The official month of love has been marked by the team behind Trendwatching.com with a rather unusual phrase – virgin consumers.
However, this is not a trend with a sexual or astrological connotation, but rather a coinage that aptly describes groups of consumers who yearn to try something new for the first time, hoping they will like it and want to consume it again. Unsurprisingly, companies are particularly hopeful about this, eagerly waiting for every new consumer signal, satisfying them with hundreds of new products and services, applications, and digital innovations, all to – deflower them and make them loyal for life. As Trendwatching.com writes, the impetus for the emergence of virgin consumers was given by a trend they called ‘newism’ or, more precisely, the trend of launching an incredible amount of new products every day in various parts of the world. Today, consumers must navigate among as many as 19,000 new applications that are released every month in Apple’s virtual store, can choose to support the development of 18,000 new projects that were presented last year on the leading crowdsourcing service Kickstarter, buy one of 1.2 million innovative products launched in the Chinese market, order products and services from an incredible half a million companies registered only in the United Kingdom… Should I continue listing? And now that it is clear that the era of ‘new’ is in full swing, the question arises as to how companies that swear they are innovative can fight for their place in the sun and win over the innocent consumer. Trendwatchers note that two things should be taken into account: that there are ‘experienced virgins’ and that among them there is an unusual ‘passion for new’. But let’s go in order.
