Author: Созвездие | Constellation
Research topic: Transformation of consumer demand and preferences in the era of the knowledge economy: the main trends and features of consumer behavior/
Before starting a long and hard work on modeling the picture of the future world at the turn of 2100, we set a goal, which was expressed in identifying the most likely and significant trends, risks and opportunities that can affect people's quality of life and sustainability in the long term.
The future is a rather ambiguous matter and it is not possible to assume with 100% certainty what the world will be like in 2100, but already now we can imagine a picture of the future based on global trends and trends that we are observing now, in their relationship with the past, present and future. So let's get started!
In our opinion, in the future, not only the economy, politics, and society will change, but also the person as a person, the set of his needs and preferences, but only one thing will remain unchanged - values. Of course, human values will be transformed and adapted to new realities in the future, but the basic human needs are family, communication, protection, etc. they will remain unchanged.
We see that family values are being transformed, the number of nuclear families is increasing, and ties between generations are being broken. According to statistics, there are currently 23.1 million "nuclear families" in the United States.
People's communication needs are also changing. According to Kepios, the number of social media user profiles has exceeded the 5 billion mark, which is equivalent to 62.3% of the world's population. Over the past year, this figure has increased by 266 million, resulting in an annual growth of 5.6%
In general, the use of social media remains the most popular activity on the Internet: more than 97% of Internet users of working age turn to social networks or messengers every month.
Chats and messengers are also very popular in all age groups: 94.7% of all Internet users aged 16 to 64 say they have logged into at least one of these platforms in the last 30 days.
Social media is not far behind: 94.3% said they had used at least one of the social networks in the past month.
People still care about their health, but not only about their physical health. People are paying more and more attention to mental health and this is happening for a number of reasons, including the instability of the international situation, rapid changes in many areas of public life, an increase in stress, etc. The online school "Psychodemia", the psychologist recruitment service Alter and the job search platform HeadHunter conducted a study of the psychological services market for 2022. Analysts have found that the need of Russians for specialists in this field has increased by 62.87% compared to 2021. The greatest demand for psychologists was registered in March and October-November 2022. VTSIOM conducted a survey involving 1.6 thousand Russians over the age of 18 in order to find out their interest in psychological assistance. The results showed that only 13% of respondents had contacted psychologists, psychoanalysts or psychotherapists at least once. It is important to note that the number of referrals to professional specialists in the field of psychology increased from 6% in 2009 to 12% in 2022, and in 2023 the figure increased to 15%.
Due to the fact that more than 66% of the world's population (5.35 billion) use the Internet in 2024, humanity has a need for Internet security when interacting with banks, exchanges, other people, etc. The number of users has also increased by 97 million over the past year. According to official statistics from the Ministry of Internal Affairs of Russia, in the period from January to December 2023, there was a tendency to increase the number of illegal acts in the field of information and telecommunication technologies by 28.7%. Their share among all criminal assaults has increased to 32.9%. The detection rate of cybercrimes was 29.9%, including those committed using the Internet – 28.8%, settlement (plastic) cards – 35.7%. According to statistics, the number of registered cybercrimes increased by 17.4% in January - April 2024.
We are already seeing that education, medicine, technology and other facilities are becoming more accessible to the majority of the population. For example, the global online education market promises to reach $282.62 billion by 2025. According to Global Market Insights, in 2017 it was measured at $159 billion, in 2018 - $190 billion, in 2019 — $205 billion. Its average annual growth rate in the next 5-7 years, according to various forecasts, will be 7-10% (global reports take an average figure adjusted for the fact that the growth of the industry is uneven). In addition, the availability of online education eliminates problems with the territorial accessibility of educational institutions, the selection of an individual training program, etc.
The unevenness. The development of technologies, their accessibility, and an increase in production volumes lead to the fact that people are becoming more and more dependent on consumption. After analyzing the peculiarities of consumer behavior of the world's population, we found that dependence is observed in relation to Internet consumption, energy and gadgets. In September 2023, the MTS Big Data center reported that Russian users began to change smartphones more often. The main reason for the trend was the expansion of the range in low and medium price segments, including among Chinese manufacturers. In August 2023, the SuperJob service found out that almost half of Russians (45%) consider themselves addicted to gadgets and the Internet, while one in eight (13%) is confident in the presence of addiction. At the same time, one fifth of the survey participants definitely did not see such signs. Wearable electronics and accessories in general - the average bill is 12,470 rubles, 18% higher than last year. The number of purchases increased by 7%," analysts calculated, comparing the data from April 1 to May 5 this year and last year.More than 66% of the world's population (5.35 billion) use the Internet in 2024. The number of users has also increased by 97 million over the past year.
