal Studies

There has been a steady increase in longitudinal studies for long-range market research, and the trend will continue in 2022. This approach works most effectively when a brand wishes to continuously monitor a fixed sample of its target audience over a pre-determined timeframe.

Longitudinal studies, also known as continuous research, tracks consumer and market attitude trends over extended periods. To do so, researchers gather information from the same sources through a long-term methodology that yields insights into buying habits or consumer response to a new product or service launch. 

Trend #5: DIY

Another emerging trend is the do-it-yourself (DIY) approach to market research. The proliferation of agile or smart research tools enables in-house teams to conduct surveys and other research activities, often using a centralized online platform. Types of DIY market research include:

  • Interviews with existing and potential customers through surveys, questionnaires, or focus groups
  • Segmentation of the target audience into clearly defined groups (demographic, behavioural, psychographic, and geographic)
  • Product testing, in many cases, before a brand reaches the initial production stage
  • Measuring satisfaction with loyal customers

DIY research should aim for gaining “insights into how happy your customers are and any specific areas they like or dislike.” This enables brands to:

  • Identify any areas of current (or potential) concern.
  • Drill down to core issues by identifying (and then interacting with) dissatisfied customers.
  • Determine what’s needed to improve customer attitudes and experiences. 

One caveat worth mentioning regarding DIY marketing. As Forbes notes, “if you go to a third party [for market research], you’re going to likely get a different perspective than what you would get from your own team. There’s also a greater chance that the perspective you receive is an unbiased one, which is healthy” and potentially more insightful about what a target audience truly cares about.”

Trend #6: Aligning Brand Mission and Values with Customers

In 2022 and beyond, market research will continue to explore the value of aligning a company’s mission statement and the values of its customer base. 

Gone are the days when a brand could tell consumers what it stands for and leave it at that. Today’s savvy customers do their research to determine if a brand “walks the walk,” particularly concerning those values consumers hold dear—be it the environment and sustainability, income inequality, racial harmony, and so on. 

Consumers who prefer brands aligned with their values often become very loyal once they identify that brand. However, if and when customers detect a lack of consistency between what’s expressed in a mission statement and what actions a brand takes, they may abandon that company and seek out more compatible businesses to support.

In 2022, brands are encouraged to take a fresh look at their mission and values and how these are communicated to a target audience. Monitoring social media conversations around these values can illuminate the process of refining a company’s mission statement. It’s also an excellent opportunity to look into making a fresh commitment to support the causes and initiatives that a brand’s audience considers most valuable in their own lives.

Market research trends come and go, but the end result remains consistent from the past to the future. The primary objectives are always:

  • Improving products or services
  • Generating more sales
  • Delivering expected results
  • Enhancing customer service
  • Boosting customer retention

Market research supports the need for brands to maintain agility in an ever-shifting marketplace. Customer needs never remain static. If a brand meets current needs—and, better yet, anticipates future customer needs—its place in the global market will be stronger and more durable than that of its competitors.

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The pandemic has led to irreversible changes in consumer behavior. As consumers stayed home for the better part of 2020, they have formed a new set of preferences, habits, and F&B expectations. 

Today, what consumers are looking for from the food and beverage industry is very different from pre-pandemic times, and these new expectations are here to stay beyond 2022.  

The “Food & Beverage Trends to Watch in 2022 and Beyond”  report examines the trends that will shape the food and beverage industry in the years to come. In this report, we look at four emerging trends around the globe:

  • Plant-based foods, 
  • Immunity-boosting ingredients, 
  • Tastes of home, and 
  • Transparency, safety, and sustainability.

Trend #1: Plant-based Foods

While there is considerable evidence of people choosing to avoid animal products as far back as 2,000 years ago, today, 4 billion people live primarily on a plant-based diet. 

Globally, the plant-based meat market will be worth $85 billion by 2030. The pandemic has only pushed the meat and dairy substitute product growth. 

Click here to see the extraordinary increase in plant-based meat sales in the USA during the nine weeks ending May 2, 2020, as the pandemic caused meat shortages and price spikes, shutting down meat-packing plants.

Read the full report to find out how the virus caused regular meat-eaters to make the switch, with many becoming permanent converts. 

