Supermarket trends 1 – 5 from Phil Lempert

Observation:  We have arrived in the season why posting for a consumer trends blog becomes easier—at least for a couple of weeks—because so many prognosticators are publishing their forecasts for the next year.  So here we go, with our first set of predictions and trends from the outside. 

I’ll start with the grocery and packaged goods industry, thanks to Phil Lempert’s Supermarket Guru website.  Here’s what Phil thinks we’ll see, according to his first five trend postings about 2012 (click on any headline to get the long form of his forecast or trend observation):

#1:  Higher food prices  (Commodity prices will rise in response to global supply and demand issues).

#2:  Online while in-the-aisle  (Apps and websites make us feel like we’re never shopping alone.)

#3:  Continued Baby Boomer influence (Why would we stop now?)

#4:  Increased focus on how food gets to market (Consumers will more closely watch the steps between the farm and the fork.)

#5:  The end of the checkout lane  (Self-service check-outs will become too easy to not use, thanks to RFID tags and other technology.)

Implications:   It’s fun to hear insights from a grocery industry insider… and to wonder how similar changes in consumer behavior might affect industries well beyond the supermarket.

In your business… what’s next?

I’ll provide the next batch of Phil’s trends in a subsequent posting.  (There are five more to go.)

Mike Anderson, for the Elm Street Economics consumer trends blog. A service of The Center for Sales Strategy, Inc.