2020 Consumer Trend Insights

008 Preface
013 Ten Trend Keywords
025 Me and Myselves : Multi-persona
049 Immediate Satisfaction : Last Fit Economy
069 Goodness and Fairness : Fair Player
091 Here and Now : the ‘Streaming Life’
113 Technology for Hyper-personalization
137 You’re with Us, ‘Fansumer’
159 Make or Break, Specialize or Die
177 Iridescent Opal : the New 5060 Generation
199 Convenium : Convenience as a Premium
221 Elevate Yourself : Birth of Self-upgraders
244 Notes

For years, I have been asked by English-speaking executives of multinational companies in Korea and foreign journalists to translate Trend Korea into English. Over the years, I also came to believe the possibility of the keywords in the book could help designers, developers, marketers, and managers working in many countries with a global market to better understand the changes in their customers and the market. Thus, I decide to have this book translated into English, starting this year. Instead of being translated word-for-word, the English translation has tried to include content more universally applicable to the various markets in the world by modifying and complementing the original content. - Preface

People today are good at “mode switching.” Who people are at work is different from who they are once they return home. Who people are at home is different from who they are outside. Who people are on an ordinary day is different from who they are while traveling. It is also not unusual to find an otherwise soft-spoken person turn into a passionate warrior when talking politics, and an ordinary housewife to turn into an “ARMY” with her sparkling eyes when talking about BTS.
One of the biggest tendencies exhibited by current trends is that the distinction between the “real me” and the “different me” becomes clearer, and consuming behavior that fits the identity of the situation becomes more important because different consuming contexts end up segmenting the identity of each consumer according to that context. Given that millennials are good at mode switching and that their way of life is becoming more segmented depending on the multiplicity of situations they find themselves in, what does it mean that the “real me” is becoming multifaceted?

Not just in the way people listen to music, but the way of life itself is changing from downloading to streaming. Streaming technology plays audio or video through a network, and it has the advantage of allowing people to experience content without having to download and own it. Having grown accustomed to streaming, consumers now want to apply this technology to every aspect of life. First, they stream their living space, realizing their dreams and designing their lifestyles comprehensively. That is, they experience a wide variety of lifestyles by staying in different conceptual spaces in a neighborhood they want to live in for a period of time they want. Second, they also stream hobbies or leisure activities by subscribing to expert recommendations. People receive style recommendations that suit their tastes, and they subscribe to cosmetics services that suit their skin type and have the products delivered on a regular basis. Lastly, people stream by borrowing. Instead of applying mental effort to select one item, they rent all the options and try them all out. People can rent anything including their dream cars, luxury handbags, and furniture items.