Trend Q&A: Functional health trends and more

Understanding your customers’ needs, adaptogens in functional health and trend risks in the post-pandemic landscape. That and more on today’s episode.

Want to know what’s next? Listen to the show where our experts from around the globe unpack your biggest challenges. This week, WGSN’s President and CEO Carla Buzasi takes us to London and Singapore. Hear from the friendly faces of our Mindset and Food & Drink teams.

Watch the full episode below or read on for highlights of this episode:

Q: How can we better understand our customers’ needs? Have best practices around consumer profiling evolved? And how can WGSN work with us on this?
“Over the past two years, we’ve seen a huge shift in consumer priorities, lifestyles and ambitions. So now more than ever, brands should consider not just the practical needs of their audience, but also their emotional needs and their common goals.

“At WGSN, we help brands put psychographics, rather than demographics, at the heart of the consumer strategy and we take out as much of the guesswork as possible. To do this, our consultancy team carries out qualitative and quantitative analysis in a brand’s key market. We then apply the WGSN trend forecasting lens to unpack consumer drivers both now and into the future.”
– Lori Gooding, Senior Consultant, WGSN Mindset
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Q: What’s coming next after adaptogens in the functional health arena?
“Adaptogenic plants including ginseng, reishi mushrooms and maca root have been growing in functional food and drink over the last couple of years. We see the next wave of wellness coming from traditional Chinese medicine (TCM). TCM ingredients such as plants, roots, herbs can overlap with adaptogens, but are a whole system unto themselves.”
– Rachel Tan, Analyst, WGSN Food & Drink
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Q: How can we minimise trend risk in a volatile post-pandemic retail landscape?
“Going forward, innovation strategies cannot be solely guided by internal data as there is a risk that broader trend signals will be missed. Instead, brands should invest in third-party data sources such as consumer, social media, e-commerce and even metaversal data as this will bring greater integrity to internally generated insights.”
– Hannah Richards, Consultant, WGSN Mindset
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