Beyond Meat and Impossible Foods have become very popular and are a force to reckon with in the plant-based meat industry. While they are not the first in the market, they have created meat substitutes that taste like real meat. 

Plant-based foods such as snacks, dips, sauces, cheese, spreads, and creamers will see a double to triple growth within the following year.

Read the full report to discover plant-based attitudes and trends worldwide, including India, U.K., China, and the U.S. 

Trend #2: Immunity Boosting Ingredients

The market for functional foods has been growing for years. However, demand has boosted since the onset of the COVID-19 pandemic.

As COVID-19 made the immunocompromised population more vulnerable, consumers became more interested in healthy foods that boost their immune systems.

Known as “functional foods,” these ingredients claim to possess an additional function. For gut health, examples include probiotic foods that contain beneficial microbiota, including fermented foods like kefir, yogurt with live active cultures, pickled vegetables, tempeh, kombucha tea, kimchi, miso, and sauerkraut. For inflammation, ingredients like turmeric, honey, green tea extract, fish oil, and ginger provide relief.

According to Beneo, an estimated 75% of consumers plan to eat and drink healthier due to the pandemic. The global market for these ingredients is expected to grow to $117 million by 2021.

Read the report to learn more about the demand for functional foods or nutraceuticals around the globe, specifically in the E.U., USA, and India. 

Trend #3: Tastes of Home

During times of unease, unrest, and uncertainty, consumers seek comfort in foods that remind them of happier, less turbulent times.

According to The International Food Information Council, many consumers are re-creating the restaurant experience at home by using meal kits, restaurant-branded products, and more sophisticated or flavorful ingredients from artisan food producers. 

  • Meal-kit service: In 2017, the industry was valued at US$4.65 billion, representing a 300 percent growth over the previous year. Read the full report to discover the estimated growth potential of this market by the year 2022. 
  • Speedy appliances: Another popular trend reveals many consumers purchased in-home appliances to make meal preparation easier.

The dinner with the family trend seems cemented in our behaviors and habits. Before the pandemic, 18% of households ate dinner together at home every day. Read the report to see the percentage of households that eat dinner together now, post-pandemic. 

Trend #4: Transparency, Safety, and Sustainability

According to a 2020 Innova Consumer Survey, three in five global consumers say they are interested in “learning more about where their food comes from and how it is made.” The term ‘clean label,’ therefore, goes beyond ingredients. There is a need for transparency around the food being organic or additive-free, and companies need to show consumers they produced the food sustainably and humanely.

An increasing number of technologies are emerging to improve transparency, including radio-frequency I.D. tracking of ingredients throughout the supply chain and wireless/ smart technologies such as invisible barcodes.

Read the report to find out how food producers increasingly use blockchain and Internet of Things (IoT) technologies to provide information to consumers.  

Now that F&B producers and consumers are more experienced living with the pandemic, the focus is expected to shift toward sustainability. 

ADM, a food technology company, observed that nearly two-thirds of consumers want their food choices to impact the environment positively. Lux Research’s report The Food Company of 2050 also lists “increasing sustainability” as a critical factor for increasing brand awareness and market share.

Read the full report for critical insights and consumer trends impacting the Food & Beverage industry in 2022 and beyond.  

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Exploring the priorities of APAC’s business decision-makers —past, present, and future 

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The global business community was hit hard in 2020, with COVID-19 creating unprecedented challenges for organisations worldwide. 

Supported by Kadence International, Bloomberg Media embarked on a research program with 3800 executive business decision-makers in six markets across APAC —Singapore, Thailand, Malaysia, Hong Kong, Japan, and Australia in waves 1 – 4 and India and Vietnam in wave 5. 

Wave 1: 22nd April – 3rd May 2020 (n=714) 

Wave 2: 16th – 22nd June 2020 (n=700) 

Wave 3: 17th – 25th August 2020 (n=700) 

Wave 4: 2nd – 9th November 2020 (n=729) 

Wave 5: 5th – 23rd February 2021 (n=969)

Spanning five waves – from April 2020 to February 2021, we’ve stayed with business decision-makers at every step of the way —from the immediate aftermath of the outbreak to the economic reopening and beyond.

Not only does this research provide unparalleled insight into how organizations adapt during uncertain times, but it also helps us anticipate the key trends, challenges, and strategic focus areas for the future, which we will explore in this report.

