In the first of a two-part series, a

professional futurist and business-

trend watcher looks at the big
trends in demography, money, and
consumerism that will shape the
world in the next decade.

By Andy Hines

Consumer Trends
in ThreE DIFFERENT
“WORLDS” MECALEHA / ISTOCKPHOTO.COM
18 THE FUTURIST July-August 2008 www.wfs.org
© 2008 World Future Society • 7910 Woodmont Avenue, Suite 450, Bethesda, MD 20814, U.S.A. • All rights reserved.
W
hat are the top 20 trends
affecting consumer life
around the world? The fu-
turists and analysts at So-
cial Technologies have done a num-
ber of deep dives into the topic and
produced a list of “durable” trends
that are sure to be important over the
n e x t d e c a d e a n d b e y o n d . We
grouped these trends into five cate-
gories: demography, rising wealth,
culture, infrastructure, and values,
and we suggest business implica-
tions for each of these trends.
Throughout this analysis, we refer
to World 1 (or W1) World 2 (or W2),
and World 3 (or W3) as our three
“worlds” based on an index that
rates a country’s economic and social
development and technological ca-
pability, then groups them among
peers. W1 consists of fewer than a
billion people in the affluent coun-
tries, including the United States,
western Europe, Japan, South Korea,
and Australia. W3 consists of the 1 to
2 billion people who are in dire
straits, including most of Africa, Ban-
gladesh, and Haiti. The W2 world is
the large segment of 3 to 4 billion in
the middle, in nations that are rela-
tively balanced in terms of needs and
resources, though still vulnerable to
setbacks. Some W2 nations, such as
India and China, are growing partic-
ularly rapidly, while nations in other
regions, such as in Latin America
and eastern Europe, less so.
Look to these trends to be influen-
tial, assuming relative economic
stability, over the next decade.
Demographic Trends
Demography is a solid starting
point for our trend analysis, because
demographic numbers are fairly pre-
dictable. However, when we look at
the future of demography, a rule of
thumb is that the exception is becom-
ing the rule.
Trend 1: Aging population. We are
all familiar with the notion of an ag-
ing population. Imagine the world
resembled Florida or Italy, where the
median age will be 50 by mid-cen-
tury. The populations of the world’s
most developed, W1, countries are
skewing toward more older people
and fewer younger people (“aging,”
in other words). W2 is just a genera-
tion behind. While those in the
United States might complain about
the “broken” Social Security system,
most of W2 and W3 don’t even have
a social security system. Of course,
opportunity emerges from need, and
the financial services in these coun-
tries are poised for explosive growth,
particularly in W1 countries.
An interesting aspect of aging in
nations like the United States is the
increasing obsolescence of retire-
ment. U.S. baby boomers are choos-
ing post-work lifestyles that don’t re-
semble the stereotype of the quaint,
restful senior citizen. Surveys reveal
that about three-fourths of boomers
plan to keep working beyond retire-
ment age. Boomers are going to live
longer, generally be in better health,
and have a better education than
previous generations. Why not work
longer?
A futurist who joined Social Tech-
nologies about a year ago is a poster
child for the post-work boomer. She
retired in 2006 after 30 years with a
large multinational corporation. She
works for us part time because she
finds futures work interesting and is
willing to accept less money than she
made in the corporate world. She
also teaches a class at a university
near her home—where she is work-
ing on another degree for herself.
She is active in her church, goes to
boot camp fitness training at 5 a.m.
every day, takes motorcycle trips with
her boomer husband, and is cur-
rently planning to run the Rome
Marathon. I jokingly tell her she is
going to have to go back to work to
get some rest!
Business implications: In their quest
to discover new activities and have
new experiences, non-retiring seniors
will look for ways to stay active de-
spite diminishing physical abilities.
Companies will surely want to tap
their valuable expertise and experi-
ence. However, many seniors will in-
sist on working on their own terms,
setting their own working conditions
or even establishing home-based
freelance businesses. The urban re-
newal trend under way in cities like
Baltimore and San Francisco—where
empty-nesters leave the suburbs and
good school districts to relocate to
high-rise condos in downtown
­areas—is also part of this trend.
THE FUTURIST
The Three
Worlds
W1 consists of fewer than a
billion people in the affluent
countries, including the United
States, western Europe, Japan,
South Korea, and Australia.
W2 is the large segment of 3 to 4
billion in the middle, in nations that
are relatively balanced in terms of
needs and resources, though still
vulnerable to setbacks. Some W2
nations, such as India and China,
are growing particularly rapidly,
while nations in other regions, such
as in Latin America and eastern
Europe, less so.
W3 world consists of the 1 to 2
billion people who are in dire
straits, including most of Africa,
Bangladesh, and Haiti.
Trend 2: Changing families. It’s
time to put the traditional family on
the endangered species list in W1.
“Alternative” family arrangements,
on the fringe a generation ago, are
now mainstream. Consider that 51%
of adult women are now without a
spouse and 37% of babies are born
out of wedlock in the United States.
Couples are delaying childbirth to
pursue career goals and then gener-
ally having smaller families.
Single-person households are the
fastest-growing type of household in
the United States—second only to
multigeneration households, in
which parents move in with their
kids who still have kids of their own
at home. This isn’t surprising consid-
ering the cost of raising and school-
July-August 2008 www.wfs.org 19