Over the past 150 years, the world's energy industry has grown 35 times and gone through three stages of development so that the duration of the stages has consistently decreased (70, 50 and 30 years), fuel prices have doubled and energy consumption growth has slowed (by 4.8, 4.2 and 1.6 times), and at the end of each stage there was a crisis decline in energy demand. The current slowdown in global energy consumption may signal that the global energy sector is at another transition point. The analysis of the results obtained in the Forecast strengthens the opinion about the onset of the next (fourth) stage of global energy development, characterized by a moderate increase in energy consumption. It should also be noted that the growth in consumption is inextricably linked with the increase in consumption rates and its speed.
Global trends and global trends determine not only the present, but also the future.
Due to the increase in Internet consumption among all age groups, an increase in the number of users of mobile phones and other gadgets with Internet access, etc. In the future, new markets will emerge that operate exclusively in virtual reality. The cyber insurance market, which is currently gaining momentum around the world and has just started functioning in the Russian Federation market, will expand its horizons in the future. It is assumed that the range of main consumers of cyber insurance services will increase, which will include not only legal entities, but also individuals, and the main demand will be a request for protection from the use of deepfakes, fraudulent schemes regarding the theft of data from bank cards, hacking of personal pages on social networks and more. We believe that the beginnings of such a mechanism already exist in view of protection from spam calls and SMS spam.
It would be logical to imagine that the labor market will also change significantly and there will be several times more "cyber" professions than professions that need to be performed in reality. According to statistics, most employees prefer to abandon traditional office work and choose flexibility and control. World Bank data shows that 46.7% of all workers worldwide are self-employed, and the total number of freelancers worldwide is estimated at 1.57 billion out of a total global workforce of 3.38 billion. At the same time, it seems that existing professions will continue to transform and move into the virtual space, as well as new professions such as "cyber police", "AI designer", etc. will appear.
We also allow the change of consumer subjects, since the development of the production of "smart" technology makes it more vulnerable and in need of special conditions, such as providing it with special protective accessories, having a stable Internet connection, special environmental conditions, etc. The list of consumer subjects, which previously included a person as an individual, society or the state as a whole, will be supplemented in the future by technical devices.
The future starts now, so let's build it together!
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Teamwork on the project began long before the trip to the St. Petersburg International Economic Forum.
Over the course of 4 weeks, during weekly two-hour phone calls with our tutor Ivan Ryabov, we began to develop a project concept and model our own picture of the future world. The meetings were aimed at getting to know and rally the guys, changing the thinking of team members, rejecting “good” / ”bad” value judgments, the ability to operate with real numbers and data, identifying skills to think with global trends, notice relationships, find the cause of certain phenomena, understanding the causes, consequences and results, and others . During the last week of online work, calls were held every day in order to finalize the disadvantages of the project, bring it to perfection and take into account the recommendations of the jury members and evaluation criteria.
Working at the Boiling Point site of Peter the Great St. Petersburg Polytechnic University has become a real way out of the comfort zone for each team member. The preparation and completion in a short time of a project that we have been working on for a long time, a conversation with renowned experts, a speech before an international jury became a point of growth for each of us and allowed us to identify the weaknesses of both the team as a whole and each participant individually.
It is important that during the development of the project, we learned and adopted the ideas and way of thinking not only of our tutor, but also of other team members, which allowed us to work harmoniously and effectively throughout the forum.
As part of the work on the project, we realized that despite the fact that society is an object of management, it determines the shape of the future world, and human values are the main impetus and engine of development. In addition, we have learned that the most successful business projects are based precisely on the basic human values and it is on these values that the most successful economies in the world are built.
We are grateful for the opportunity to become active participants in such a large-scale event, to show our qualities and leave a mark on the history of our country and the future of the whole world!