Carried away by trends

Trend has become a trendy word. How can trends be researched, foreseen and defined? These were the questions discussed at conference organised by Dr. Törőcsik Marketing Inspiration – Consumer Behaviour Research Institute on 27 February. Dr. Mária Törőcsik, head of the Institute, spoke about the so called Lifesytle Inspiration Model in her opening presentation. She also outlined the practical use of trend research and main categories of trends. Ákos Demeter from the Boston Consulting Group, spoke about the characteristics of Eastern Middle European consumers. This region has a population of 326 million, out of which 200 million belong to the middle class. He mentioned three market strategies used by manufacturers. The first is the copy paste method, which means applying Western European trends to this region without any alteration at all. The second is when obsolete products are marketed in this region. The third is when innovations are developed specifically for this region. Dr. József Kandikó, rector of the College of Modern Business Studies and chairman of the Hungarian Marketing Association pointed out the complexity of the process of doing business. Customers are complex personalities, whose attitude towards trends is defined partly by their individuality and partly by the groups they belong to. Main market trends are determined by Models, Magnets (modern distribution channels) and Brands. Szabolcs Lipi, regional director of Kay EUU provided a sort of a user’s manual to our region. He believes that regional trends are too general, which means these need to be broken down into clusters like newcomers to the EU, or the Balkans with Russia. Michael Schipperges, research director of Sinus Sociovision, spoke about their new research method Sinus-Milio, which is a country-specific, systematic, intercultural comparison. Research is focused on everyday life and basic values and attitudes. Sinus-Milio is system for defining consumer groups which share similar ideas and feelings.