Those changes happen for countless reasons. Among the most common reasons we find changes in tastes or changes in needs. All consumers experience changes due to age, situations they experience or simply due to life circumstances, such as the availability of certain products and technological changes, among others.
We are currently undergoing a change in the environment that we could call economic pessimism. We constantly come across consumers who say that economic progress has stopped or ended, although perhaps they are referring to the performance of the economy in general, rather than a product issue.
The classic economist John Maynard Keynes once said something similar back in the 1930s. At that time the world was suffering from the first great depression. We suffered the second at the end of the 2010s, with the so-called crisis of the subprimes impacting almost the entire developed world. We constantly face crises that affect the perception of the products that consumers need or seek, which always leads companies to reinvent business models, products and ways to satisfy customers.
With the end of the Covid-19 pandemic that we have experienced in the last three years, we can see that the business environment seeks to return to normal, or what is now called the new normal. The current normality differs from what we had before the pandemic; it is also different from the one we experienced in previous years. The facts are the facts, and despite presenting or seeing them from different points of view, they remain. Crises help to reinvent themselves, but they also cause consumers to modify their consumption.
We can currently say that we are experiencing generational changes that will have an impact in a few years. The generation that liked certain products in the past is now of legal age, gets older and modifies its consumption. The new consumers that we saw at the beginning of 2000 are now people in their 40s, going to their 50s, with which their needs and tastes change. The generation that is born after 2000 will be 30 years old very soon, seeking to satisfy their needs and desires in a different way than before.
The preferences of all types of products are affected by generational changes and the developments that time offers. Products tend to be presented in more “modern” or “contemporary” ways so that new generations can better understand and consume them. These new generations are the ones that will consume the majority in the future. It may be that older generations accept the modernity of products, although it is more likely that they seek to keep their consumption as stable as possible. Let’s look at an example to understand this better.
Let’s think of a product that has grown a lot in Mexico in the last 30 years, such as wine. Currently, about 20% of the wine we consume is produced in Mexico, the rest is imported. A few years ago, the largest consumers of wine were people over 40 years of age. The recent Wine Intelligence 2021 report indicates that the majority of wine consumers in Mexico are now under 35 years of age. This is in contrast to what happens in other markets, such as the United States or Europe, where wine consumers age by drinking it, and young people prefer other beverages, even some without alcohol content.
Without going into the reasons, what is remarkable about the issue is that consumers are constantly changing their consumption habits. Many times in traditional or expected ways, but other times in a different way. Marketers must be alert to these changes so that when they happen —before, during or after a generational event or crisis— we can timely attend to these new realities or normalities.