ing children in many W1 countries.
In March 2008, the U.S. Department
of Agriculture deduced that the cost
of clothing, housing, and educating a
child in the United States until the
age of 18 is $204,060.
Kids now grow up faster and, iron-
ically, adults are “growing up” more
slowly. Children absorb adult mes-
sages from media and are moving
through childhood more quickly.
Meanwhile, many adults are seeking
to recapture their lost childhoods—
these youth-seeking grown-ups have
been called “rejuveniles” or “kid-
ults.” Those who come back to live
with their parents have been dubbed
“boomerangers.”
An indicator of this demographic
boundary blurring is the formation
of adult kickball leagues and partici-
pation in other activities formerly as-
sociated with children. At the same
time, adults are going back to school
in record numbers—in many cases
outnumbering youths in the class-
room.
Business implications: Given all
these changes in the nature of fami-
lies, organizations will need to recon-
sider how they think about families
and how they communicate with
them. These shifts are already driv-
ing market researchers crazy—at
least those who still rely on tradi-
tional age-based segmentations. Age
is simply not a reliable indicator of
people’s actions or interests. The
20 THE FUTURIST July-August 2008
Trend 1: Aging population.
The populations of more-affluent countries
are skewing toward more older people,
fewer younger people.
choices open to people across life
stages have expanded, and aging
populations are taking full advan-
tage of them.
Trend 3: Migration. It’s logistically
easier now than ever before to relo-
cate from one area to another—be it
across a country or around the
world. This phenomenon is raising
challenging social and political is-
sues. In W1, the debate continues
over whether immigrants are a net
benefit or drain on the recipient
economy, and it has become a peren-
nially popular campaign issue for
some politicians, as well. Do we let
them in? Do we keep them out? Sev-
eral European nations are confront-
ing these issues, made particularly
acute as their native-born population
growth has stopped and in some
cases declined. Incorporating immi-
grants into national social/entitle-
ment systems can present major po-
litical challenges.
It is likely that politicians will con-
tinue to make a lot of noise about
“cracking down” on illegal immigra-
tion, but in the end, we forecast, the
net benefits that immigrants bring by
doing both manual and high-value-
added knowledge work will keep the
flows of migrants coming. One of the
traditional strengths of the U.S. econ-
omy, for example, has been its will-
ingness to embrace new people with
new ideas. Many argue that it has
been a key competitive advantage.
www.wfs.org
SERDAR YAGCI / ISTOCKPHOTO.COM
Business implications: Organizations
struggling to deal with the issue of
growing diversity are particularly af-
fected by this trend. In the future,
more organizations will find them-
selves confronted with having to di-
versify their workforces in the face of
a global economy that demands an
international perspective to succeed.
Trend 4: Population growth. About
10 to 15 years ago, a series of books
came out sounding the alarm that
population growth threatens Earth’s
carrying capacity. The most recent
statistics from the U.S. Census Bu-
reau suggest that global population
is going to top off at somewhere be-
tween 9 billion and 10 billion people
(we’re closing in on 7 billion today).
W2 and W3 have been proceeding
through the demographic transition
more quickly than some had antici-
pated, important because 95% of
population growth will come from
these worlds. As these nations de-
velop economically, large families
are confronting disincentives in the
form of the high cost of raising chil-
dren. Previously, more children
meant more labor to work the farm.
But the process of industrialization
has diminished the economic advan-
tages of having kids in the developed
world. Most European countries and
Japan are already below replace-
ment-level fertility, and the projec-
tion is that global population growth
will reach this mark by 2050.
 Trend 5: Urbanization.
The majority of the world’s
population is now living in cities.
In the highly developed world for
instance, urbanization rates
typically hover around 75%.

