A concept store is the first thing what comes to our minds when we think of the term “retail innovation”. The original idea to offer a complete and delightful retail experience to costumers was born in the United States of America. This happened in the seventies when a Philadelphia based retail chain Urban Outfitters’ marketing team realized that it is better to offer more range of products and aim for a bigger target market than dealing in just one type of product and a limited audience. As a result, their first lifestyle shop was established in their hometown. According to Urban Outfitters’ CEO Glen Senk, the concept of a concept shop was discovered rather accidentally. A lot of antiques in the shop were used as props and decoration, and customers showed interest in buying these items. It might sound a bit out of the blue but this was how the store management realized that they can make their store authentic by selling everything available in the shop.

Expect the Unexpected

Urban Outfitters soon came up with the concept to offer only the best and most exciting stuff in clothing and accessories. They started building their identity and brand by making their shops a true shopping paradise, full of surprises, gadgets and vintage treasures. This ensured brand awareness as customers were guaranteed an exciting shopping experience in all the Urban Outfitters’ shops throughout the world.

On being interviewed by the Fast Company magazine, Glen Senk said, that the 250 Urban Outfitters stores offer a sensorial experience of a place where people come to connect. A person really needs to be identified as a different individual and the store caters to these individual needs. Even the music in stores is played with great care to add on to the experience. Every store has at least two artists working full time and creating various forms of art to

Today, Urban Outfitters offers premium clothing labels like Diesel, Lacoste, Miss Sixty, Adidas and many other brands. A variety of products like clothing, accessories, bags, shoes, furniture, home ware and food are offered under one roof symbolizing the overall image and attitude towards life. Urban Outfitters is also attracting its target customers to their website, offering a superior online shopping experience. On www.urbanoutfitters.com, shoppers can find new arrivals, sales and shop trends plus original and even exclusive gadgets.

The combination of unique product range, top brands and a strong e-presence of the store has created a dynamic image of the Urban Outfitters brand. After all these years, Urban Outfitters has become a well known and a strong brand with an exclusive customer experience offering passion, honesty and individuality. Urban Outfitters depicts urban life and culture. It is almost impossible to see anyone leaving the store without buying a single thing, as there is plenty lot of choice for everyone.

Smart brands and companies are using social media and digital tools to increase their communication productivity and build a much stronger and a loyal consumer base.

A consolidation of companies and co-branding activities will increase, and the competition to engage consumers will be keener. Survival of the brands will depend on their ability to deliver tangible benefits. Companies will be able to cut down their expenses if they use digital technology effectively to highlight their products and brand activities.

There are three factors for effective branding where smart establishments will focus in the future. First is creating relevant brand story and dialogues to provide the consumer with a solid platform to interact with the company. The brands will have to be more creative and highlight their product and also deliver their promises consistently.  Secondly, brands should rely on word-of-mouth publicity for greater advantage. This sort of marketing is a powerful and an efficient tool to get the message to their target market. This will ensure more emphasis on creativity and innovation and cut down substantially on the company’s marketing budget. Engaging consumers will be critical ability to create unique, sharable and immersing experiences.

Lastly, the smart brands always play to win. Research and marketing tools will become more polished and get the consumers into the buying cycles of the company. With the digital acceleration of social media as Facebook and Twitter and the explosion of the mobile phone, a brand will need to be present everywhere.

Advanced information gathering techniques will allow exact targeting and effective communication towards the consumers, ensuring a better return for the marketing expenses. The consumers will be able to interact with the company representatives through feedback websites and industry chatting applets, enhancing word of mouth publicity.

Today, consumers have a wide range of information about the products in the market and a huge choice. This influences their purchase decisions. The market trends have become so volatile that yesterday’s innovations are common good today and may be old news by next week. In the case of the youth market, companies and researchers must be alert, inventive and creative in their approach to foresee the changes in the market.

The young generation today is living in an altogether different world. This might make the entire youth market a bit difficult to understand. Even the older customers are influenced by the young generation, and that is why companies need to see what will be driving the youth segment next. Due to the contradictions in the opinions and the multi-layered consumption patterns of the youth, companies have to research this market segment intensely to understand the future trends.

