The Next Big Thing

Citation

Duarte, P. (2011), "The Next Big Thing", Journal of Consumer Marketing, Vol. 28 No. 1, pp. 92-93. https://doi.org/10.1108/07363761111102001

This book made me think of Liza Minelli singing “Money makes the world go round” in the classic movie “Cabaret”. If it is true that “money makes the world go round”, reading this book made me think of who or what defines in what direction the world moves. Without the proper knowledge, it is difficult to figure out exactly what drives the world, but now I have no doubts. Trends are responsible for defining in what direction the world will move.

Our world moves according to trends, for “it is hard to escape the word ‘trends’ today” (p. 1). Trends determine our desires and wants; what we buy and, in some way, even who we are. Trends are also especially important to companies. They can provide enormous benefits to those who develop the skills needed to the early identification, interpretation, and implementation of trends and use them to capitalize their potential. To survive, companies need to understand how to anticipate consumer changes and efficiently predict attitudes, tastes, and wants to get the most out of them. Another main idea conveyed in this book is that trends are far too important to be left to chance, and companies should develop formal methodologies to exploit and leverage the benefits they can generate. These are the main lessons one can learn from this interesting book.

The book provides a “how‐to” approach to understand, identify and leverage trends. Easy to read, the book is filled with real world examples which reflect the author's ten years of professional experience in identifying, interpreting, and implementing trend marketing for companies across a range of sectors.

The book is organized in two sections. In the three parts and 12 chapters of the first section, named “Trends”, the author discuss what trends are, why they are important, and how they start. The first part named, “The value of trends”, is devoted to introduce the reader to the importance, relevance, impact and benefits of trends. It starts by explaining the meaning of trends, how they shape consumer behavior and at the same time, how political, economic, social, and technological (PEST) factors (here called trend initiators) (p. 78), as well as globalization and boundary blurring, shape the emergence and growth of trends. The remaining chapters of this part expose the power of trends as purchase drivers, describing their impact on communication, distribution, new products development, and internationalization strategy. In the last chapter the author emphasizes the fact that “if approached correctly … trends can offer great opportunities” (p. 33) but that trends can also offer threats. Evidences of how trends can threaten one whole industry can be found in the digital cameras market that devastated the camera film industry, and how the rapid growth of the mobile phone market lead to a massive decrease of fixed‐line phone market. At the same time, there is also the danger of missing a trend. Failing to exploit a positive trend means missing out on a potentially highly profitable opportunity; conversely, failing to identify a negative trend early enough can limit the company's capacity to reduce its full negative impact.

Before initiating the process of trend marketing and trying to get the most out of trend knowledge, marketers need to prepare themselves and their companies. The essential skills and qualities that a trend marketer and companies must possess to facilitate the acceptance and integration of trend knowledge are introduced in chapters 6, 7 and 8. Among those, the author stresses the importance of trend marketers keeping an open mind to new things and adopting a neutral and unbiased position toward the future. They must be systematic in their methodology to be able to interpret trend honestly and objectively, yet they must maintain an innovative perspective to be able to effectively mobilize and manage the internal and external resources needed to the acceptance and smooth integration of trend research findings into the company strategy. This takes us to Part 3 designed to ”understanding trends” (p. 75). The author uses the four chapters (9‐12) of this part to explain the several types of trends, how trends start, where they occur, and, very important, the difference between trends and fads. According to the book, the difference lies in the cause, the impact, and the durability. A trend is driven by consumer needs, lasts for a minimum of two years; normally affects more than one industry, and has an impact on future change. On the other hand, fads are more intense and provide short‐term opportunities, but are more volatile and have little or no impact on the future.

The second and final section, titled “Trend marketing”, presents a framework for the trend marketing process. This section is divided into three parts (4‐6) with four chapters each. Each part details one of the three stages in the trend marketing process: Identification, Interpretation and Implementation.

The first part of this section describe the what, where, when and how to look for trends. The chapters in this part describe how evidence of trends can be found almost everywhere, from statistical data and reports to magazine polls or even on the street. However, identifying a trend is just the first step. To become useful, trends need to be interpreted. Interpretation is the process through which trend marketers determine how trends move from one adopter to another and what type of factors drive the spread of trends.

Finally, in the chapters devoted to implementation, the author emphasizes the importance of the integration of trend knowledge and business needs in order to identify the most effective marketing strategies. This is often a long and difficult task. Convincing others of the validity or significance of a trend is not easy, and that is why the author writes that “Implementation is equal parts analysis and persuasion” (p. 194). Persuasion is crucial to convince others of the power of a trend to generate profitable results and move from theory to practice. This is precisely the title of the last chapter, where the author makes use of the 4P's framework to provide a more precise explanation of the final steps of the trend marketing process.

In summary, this is an interesting and easy to read book that helps to understand what trends are, how to identify them, why they are important and how they can help companies to improve their results. With plenty of examples to illustrate each concept, this is a valuable resource for everyone who knows little or nothing about trends. However, some parts could be a little disappointing for those with some marketing and trend knowledge.