CHRISTOS GEORGHIOU / ISTOCKPHOTO.COM

Business implications: Ironically, a
newly emerging “worry” is that soon
W1 will have too few people and too
few workers. This concern results
from the common misconception
that economies and organizations
must continue to grow. The chal-
lenge brought by slowing population
increases is that some of the “auto-
matic” growth that businesses have
experienced due to ever-higher GDP
(fueled by population increases) will
gradually decline. This is already
happening in the United States, Eu-
rope, and parts of Asia. W2 and W3
are rapidly catching up.
Trend 5: Urbanization. The major-
ity of the world’s population is now
living in cities. In W1, for instance,
urbanization rates typically hover
around 75%. W2 and W3 are in the
process of rapid urbanization, as
many of those countries are transi-
tioning from an agricultural to an in-
dustrial economy. When that hap-
pens, people tend to settle in huge,
multimillion-person megalopolises,
often around national capital cities;
one exception is the Nigerian mega­
city of Lagos.
Thanks to technology, anyone
armed with a laptop or PDA can con-
nect to the world, and the workplace,
via the Internet. As a result, some in-
teresting choices will emerge about
where to live and work. For decades,
urbanization has been agglomerating
people together, grouping them in
big brick or glass tubes called office
buildings after they fight a daunting
commute and joust for expensive
parking spots. Many of these people
go up 30 floors to sit in a cubicle and
use a computer or phone all day—
the typical activities of a knowledge
worker. Why fight this battle in an
age of telecommunications? Why not
work at home, the local coffee shop,
or any venue where you can plug in
and stay connected, going to the of-
fice only when it’s necessary to phys-
ically meet with people?
Business implications: Managing
virtual workforces will present chal-
lenges to organizations. In the past,
measuring the “good” workers by
how many hours they spent at their
desks was easy. Organizations will
now need to devise new ways to
measure productivity based on out-
put or value created, rather than
hours spent in the office.
Rising Wealth Trends
We characterize this economically
based set of consumer trends as
“rising wealth” to reflect the world’s
rising standard of living—particu-
larly in W2 nations such as China.
Interestingly, this trend is challeng-
ing the fundamental assumption of
scarcity, defined as the assumption
that, in order for there to be wealthy
people, there must also be poor peo-
ple, and that a certain amount of le-
thal poverty is inevitable. Rising
wealth suggests a need for an
economic system based on a new
assumption of abundance. The
global economy produces more than
enough wealth to support a com-
fortable standard of living for all
three worlds, but it still hasn’t fig-
ured out an equitable way to dis-
tribute that wealth or produce it
sustainably.
T h e o p e n - s o u rc e m o v e m e n t
(where computer developers post
code they’ve developed online for
free to be used and added to by other
developers) is an example of how an
abundance economy might work:
Contributors give away their exper-
tise to have a better product; in the
process, they enhance their reputa-
tions and build networking connec-
tions that may later pay off in a
“real” project or job. The open-source
idea is spreading beyond software
development. There is even a Web
site for open-source prosthetics.
Another indicator among young
people, particularly in W1, is that
they are less inclined to follow tradi-
tional paths to earning a living.
Some, for example, may spend their
day blogging and not getting paid,
because they believe that if they pro-
vide value it will pay off at some
point, sometime, somewhere. And
they are often right. Somebody picks
up one of their stories, which builds
their reputation and eventually leads

