"Home delivery, Internet shopping, and mail order will all benefit
from our instinct to cocoon. So will personal-security devices and
products that make our air, water, and
food safer."
BOTTOM LINE: Popcorn says companies should strive to make
their corporate environments more like home, and, if they don't
have a work-at-home policy, it's time to draft one. Companies
should also be considering goods and services targeted at the
growing pool of homebodies.
INTIMACY AND BALANCE
Priority shifts have rocked the workplace for several years now.
According to J. Walker Smith,
president of Yan-kelovich Partners,
an influential marketing, trend-watching, and database company,
people are thinking harder than ever about what does and doesn't
work in their lives, about slowing down, relaxing more, improving
family ties, and keeping "stuff" from cluttering their lives.
Indeed, a nationwide survey of restaurants in October 2001 showed
that reservations for family groups were up significantly,
according to Crisis Management International. And over the coming
year, Smith sees a continued move toward greater intimacy, and
toward greater balance between professional and personal lives. He
sees Americans "pulling in the boundaries of the world around them
and living in tighter, more intimate circles."
Such priority shifts need not damage economic prosperity. Smith
believes everything about business can be understood by remembering
that people don't buy "things," they buy solutions. The new
problems of the day - helping people find intimacy and balance -
are ripe business opportunities for 2002. Marketing toward these
priorities, Smith sees an increase in casual gift giving; a boom in
book, sport, and social clubs; new technologies to reduce excessive
business travel; a rise in home concerts and home entertainment;
more intimate venues for leisure activities, and so on.