Filipa Caldeira, Nuno Moreira, and Pedro Batalha, three experienced professionals in the field of Marketing, at FullSix, the leading communication agency in the market, presented the six main trends that we must be aware of in 2021 to succeed in the digital world, in a Nova SBE Executive Education webinar.
These trends are based on market studies and the evolution of demand in Portugal and the rest of the world. They are:
The future of digitization looks almost like a sci-fi movie, but these trends are already based on products established in the market and with an exponential growth perspective.
«Digital is going to affect not only the purchase, but also the experience. That experience is the consumer journey and, if we focus on before the purchase on the discovery part, we see that the channels that consumers are using to go looking for new brands, new services, and products are digital», said Filipa Caldeira, adding that in the second phase, when looking for more information about the products, the same process happens. «These trends are important because they fill in the client's needs for hyper-personalization and authenticity».
According to the experts, these categories complement each other. Artificial Intelligence is increasingly part of our daily lives, and, mainly, of our journey as consumers. It is everywhere: from applications on our mobile phones to autonomous cars, or home robots. AI is increasingly contributing to greater customer comfort.
Data science has been gaining increasing strength. «It is expected that in 2025, the amount of data generated per day will reach 463 exabytes, worldwide», explained Pedro Batalha. And through the study of data science, it is possible to customize services and products to the needs and characteristics of the consumer, which is increasingly demanding in regards to authenticity and proximity.
Although it has not achieved great expression in Portugal, the market for devices that allow “hands-free”, such as digital voice assistants, is gaining weight and may even be the future of e-commerce. Likewise, social media has adapted to the sale of products, both in Instagram “online stores” and in Facebook lives or on other platforms. The influencers' market is increasingly representative, as well as the emergence of new social networks, such as Clubhouse or podcast platforms, personalized considering the tastes of its users.
COVID has also accelerated the process of extinction of physical money, due to the pressing needs of hygiene and the expansion of the digital market. In Asia, a cashless payment system using AI is already being tested, in which a machine can carry out the transaction based on the customers' facial recognition. This system is still being improved, as critics fear that crimes of identity theft will increase as well as possible privacy problems. But while this is a technology that still seems to be far from being adapted massively, wearables, on the other hand, are already commercialized, showing an increasing trend in demand: «We are witnessing a merge between wearables, technology, and cashless. They are already creating tokens to make contactless payments», said Nuno Moreira.
Regarding Extended Reality, the universe of Virtual and Augmented reality, you would be surprised at the amount of technology available to help the consumer in the purchase process: do you know that virtual try-ons already exists? Well, from now on, you do not even have to go to the store to find out if a piece of clothing fits you.
Are you curious to know more about the future of the digital world? All these concepts are going to be deepened in the next edition of the Doing Digital program, resulting from the partnership between Nova SBE Executive Education and FullSix, starting in May.