Overall Business Outlook

The sustained roll-out of vaccines in major economies and more informed knowledge of controlling the virus has led to a positive outlook amongst decision-makers. More than half of the decision-makers (55%) anticipate a recovery period following the uncertainty of 2020. 

The pandemic has spurred the speed with which organisations embraced specific ideas and priorities, most notably in the areas of new technology, flexible work, commitment to staff wellbeing, and businesses’ roles in contributing towards a more sustainable and equitable world. 

Get more insights into how business decision-makers perceive the overall business landscape here by downloading our free report.

Critical concerns for business decision-makers 

For decision-makers, there has been a shift in areas of focus. During the first wave of this research conducted in April 2020, their top three concerns centred around the protection and safety of their employees, guarding against disruptions to business operations, and working capital and funding. 

Concerns around protecting employees against disease have remained consistent throughout the five waves; however, other focus areas have shifted. The fear of disruptions to business operations is far less prevalent today as organisations have innovated and painstakingly adapted to continue operating despite challenging conditions.  

Focus has shifted to facing the unknown, data security, and overcoming work visas and international travel issues. Compared to the pandemic’s start, more business decision-makers cite facing the unknown as a critical concern. Data security has come into sharper focus as a result of working conditions in the new normal. 

For 68% of the decision-makers, overseas business travel is either very or of utmost importance for meeting new and prospective clients and for training and development. This has brought the importance of mitigating work visas and international travel challenges posed by the pandemic. 

As decision-makers actively follow COVID news coverage to navigate the challenges posed by the pandemic, news organizations have played a significant role in supporting businesses. With 77% of business decision-makers telling us they use their smartphone more often to follow the news, we see smartphones playing an increasingly important role in accessing information. 

Get more in-depth analysis of the most significant business concerns for decision-makers. Download our free report here.

Priorities for the future —Harnessing technology is a top priority.

In the final research wave, we asked decision-makers to reflect on how their priorities have changed now compared to before the pandemic. Digital transformation was the predominant theme as businesses have had to make rapid changes to ride the pandemic and survive it. In fact, 82% attribute their company’s increased prioritisation of digital investment to COVID-19. This is not a short-term trend, and decision-makers will continue to harness technology for their companies in the future.  

According to the report, 77% expect their company’s overall technology budget to increase in the next 1 to 3 years. 

So, where do companies expect to be investing their digital spending? IT support tops the list as organisations recognize the importance of securing and installing new tools. 

Download our full report to find out what other areas are envisioned for increased tech budgets in 2021 and beyond.

Attitudes towards foreign investment

In the near future, business decision-makers are most confident that Singapore, Australia, New Zealand, and Japan are the markets they would like to invest in. 

This is because these top five countries are perceived to prosper across four critical pillars of market confidence: political stability, economic reopening, virus containment, and society’s resilience. 

Discover how APAC business decision-makers rate the factors that will play a critical role in informing which foreign countries to invest in the future by downloading our free report.

The role of the office

The pandemic caused a significant shift in the office’s role, with many companies moving fully remote and others offering the flexibility of a hybrid work model. 

Read the full report to learn what percentage of companies allowed the flexibility to work from home or office over the three waves.

Flexibility is not limited to where people work from, but also the hours they work. Working from home during the pandemic meant juggling household responsibilities, like childcare while schools were closed. Again, this trend is not short-term as many companies have made flexible work a part of their long-term strategy. 

Flexible work has not been without its share of challenges. Therefore, decision-makers are adopting new tools and methodologies. 

Find out which areas companies are focused on developing and how they are planning to overcome post-pandemic human resource challenges by downloading our full free report.

People Management

There has been an emphasis on physical and mental health both in their personal and business lives. Throughout the research, decision-makers have placed health and wellbeing on top of their list, considering it more important than their career and business, financial stability, and even relationships with family and friends.  

According to the research, 79% of business decision-makers say that their company has become more aware of safety, personal values, and their employees’ wellbeing. 

Read the full report to find out how decision-makers are translating this awareness of the health and wellbeing of their employees and how they plan on continuing to increase investments in their company’s healthcare and wellness programs. 

Decision-makers have also made helping employees manage their mental health a priority.

