Surfing Twitter waves for market trends

No more newspapers during my private time in the morning – Twitter is a lively and interactive news source with various sessions that you can customise and colour as you wish. You can even discuss issues with reporters or celebrities if they are available. For sure, this is fresher and faster news. Newspapers are still a necessary information source; for me, however, they have been pushed a little later, to my coffee time in the office.
Through my surfing on the Twitter waves one morning recently, I was struck by some interesting trends and customer preferences. So let’s see whether one of them will trigger your thoughts.

-A green tax is closer to our daily lives than we think
As of January 1, all the world’s airlines are being billed for the carbon emissions of their flights into and out of the European Union. With this starting point, sooner or later, people who consume more (and emit more) will have to take more responsibility. For example, if your family consumes more electricity than your friend’s family, in general I would say that your family emits more carbon dioxide. So your family should pay a higher green tax than your friend’s family. Is this a looming threat for makers of electrical appliances or a big opportunity for manufacturers of energy-saving equipment?

-Living single is a preferable choice, not a life of “nobody needs me”
Japan, which has one of the lowest national birth rates in the world, is worried that the living-single trend has become more popular than at any point in history. In that country, 61 per cent of single men aged 18-34 years say they have no girlfriend, and 50 per cent of single women have no boyfriend. The single lifestyle in Japan has been increasing since 2005. There seems to be a similar trend in such developed economies as Singapore, Hong Kong and Germany. Is this a looming threat for family products or an opportunity for the healthcare segment?

-Women at the top
Ten years ago if I asked you to name a female chief executive of a global company, you might have had to take a few minutes. Today, I believe you would need less than a single minute to name someone such as Indra Nooyi (CEO of PepsiCo), Sheryl Sandberg (chief operating officer of Facebook), or Irene Rosenfeld (CEO of Kraft Foods). Not only are there more women in top management of international companies, you also find a lot of them leading countries, such as Angela Merkel (German chancellor), Hillary Rodham Clinton (US secretary of state), and Dilma Rousseff (Brazilian president). This is not by accident, but it is the trend as the world has accepted women’s capabilities. Female managers have similar decisiveness as men but in a more humanised way. In 2010, 27 per cent of millionaires worldwide were women, compared with 24 per cent in 2008. One of the businesses capturing the opportunities in this segment is commercial banks, which are focusing on high-earning female executives because they have bigger wallets than their husbands.

-Minimalism and simplicity
More and more products are following the late Steve Jobs’s path, or Apple’s way as you may call it – minimalist and simple. No argument that Apple’s minimalist style has a big influence on customer preferences. I found an article about a hotel service moving towards minimalism with the simple question, “Do the customers want drawers in hotel rooms?” The outcome was that people on business trips tend to stay one to three nights and don’t seem to like unpacking things and putting them in drawers. Do you minimise unnecessary options in your company’s products and services? This would bring win-win benefits as it matches customer lifestyles while you can reduce your costs.
As the saying goes, “Smart people see opportunity, while others see another way around.”

Jirat Sirichalermpong is customer and marketing analysis manager at Siam City Cement.