The Modern ‘Warp Speed’ Product Consumer

We live in a world where as humans, the growing demand is for everything to be connected. Our experiences are defined as touchpoints in which we interact with ‘things’ throughout our days. Think about home appliances like washing machines or modes of transport like a car, and how technologically advanced they have become in the last ten years. These ‘things’ have also evolved organically, where new technology blends network connectivity, biometrics, and distinctiveness to form a symbiotic bond on developing a product experience, all about the consumer.

The role of 5G and evolutions in network technologies enables the radical possibilities of technology interoperability and assimilation with the daily chronic nature of the modern consumer. Personalization is the prime driver in consumer differentiation in this new era. Once limited mainly to targeted offers, personalization now extends to the entire end-to-end customer experience. Modern consumers especially want personalization throughout their interactions with a retailer—with multiple, personalized touch points enabling them to allocate their time and money according to their preferences. Through this, an incredible amount of rich data is collected around consumer profiling and behavior, that delivering a customized human experience associated with a brand is almost the status quo. Consumer dependency and yearning for this personalized experience is inevitable and will lead to a technological shift in designing products. Ultimately, the main difference between a market maker and a market mover is all about agility.

This agility has created a catalyzing acceleration in product cycles; for instance, GoPro is a groundbreaking technology company producing action cameras, mobile apps, and video-editing software. As a result, their product portfolio tends to release 2-4+ new product lines each year. Samsung, in parallel, has also accelerated product release cycles by expanding categories into their mobile portfolio, by diversifying across their flagship handsets, foldable and phablet ranges, effectively expanding into a new tier of product speed (Warp Speed!). The phenomenon creates a unique tension for the modern consumer, caught between the regular release cycles and the value propositions of the current and subsequent editions, balanced between an individual assessment of pricing and features.

Future products will encourage us to drive new behaviors that we are yet to anticipate and continue thriving on our consumer psychology. More recent, faster, and wiser augmentations to our daily lives will genuinely shape our needs into demanding a warp speed product cycle from many big brands. It’s time for all major brands to consider how they may adapt their product portfolios and lifecycles to this new speed of consumerism or risk lagging behind the global market.

Having worked with the world’s most extensive product manufacturers and retailers, we help them understand and solve these types of challenges, especially with the emergence of 5G. We advise our clients to build deep relationships and symbiosis between the customer and the ever-changing experiences expected with their products in the modern world. As a result, we observe that the market leaders can anticipate consumer demands and have a rich understanding of behaviors and trends, determining the right features and functionalities for their next generation of products.

Infosys consulting offers deep expertise and a wealth of cross-industry experiences. To learn more about the topic, please reach out to our experts.