BusinessNews Publishing - Summary: The Popcorn Report: Review and Analysis of Popcorns Book

Book Abstract

For anyone in business, the future is a serious issue. If your customers reach it before you do, they will leave you behind. Business success requires that you constantly evolve towards meeting the requirements of the future.

The best approach lies in constantly monitoring the attitudes, requirements and tastes of your customer base. Take what you observe and project those perceptions to their logical conclusion. Then start aligning your product or service with the long-term logical conclusions of your analysis. In doing this, you are acting today to preserve the long-term future and profitability of your business.

Important Note About This Ebook

This is a summary and not a critique or a review of the book. It does not offer judgment or opinion on the content of the book. This summary may not be organized chapter-wise but is an overview of the main ideas, viewpoints and arguments from the book as a whole. This means that the organization of this summary is not a representation of the book.

1. Timelines

The future is a serious business, and if your customers reach it before you, theyll leave you behind. There will be economic casualties as the changes take effect, but those who see the shakeups coming stand the best chance of surviving.

The 90s will be a decade of change from fast-track living to a return to home and self-protection. This change is not inspired by any single particular happening, just by society shifting its assumptions about the past, present and future.

Consider these trends;

1. For the first time ever, the wilderness is now considered safer than civilization. People are increasingly entrenching themselves in the privacy of their own homes as a fortress from society. They will work from home, shop from home, be entertained and educated at home - their homes will become their centers of consumption.
2. Nature is no longer our ally but our enemy. What we eat, and how our food has been prepared, has become a political issue. The impulse to get fit has been superseded by an intense drive to survive.
3. Foodaceuticals (food combined with drugs) will be developed to create new methods of nourishment. Herbal treatments will combine with modern medicine to produce specific foods for treatment of ailments.
4. There is presently a general aversion to long-term thinking. Consumers are disillusioned by the traditional corporate approach of search-out-resources-and-destroy and instead they look at purchase decisions as political. Companies no longer sell what they are offering, but increasingly what they are and their value system.

2. Paths To The Future

Trends are a road map to the next decade. They are designed to point to the factors that will motivate consumers to buy one product over another. It is a focus on consumer moods rather than simply consumer types. Trends are predictive simply because they start small and gather momentum. On average, trends last about ten years. If you can propel your business on the momentum of a current trend, you can increase your hold on the consumer.

Watching the trends expands your vision, and helps you see more clearly how the future will look and feel. And, specifically, how your business can profit from this unique perspective.

Trend 1. Cocooning in a New Decade

Main Idea

Cocooning refers to staying at home rather than going out and about on the town or in the community. People are increasingly setting up their homes exactly as they want them, and spending more time at home enjoying their own personal set-up.

Supporting Ideas

Cocooning was in full speed during the 80s. Everybody was busy building their homes into high-tech havens where they could dig-in and hide from the pressures of the world. Cocooning is the ultimate insulation and avoidance strategy. Video recorder sales, a boom in take-away food and a soaring birth rate are evidences of the widespread reach of the cocooning trend.

Rather than letting up, you can expect the 90s to produce;

• The Armored Cocoon

Gun ownership in the U.S.A. was up 53% between 1983 and 1986. Home security systems are booming. People are also forming groups (sort of armed neighborhood watch groups) of like minded cocooned consumers. To reach these people, you have to go to them - dont expect them to come to you.

• The Wandering Cocoon

Increasingly, people are setting up their transportation like a cocoon away from the cocoon with numerous amenities and gadgets now commonplace in cars and vans. In other words, cozier cars are becoming secondary cocoons. The 90s style is plain on the outside and luxurious on the inside. (That way, people wont get jealous or hit you over the head for your property).

• The Socialized Cocoon

More people are entertaining at home than ever before. Not on the grand scales of huge parties or glittering occasions however. People today are inviting into their cocoon soothing and congenial compatriots - people they feel comfy with and with whom they can weather the raging storm together.

Trend 2. Fantasy Adventure

Main Idea

As people escape physically into their cocoons, they are also escaping mentally into fantasies for adventure. These adventure fantasies offer the chance for a vicarious escape from the real world - taking daring risks in the safest possible way.

Supporting Ideas

In the real world, there has been an appreciable change away from devil-may-care risks to caution in pleasure-seeking for some time. Consider also;

• Food - today there are more than 250 different kinds of fresh produce, compared to about 65 a decade ago.
• Sex - there has been a tremendous boom in pornography and a decline in active participation (thanks to AIDS).
• Fashion - more of the top models are now coming from Czechoslovakia and other exotic locations than ever before.
• Music - exotic sounds from Brazil to Europe to Polynesia are now joining the mainstream of pop culture.

Trend 3. Small Indulgences

Main Idea

There is a real militancy about small indulgences these days - people dont look at them as simple, small diversions but as rights of existence. People are choosing one very small and insignificant category in their lives, and going all out to buy the best in that category alone.

Supporting Ideas

Of course, the word small is, by definition, relative - what is a small indulgence to one person may rate as a big indulgence to another.

In addition to indulging themselves, people are also paying for indulgences for their children. This trend depends not so much on price but quality. People are scaling down the size of their indulgence to be able to afford the level of quality that they want.

The good thing about this trend is that it works both ways. The worse that economic factors become, the more people like to make small self-indulgences. When there is an upturn in the economy, people simply raise the dollar price of their small indulgences.