To study such a complicated target segment with contradictory values and preferences, research and marketing professionals should be willing to invest a considerable amount of time and efforts. The challenging aspect about this research lies in working with the traditional research methods that are not so efficient in understanding the whole youth market. To understand the target groups, it requires identifying the influencers who set new trends for their peer groups. Understanding the current aspirations, motivations and behaviors of these influencers is key, and will give you the needed information on future trends.

MTV approached an agency called Youth Intelligence to conduct its first ever trendsetters’ study in the year 1988. The research was carried on the fans of the music channel, but it mainly focused upon the people who had an advanced thinking pattern and were the first to adopt the rapidly changing developments in style. This study found out the characteristics relating to music preferences and also the group’s general mindset. The most prominent of the identified characteristics included highly individualized tastes, high fragmentation, cynicism towards the media and their wish to expose themselves to others. The historic importance of this study lays in its informative nature and the role that music plays in influencing youth fashion, lifestyle and identities.

Today, the urban youth trendsetters’ research is still mainly conducted with opinion leaders interviews and embryonic consumer research.

To capture the influencers, you’ll need an in-depth understanding of their needs, lifestyle and aspirations. Youth is always seeking new experiences, and this attitude will affect your business, so it’s important to keep up with the latest trends and to develop a sharp eye for the developments in music, technology, fashion, design, graphics, media and arts to (re) define the opportunity areas for your company or brands.

The optimism of consumers about their own financial future already increased during the presidential elections in 2009, but was short-lived as it fell again and remained low through most of 2009. In January 2010, the first signs of a recovery could be noticed: customers saved less and spent more – a sign that they are again increasingly comfortable about their financial situation.

With the last months being financially a bit better and considering the increased expenditure, specialists can observe an upward trend in the optimism of consumer’s personal finances. Overall it appears that customers have again a positive attitude but the researchers are still not 100% sure about it and will need further studies to confirm this trend.

After 2 years of growing unemployment, decreasing home prices and a failing stock market, purchases of durable goods are again in the lift. January saw a growth of 0.7% in the sales of appliances and cars, meaning that shoppers are willing to spend more money on big-ticket goods. Bernard Baumohl, CEO of the Economic Outlook Group, interprets this increased spending as a sign of renewed consumer optimism. He explained that the jump in spending comes from personal savings rather than from credit, but of course this expansion is still very fragile as the incomes are still very soft and there may be not enough money available to maintain this positive trend for long.  Of course much will depend on the fact if the government and economy are able to create more jobs, so the engine of consumer spending can be sustained. Because now the least of signs can cause a crisis (for example the severe snowstorms in February 2010). Only steady job growth will prevent consumers of getting nervous and start pulling back again.

Brand Identity

The values of the brand can be used to create an identity in the minds of the consumers only if they are ready to believe the brand’s statements. Brands nowadays do not have the luxury to just say what they represent. It is the consumer who decides about the authenticity and importance of the brand, differentiating it from others.

Need for New Strategies

Consumers prefer brands that connect with them on an emotional level.  Due to the economic recession the consumers are now aware of the fact that the claims made in the advertisements of banks are often hollow and not true. Advertisements claiming, “we are all in this together”; while financial institutes have cancelled the credits of many consumers and devaluated their retirement plans. Even the celebrity brand value needs to be in conjunction of the product. For example, Tiger Woods is having a hard time promoting anything related to the virtue of faith and honor.

Distinguished Brand Value

Using consumer awareness as the only marketing strategy is been outdated now. The market now demands a brand to build up its distinct reputation along with highlighting the unique selling points of the brand. A good brand is determined by its product quality, services and what it represents. For instance, US consumers prefer at this moment J Crew over GAP as it represents modern age in a chic and stylish form.

