Consumer Behaviour Trends 2025

Imagine you know exactly what will be happening in your customers’ minds in 2025. You can plan your strategy with confidence, choose to invest in projects you want to, knowing they will keep bringing benefits long into the future and have more time to innovate as less of your time goes to fire fighting. 

I have analysed key consumer behaviour trends for 2025 and beyond to help you create brands and experience unlike any other. Using my deep expertise in psychology, retail, strategy, design and innovation, I have identified the following 8 major consumer trends:

1. Subconscious Commerce - Using brand’s data to not only understand and predict, but inspire consumer behaviour. Subconscious Commerce is the approach that allows you to get into your customers’ psyche and understand them - their needs, wants and desires even better than they can themselves. 
2. Human AI - People are increasingly perceiving AI tools like voice assistants as human-like, forming more intimate relationships with them. The impact of these ‘humanised’ AI tools on the strength and depth of your customers' relationships with your brands can be exponential. 
3. Meaningful Moments - creating moments of disconnect from all the world’s noise and focusing on creating deep, meaningful connections with your customers. Here the role of increasing Meaningful Friction while eliminating Meaningless Friction is crucial.
4. Brands Are Social Platforms - As loneliness and social isolation continue to increase, the role of brands have transformed from purely self-expression tools to platforms of connection and relationship building.  
5. Emotional Shopping - Customers require brands and products to positively impact their mental health and well-being. Brands using joy, humour and surprise will surpass competitors. 
6. Planning as control - With continuous socio-economic turbulence, customers will claim control where they can, leading to more planned and less impulsive shopping behaviours. Great for product planning, but challenging for brands big on  impulsive buys.  
7. Trust & Safety - In an unstable world, consumers seek safety even with brands they buy from, with a high level of brand trust becoming a must have. Brands that make people feel secure will become launchpads for their customers’ dreams and desires leading to deeper relationships and higher loyalty. 
8. Default Sustainability - With sustainability becoming a hygiene factor for brands, customers will be searching for how sustainable principles actually show across brand strategy. Strategic tools like transparency, authenticity and even brand compassion are key.

Between today and NYE I will post more information on each of these trends and how you can apply them across your brand strategy, retail design, ecommerce, marketing and innovation. 

Follow me, connect here, message me if you would like to know more or invite me to speak to your team about how they can benefit from these trends.