Consumer Insight

CONTEXT CONSUMER INSIGHTS:

Local - Social

Homecooked

Migration

Kinecting: to create, build, maintain relationships that mean "something" in today's world. Think of kinecting as the "new kinship" for contemporary times.

In 2008, we are reestablishing our relationships with family and friends as well as our place in the world in the face of our impending recession. We are redefining what "kin" means to us. And the definition of kin is manifesting in the products and services we choose to use as well as in our overall lifestyle.

The local movement is a strong indicator of our rebuilding. We want to buy things that are made close to home, we want to know where our goods are coming from and what kinds of food we are putting into our bodies.

But Local is really about Social at the root. When we buy local we get to know the people who are selling the goods and the other people who shop there, is it about community, establishing a community and flourishing within that community.

Another manifestation of kinecting is the idea of home cooked. We want to make or at least eat a homecooked meal because food is our tool for creating and maintaining social connections. If you look at the Food Network lately most of the people who have been very successful and developed multiple shows (Rachel Ray and Paula Dean) are in fact not classically trained chefs.

We have also observed a rise in the ultimate symbol of a home cooked meal - the Crockpot. And the restaurant business has tapped into this home cooked trend as well over the past few years by offering items such as meatloaf and potpies.

We have also observed the trend of the migration towards family. Be it grandparents moving closer to their grandchildren or kids moving back closer to their family or sometimes even never leaving the family home. The days of the "snow birds" may be slowly fading out. They are opting to buy the house near their grandchildren and helping to raise them.

This in fact might be the U.S. reverting back to the concept of family from when we immigrated and when families lived together, all caring for one another and taking care of the elders, we are just not all in the same dwelling anymore.

About Context Consumer Insights

Context Consumer Insights provides a lens into consumer behavior based on our ethnographic research. This year, we cover the Grounded Consumer. We will identify key pieces that comprise this insight, illustrate examples from the marketplace and offer recommendations on what to do with this information from a marketing and product development standpoint.

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