THE FUTURIST July-August 2008 www.wfs.org 21

 Trend 6: Asia rising. There are
various estimates of when China will
be the world’s largest economy. Note
that this power will not be exclusively
based on cheap labor.
HSING-WEN HSU / ISTOCKPHOTO.COM

to a paid gig. We might call it the
“karma economy.”
Trend 6: Asia rising. The rise of
Asia became real for me personally
when I was chatting with a U.S.
representative from a large Korean
conglomerate. He was telling me that
his company was interested in enter-
ing the U.S. market, but that their big
push in the next five to 10 years was
going be in China, because they saw
it as a bigger opportunity.
There are various estimates of
when China will be the world’s larg-
est economy, and there will be many
debates about whether India might
be the winner. Both China and India
are ascending the economic ladder of
development; workers are becoming
more educated and skilled as legiti-
mate players in the global knowledge
economy. Singapore, for example, is a
small island of 5 million that has
ascended from W3 to W1 in just a
generation. It has become one of the
richest countries in the world thanks
to the technological and knowledge-
based prowess of its p­ eople.
Business implications: The twenty-
first century can be characterized as
the Asian century. Asia’s economic
and political clout is clearly rising.
Many in the United States (the num-
ber one economy for some time now)
are frightened by the trend. But it’s
good news for the global economy.
These W2 and W3 nations will be
more economically and militarily
competitive, but they will also offer
large and lucrative markets for W1
organizations.
Trend 7: Consumerism. For the
first time, hundreds of millions of
people in W2 and, to a lesser extent,
W3 will be living in a consumer
economy. As these nations become
wealthier, the work and lifestyle pat-
terns of their people will shift—and
soon they will be able to purchase
more goods and services as they
build economies of specialized labor.
Over time, the purchase of consumer
goods becomes an increasingly im-
portant expression of one’s values
and identity. For instance, being able
to afford luxury branded goods is a
way to signal to one’s peers that one
has “made it.”
In W1, on the other hand, there are
growing questions about consumer-
ism. One could argue that a primary
assumption of our capitalist system
is that consumption will make you
happy. The more stuff one accumu-
lates, the happier one should be.
Data convincingly suggests that this
is a dangerously flawed assumption.
Yes, there is a correlation between in-
come growth and happiness as na-
tions modernize and citizens move
beyond a survival mode. But in af-
fluent, developed-world countries,
studies show that more money does
not equal more happiness.
Although consumerism is still
alive and well in the developed
world, some early indicators suggest
it may be changing. For example,
there is the story of 10 San Francisco
friends who vowed not to purchase a
single new thing in 2006 except food
and some bare necessities such as
toilet paper, brake fluid, and under-
wear. People in more-developed
economies will have to make choices
about how to pursue happiness in
the future.
Business implications: The evolution
of consumerism is likely to play out
in different ways around the world,
and companies would be well-­
advised to develop different strate-
gies for approaching it in the differ-
ent “worlds.” For example, whereas
material goods are likely to thrive in
W2 nations, having rich personal ex-