Companies are increasingly engaging with an expert or vendor to provide healthcare/wellbeing training or services for their staff. According to the research, this percentage has jumped from 55% in wave 4 (November 2020) to 66% in wave 5 (February 2021).

Businesses are considering several options to support staff, but mental health and stress management are on top of their list, with almost half (49%) of firms considering this. 

Discover the other top areas considered to enhance the company’s corporate wellness program by downloading our free report here.

Aligning personal and business values 

The pandemic experience has caused many people to re-evaluate what’s important to them, extending to the world of business. 

According to the research in wave 5 (February 2021), 75% of business decision-makers say they have placed greater emphasis on giving back to society. 

Not only is an increasing focus on altruism informing business strategy, but it’s also influencing brand choice. 

Read the full report to discover the two most prominent social causes that are the focus of decision-makers. 

After witnessing what might be the most challenging year in recent history, there’s a sense of optimism from APAC’s business decision-makers. 

With new shifts in the way we work and feel, there are evolving challenges. However, flexibility, wellbeing, and altruism are here to stay long-term, allowing business decision-makers to align their values with their commercial goals. 

In this research, we take a deep dive into major focus areas within each trend and discover what decision-makers consider their top priorities in the near future. If you need more detailed information to help make decisions for your organization or brand, download the full report here. 

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The automotive industry has a clear, shared vision of a dramatically transformed future with electronic vehicles, autonomous vehicles, connected cars, shared ownership, and subscriptions. But are consumers ready to transition just yet? The pandemic has changed how much people travel, and this leaves us with the big question: how will the economic damage caused by COVID impact the car industry?

To further understand where consumers stand and what economic recovery looks like for the automotive industry —one of the hardest hit by the pandemic —we looked at five significant trends. We explored what’s at stake for each of these five trends, evaluated the rate of progress, and put the spotlight on innovative brands and solutions leading the way.

  1. Post-COVID caution: A battered industry navigates massive uncertainty.
  2. Plugged In: The electronic vehicle revolution is happening but still powered by subsidies.
  3. In Control: Artificial Intelligence is enhancing, not replacing, human driving abilities.
  4. Connected Vehicles
  5. Older Drivers, Younger Drivers

Ｄownload the full report and read the summary of the top 5 trends shaping the future of the automotive industry, with a spotlight on the brands that are capitalising on these trends with their cutting-edge innovative solutions.

#1 Post-COVID caution: A battered industry navigates massive uncertainty.

According to analysts, Jato Dynamics, global new car sales fell by over 12% in 2020, that’s around twice the drop recorded in IEA figures for the worst year of the last financial crisis (2007-2008).

While this drop was only 2% in China, the automotive industry felt a heavy blow globally. France, Germany, the UK, and Brazil saw declines of over 20%.

Consumer behaviour changed dramatically, and while new car sales declined due to the pandemic, the automobile aftermarket flourished as people tried to preserve their existing vehicles. Consumers started putting off purchases of luxury cars, hybrids, and EVs.

The early COVID-19 spread brought with it a new innovative trend —virtual showrooms, whereby consumers could move all or at least some part of their car buying experience online. In many parts of the world, COVID restrictions will become a part of life indefinitely, and therefore, this trend is here to stay.

Learn more about how the pandemic has reshaped the automotive industry here by downloading our free report.

#2 Plugged In: The electronic vehicle revolution is happening but still powered by subsidies.

As with much of the electronic vehicle (EV) revolution, subsidies and regulation may be needed for mass EV adoption.

In Norway, subsidies and tax breaks make the cost of an EV virtually identical to that of a non-electric car. 74% of the new cars sold in Norway are EVs, whereas it’s just 2% in the US. In the USA and China, EV sales plateaued when subsidies were reduced or phased out.

In 2021, US President Joe Biden took a step toward cutting greenhouse gas emissions signing an executive order aimed at making half of all new vehicles sold in 2030 electric, a move made with backing from the biggest US automakers.

Amazon is started testing electric delivery vans in 2021. The vehicles were developed in partnership with start-up Rivian, which raised $8 billion from investors, including Amazon through its $2 billion Climate Pledge Fund. The fund includes an agreement to purchase 100,000 electric vehicles from the start-up as part of its ambitious push to make Amazon’s fleet run entirely on renewable energy. Each van has a range of 150 miles per charge.

