The Importance of Identifying Consumer Trends in Canada - Research Paper Example

This report analyzes and examines the changing behavior of consumers and how important it is for businesses to analyze consumer trends. Moreover, the report also analyzes how to identify consumer trends and discusses consumer trend drivers. The report then discusses changes in the consumer trends towards food products and how Canadians have been spending on their households, transportation, food and health care. With the changing environment and market, consumer needs and preferences are also changing and one of the changes in the consumer trend that has occurred is in recent years is towards mobile phones.

With the advancement in technology, there has been an increase in eCommerce and online transactions and this report discusses the trends of online shopping in Canada and also identifies the barriers that could hurt the growth of e-commerce.
1.1. The Importance Of Identifying Consumer Trends
Consumers have a very important role to play as their behavior, actions, thinking can not only influence the businesses but could influence the overall society as well (Higham, 2003, pg. 9: 2-3). This is the reason why understanding consumer behavior and identifying the trends of consumers is very important for businesses (Higham, 2003, pg. 9: 6-7). Consumers are the ones for which businesses offer goods and services, if they are not willing to buy the products, then there is no reason why businesses should sell the products (Higham, 2003, pg. 9: 8-9). So, understanding consumer needs and preferences is very important.

However it is not an easy task as the consumer preference and taste changes and businesses in order to keep up with the changing consumer preferences and trends come up with new products every now and then (Higham, 2003, pg., 9:12-13). According to Mintel’s New Product Database, twenty thousand new products are introduced every month (Higham, 2003, pg. 10:1). However, the introduction of new products is not good enough to meet the changing consumer as businesses have to identify the changes in the consumer trends and offer products accordingly.

As it has been found that 83% of the products are not able to meet their marketing objectives (Higham, 2003, pg. 10:5-6) and one of the main reasons for this failure is to not understand the consumer trends and what consumers are willing to buy (Higham, 2003, pg. 10: 8). Therefore it reflects how important it is for businesses to understand and identify the consumer trends and how these trends and preferences would shape up in the future in order to make sure that their products are able to match with the consumer needs, preferences and tastes (Higham, 2003, pg. 10:15:16).

Otherwise, the products would not be able to achieve their objectives.
1.2. The Benefits Of Identifying Consumer Trends
Businesses offer goods and services for consumers, if there are no consumers then who will be buying the products and services of the business. Consumer trend has been defined as the changes in the behavior of the consumers in the long run that could create opportunities for businesses (Higham, 2003, pg. 16:15).