22 THE FUTURIST July-August 2008 www.wfs.org

periences is increasingly important
for people in more-developed coun-
tries. And an ongoing need for W3 is
to devise strategies to reach those at
the “bottom of the ­pyramid.”
Trend 8: Middle-class growth. In
affluent countries, particularly the
United States, the middle class is
shrinking as the upper and lower
classes expand. But rather than haves
and have-nots, it is more accurate to
say the divisions are between haves
and have-lots: The standard of living
at the bottom of W1 is still higher
than in much of W2 and W3.
While the size of the growing W2
middle class in countries like China
is difficult to nail down, it is growing
along a similar trajectory to the one
that places like Europe, the United
States, and later Japan underwent a
few generations ago, which created
large numbers of “first-time buyers.”
These markets will be the places to
look for sales volumes to increase.
Given that many affluent-nation
populations and their middle classes
are shrinking, the automatic growth
that many businesses have become
accustomed to will decline in these
places. Thus, attention will turn to
W2 and eventually W3 for growing
the top line.
Business implications: In the bifur-
cating W1 markets, a pattern of
­status-conscious shopping is emerg-
ing. Increasingly, consumers are will-
ing to spend lots of money on “iden-
tity-related” purchases, while other
less-important purchases are based
solely on cost. Thus, we have people
shopping at Gucci for a handbag and
at Wal-Mart for dishwasher deter-
gent and a new lawnmower. This
suggests a need for business models
where manufacturers and retailers
can profit by making small amounts
of customized products—especially
those identity-based products.
Trend 9: Time pressure. As never
before, consumers in wealthy W1 na-
tions consistently say they never
have enough time to do everything
on their to-do lists. Of course, the
perception is often worse than the re-
ality, as some of the pressure is self-
imposed. A time-use study of the
U.S. population by sociologist John
Robinson at the University of Mary-
land suggests that people have more
free time now than in the past—they
just fill it up as soon as they get it.
The complaint goes something like:
“Oh, I don’t have to go to choir prac-
tice. Great, now I can do boot
camp…. I’m so busy!” A popular la-
ment in some psychotherapy ses-
sions is that people are becoming hu-
man “doings” rather than human
beings, because they constantly feel
the need to be doing something. Rob-
inson’s research also suggests that
free time is now available in smaller
chunks—convenient for checking
e‑mail, but inconvenient for reading
a book.
In W2 and to a lesser extent W3, free
time is more likely to actually decrease
as people spend more time working in
their growing economies. This will be
even more the case as those economies
experience rapid growth.
Business implications: Time will
continue to be at a premium. Don’t
believe it? Survey your colleagues
and ask whether they would prefer a
week of unfettered vacation—not the
kind where it means double the
work upon return—or the equivalent
sum in pay. Don’t be surprised when
vacation wins hands-down. The time
shortage means that businesses may
benefit if they provide time-saving
products. It also serves as a reminder
of the value of customer service. An
automated call-response system that
costs less than flesh-and-blood phone
operators isn’t necessarily saving
you money. If it’s a hassle to use, it
isn’t just annoying your customers,
it’s robbing them.
Trend 10: Personal outsourcing.
Consumers used to save money by
doing their own chores, but today’s
time shortage is leading consumers
to outsource services they used to
provide for themselves. Thus, a new
breed of time-saving products and
services is emerging. In W1, for ex-
ample, pet sitters and personal con-
cierges are both growth jobs. In W2,
labor-saving devices such as refrig-
erators and dishwashers are as
sought after and trendy as they were
in the 1950s in the United States.
These purchases free up time for par-
ticipation in the paid workforce.
The growing value of time-saving
technologies and services will bring
up some interesting choices for con-
sumers. Is gardening a hobby or a
chore to be outsourced? Should I
THE FUTURIST
mow my own lawn? Is having a
housekeeper a practical choice or an
unnecessary indulgence? In many
cases, it may make economic sense
to outsource an activity.
Business implications: Some people
may feel guilty about spending
money to save time, but as time pres-
sure mounts, statistics suggest more
people will get over their reserva-
tions. This values shift will provide
great opportunities for an increasing
number of businesses to earn money
by offering convenience, performing
tasks that people could do for them-
selves but haven’t the patience for
any longer.
***
This partial list is intended to
provide a primer on the global trends
in play today and how they might
develop and evolve into the next
dec­ade. It is a starting point for anal-
ysis, and we’ll follow up in the next
issue with trends related to culture,
social mobility, and women’s equal-
ity. We’ve suggested some of the
business implications of these trends,
but all of them also carry conse-
quences for individuals, organiza-
tions, and nations.
Understanding established trends
such as these provides a foundation
for thinking in a productive way
about the future. The next step is to
apply the knowledge by uncovering
new opportunities, detecting threats,
crafting strategy, guiding policy, and
exploring new markets, products,
and services. ❏
About the Author
Andy Hines is the director
of Custom Projects at
Social Technologies. He
co-founded and is currently
chair of the Association
of Professional Futurists.
Thinking About the Future,
his third book, co-edited with Peter Bishop,
was published by Social Technologies
in 2006.
This article focuses on some the Top 20
trends affecting consumer life around the
world, as judged by the futurists of Social
Technologies. The list was developed for
the sponsors of Social Technologies Global
Lifestyles research program. The second
part of this list, detailing trends in culture,
gender equity, etc., will appear in the
September-October 2008 edition of THE
FUTURIST. For more information, visit
www.socialtechnologies.com.
July-August 2008 www.wfs.org 23