The Tinderbox Team


Spark is your update on culture, innovation and trends - a spark of innovative inspiration. Be careful...you might start something.





Find out why culture matters. "Culture" generally explains most failed products. Download our white paper defining culture as we see it.

While there are many answers to that question - some more intelligent than others - most eventually return to our foundational belief that the best consumer insights arise with one foot anchored firmly in the past; the other treading curiously around the fringes and boundaries of emerging culture.

By using the time-worn tools of legions to come before us - cultural analysis, history, anthropology and the like - we are better poised to cast an explanatory framework around the cutting-edge consumer trends.

While some in the trends business prefer to cast themselves as soothsayers or wizards, we prefer the more humble roles popularized by the likes of Mead, Leaky or Lewis & Clark.

Our current consumer trends framework, for example, couches the most recent consumer developments in the long-evolving transition from traditional culture to consumer culture. The advantage is that rather than blithely exclaiming something like "open source consuming" to be the next big thing, we can explain why and how this happened - information we believe is a must for all interested in successfully engaging such trends.


The shift to consumer culture

While academics have been detailing - and often bemoaning - the transition to a fully realized consumer society for some time now, we find that marketers and business theorists often ignore these critical developments.

When we speak of traditional culture, we are referring to a society regulated by pre-modern, pre-market authority structures. That sounds high-minded, but what we're referring to here are societies regulated strongly by family structures, family roles, class hierarchies, social hierarchies and the like. If it helps, think about life under a feudal monarchy. You were born into your position, you obeyed your parents, you respected your elders, you kept to your same class, you didn't question much, and you dressed and acted like those around you.

Then came the advent of something called the market economy and things began to change, however slowly. Peasants became workers, workers became professionals, and professionals somehow decided it wasn't necessary to don formal wear in church. Heck, many of the defining struggles of the late 20th century (e.g., the counterculture movement of the 1960s) concerned still fertile tensions in the transition from traditional to consumer society. How dare they have the gall to protest the Vietnam War!

While the transition is by no means complete, our current epoch is approaching a fully developed consumer society more rapidly than even most academics could have predicted.


So what does this mean?

The short answer is that consumers are increasingly freed from the vast and powerful constraints of traditional authority structures to pursue a life - and express themselves - in ways previously unimagined.

More specifically, the evolution of these freedoms - especially over the past half century have - have come to form the cornerstone of what we see as the eleven biggest consumer trends affecting today's marketplace.

In today's modern culture consumers are increasingly freed from the vast and powerful constraints of traditional authority structures to pursue a life - and express themselves - in ways previously unimagined.

The evolution of these freedoms - especially over the past half century have - have come to form the cornerstone of what we see as the eleven biggest consumer trends affecting today's marketplace.


Eleven Trends

1) The Rise of Luxury Consumption Consumers from all walks of life are free - and willing - to explore levels of luxury heretofore reserved only for the most wealthy or elite peoples.

2) The Rise of the Experience Economy Consumers are less interested in fulfilling basic needs with products and much more interested in seeking fun and adventure through experiences.

3) Democratization of the Family Families are increasingly being run like democracies rather than fiefdoms, where each individuals wants and desires are accommodated despite their age or position.

4) Consumption Based Identities Increasingly, our identities are less the product of our family heritage and more a reflection of the assorted social networks we belong to - many of which are directly concerned with consumption.

5) Open Source & Creative Consuming Consumers have come to value consumption not as a means to an end (fulfilling needs), but as a source of productive activity worthy in its own right.

6) The New Empowerment Knowledge and authority are increasingly contested; they are viewed not as absolutes but as merely differing perspectives or interpretations.

7) The New Hedonism We have moved beyond the traditional (Puritan-based) belief that desirable outcomes must come from denial or abstinence.

8) Increasingly Fluid Tastes and Preferences Consumers no longer demonstrate a desire for consistency when it comes to choosing foods, beverages, clothes, etc.

9) Remixed Culture We are increasingly less likely to take things as face value but, instead, treat our culture - especially our consumer culture - as a source of irony, and playful commentary.

10) Firms of Endearment Cooperation is quickly managing to replace competition as the most critical marketplace value.

11) Consumption Driven Economy More than ever, consumers set the rules of engagement for the marketplace.