Before consumers join the EV revolution, they want to know there is a plan for infrastructure for charging stations.

A Deloitte study showed that consumers were putting off plans to buy EVs due to price and driving range. With ranges for EVs now often well over 400km, that is taken care of, but there needs to be a visible EV infrastructure in terms of charging stations. Therefore, at the moment, innovators need to tackle the two most critical factors —price and infrastructure.

Wireless charging stations are an essential solution. Although the technology exists, firms don’t want to build the infrastructure without enough cars; and manufacturers don’t want to create more expensive wireless options without that infrastructure.

Learn more about how Electronic Vehicles or EVs are perceived and the challenges ahead here by downloading our free report.

#3 In Control: Artificial Intelligence is enhancing, not replacing, human driving abilities.

Even though Tesla has made huge strides with its self-driving cars, the adoption is still slow due to consumer trust issues.

Moreover, driverless cars pose problems —of AI, of laws and ethics, and public perception. 

In this scenario, autonomous vehicles with Driver Assistance Systems are becoming the norm in many markets. 

The ultra-high-end Cadillac Escalade Platinum, launched in Summer 2021, is the first vehicle to boast GM’s Super Cruise technology. The vehicle handles your highway driving for you on major mapped roads. However, your car monitors you and will warn you if you stop paying attention to the road for more than five seconds before switching back to manual.

AI is set to become more prevalent in vehicles, learn more about the challenges for these enhancements here.

#4 Connected Vehicles

So far, automotive and infrastructure innovation has happened chiefly at the individual car level. However, traffic jams and rush hours occur at a network level when all those individual cars interact.

We see a change in this direction as businesses and transportation planners recognize the idea of the “mobility ecosystem” —where software platforms can connect, manage and mitigate network-level inefficiencies between transport services and their users.

Navigation apps showing real-time traffic data are already being used widely. We also see more adoption of smart speed limits and smart traffic light systems.

The next generation of connected vehicles goes deeper and broader with tools that allow bikes or mobility scooters to connect to the same systems cars use. Connected vehicles also make fleet management —of buses or utility vehicles, more efficient.

What are the implications for individual drivers? For the mobility ecosystem to work, each car requires a digital identity. They do, however, present the issue of privacy.

Your car’s digital identity can also be linked to your own distinct identity as a driver, which makes the car more secure with keyless entry using facial or voice recognition and biometric sensors.

Our innovation spotlight is on Foxconn, the Chinese manufacturing giant which makes the iPhone. Foxconn is developing an EV platform that any brand can use to bring vehicles to market —in the same way as the Android phone platform. Foxconn bets that the real differentiator in the future EV market won’t be looks or performance; it’ll be the array of connected features and AI capabilities they possess.

A connected mobility ecosystem is one of the trends emerging in the transportation and automotive industry. Download our report to discover more about this emerging trend.

#5 Older Drivers, Younger Drivers

The automotive trends influenced by the ageing population and the changing expectations of Gen Z are creating significant changes. For older people, AI can help extend their driving lifetime. For the young, the big question is whether ownership will decline in favour of sharing and subscription mobility.

Late Millennial and Gen Z consumers are a post-ownership generation —they prefer renting to buying houses or vehicles. Car manufacturers have been trying to introduce the idea of Mobility-as-a-Service solutions, which replaces car ownership with car-sharing or subscription-based offers at a lower cost.

However, while Mobility-as-a-Service has had some successes in the bikes and e-Scooter sectors, especially in busy cities, it’s been tougher ask for cars.

Overall, we see a shift away from the brand to features and capabilities.

If you need more detailed information to help make decisions for your organisation or brand, download the full report here.

To learn more, download the full report: Automotive Trends For 2022

To learn more about how these trends, download the full report. Alternatively if you’d like to speak to us to understand more about how these trends are playing out in your market, get in touch.

Our lifestyle is still undergoing significant transformation in response to Covid. The overseas trend is getting blurred even more. Our Introduction to Overseas Trend’s seminars series is for getting rid of such a problem when considering overseas marketing research.

This time, our local team members from across our Southeast Asia offices introduced the lifestyle changes during the pandemic as well as provided anecdotes and case studies of the products and services that are rapidly growing in the region. Let’s catch up by watching the recordings below.

Watch the session in English

Watch the session in Japanese

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