Increased Consumer Expectations

In today’s fast paced world not all brands are able to keep up with consumer’s expectations. The consumers have an increasing desire for latest technologies and inventions. Smarter brands will have to anticipate the expectations of their customers, which are not yet fulfilled to survive in this difficult market conditions.

Online Communication

Consumers are now mass-using social networking websites like Twitter, Facebook, Myspace and Tumblr to talk to peer consumers regarding the existing brands in the market. Certain communities such as the feedback boards on sales platforms such as eBay and consumer sites have gained a lot of trust. The brand value is increasing by a mere word of mouth. Brands and companies need to connect themselves with social networking websites and share their product and service information with the active members of the websites.

Engaging Consumers

Engaging consumers is a fairly new trend. Consumers can directly interact with the representatives of the brand or company via industry chat pages, websites, store events and so on. This helps the companies to get a clear insight of their customers’ demands and expectations and act accordingly.

To accommodate these customer trends, companies will have to change their goals and strategies up to a certain extent. The future success of brands will depend on how they anticipate and respond to consumer demands.

Averagely around 12% of the mobile phone owners use their phone to browse the internet. Around 90% of mobile internet users have internet at home as well, but the usage is seen to be decreasing. This is an indication that people are getting more comfortable browsing the internet on their mobile phones, rather than using the traditional devices at home.

Mobile devices have become an inseparable part of the American lifestyle. Over the last 12 months, Apple sold over 10 million iPhones and other brands shared in the phenomenal success of internet and multimedia enabled smartphones

Marketers better keep a close watch on the changing scenario of customers relying more and more on their mobile devices for web browsing, rather than surfing at home. A personal medium like the mobile phone is much more appealing, and has a great potential to be used effectively by marketing professionals to reach more consumers on an individual level.

A study of trends by National Consumer Study Office Experian Simmons, initiated in January 2009, provides an insight to the attitudes and opinions of the mobile phone users. This study indicates that if proper incentives are offered to the mobile internet users they will be more willing to accept online advertising. About 18% of the users are willing to accept advertisements, in exchange for valuable information, goodies and freebies.

Consumers are now depending more on their mobile phones to browse information to help them to find ways to spend their time. There was a 33% increase in the last year in the number of mobile phone users using their phone to look for places to go or how to spend their free time. This increase is seen in the first place among the age group of 18- 24 years.

Even though the percentage of the mobile phone users buying advertised products is still rather small, it is slowly increasing. From January 2009 to mid January 2010, the increase is seen up to 27%, so it’s a clear indication of a trend on the rise.

Studies show that the companies who focus more on trendsetters and opinion leaders rather than the mainstream audience are successful in attracting and retaining the young generation.

The overall attitude of the youth towards advertising has become quite sophisticated. They have overcome the phase of classical print advertising and television commercials. Today, advertising is an essential piece of social interaction among teenagers and young adults. A huge number of famous campaigns have been absorbed in the unconscious minds of the youth leading to a feeling of disbelief and excessive awareness towards marketing. Advertisers using the pop culture or the hip-hop language are no longer considered to be so reliable.

The current generation has a sophisticated knowledge of marketing and is a very enthusiastic and sensitive customer of media. It looks like a mystery from the outside, and the marketing professionals have to find the right way in. They do not need to be over persuasive or trendy, but more on the creative side to win the customers. Some of these successful strategies include consumer generated media, sponsoring events and placing the products carefully.

To reach the youth market most effectively the advertisers need to be very creative and simultaneously the researchers should be equally innovative while profiling a group. This has resulted in a search of new ways to improve and add on to their research results. The use of multimedia in making and testing advertisements and information has become very common these days. Interviews with the youth regarding the social pressure from certain groups or financial pressure from their parents have led to new and complex findings influencing the youth decision making power.

There are many studies to depict the power and influence of the role of trendsetters. This research covers fashion, cars, technology, art, entertainment, graphics, music, hobbies, advertisements and lifestyle. The researchers and marketers to focus on the behavior, ideas, beliefs, emotions and movements of the consumers and understand them thoroughly in order to get to know about them and their future purchasing decisions require it.