Understanding Product Trends

Estimated reading time: 8 minutes

It’s the start of a new year, and like most business owners, you may have asked yourself several questions relating to your business. Especially, considering your sales figures for last year, you may want to know which products to add to your market; which to improve on, and which to drop.

That’s what everyone is doing! Keep up! It’s pretty unnerving to be stuck in the past.

As a business owner, your understanding of product trends will determine the pace at which your company grows.

It’s pointless trying to sell a mug to a market demanding a pen. Asides from the fact that your potential customers will think you’re not paying attention, you are not solving any of their problems.

And business is about solving problems – trading solutions.

Suggested Reading: Solved: How To Understand And Solve Your Customers’ Problems

Keeping up with product trends can be a bit tiresome, especially for entrepreneurs and retailers. However, for your business to succeed, you should stay up to date with the current trends in your industry. 

People will give a second look at a product generally because they think it fulfils their particular need or it doesn’t.

Truth be told, most of these trendy products are twists or modifications of what’s previously or currently on the market. Meeting basic needs is crucial for any successful product these days. However, it doesn’t debunk facts that someone in a room might feel entitled to raise their hands to iterate the dangers of instant noodles, but it’s still thriving.  

It’s fascinating how these trends are updated yearly on media through glass breaking headlines and captivating images with prognostics by experts or companies well saturated in the business. These trends cover many products, including:

• Fashion, 
• Beauty, 
• Health and fitness, 
• Technology, 
• Sports
• Food and beverages. 

Why is Understanding Product Trends Important?

Over the years, a prevailing challenge in the trends industry is “change”. This is why keeping track of these trends could be tardy, especially when they are promotional products. One minute a product is in high demand, and the next, it’s out of style. 

• They keep you on top of your competitions:  You can only be unique when you have information. Understanding product trends gives you a chance to stay on top of your game. It hands you the right expertise to understand what is currently happening and the strategies others in the industry are implementing. Through this, you may be able to know the strategies that work and those that don’t. Having an idea of these product trends position you in the market and helps you be unique.
• They help you understand your customers: Understanding who your customers are in the market is an integral part of your achievements. Keeping track of the latest product trends in the current market will give you knowledge about your customers’ behaviour. It will provide you with insights into what products they respond better to. It provides you with the pattern or traits of your customers for product trend analysis. It is actually a major part of any customer acquisition strategy.
• They help you expand your possibilities: Examining the product trends allows you to identify gaps in the business’s extension. The trends of valuable product in the industry can help you see the bigger picture where another product could be added to make a unique combination of both products. It allows you to see an opportunity to improve your business and make it a blockbuster. 
• They give you a direction to where the business is going: Ignorance, to an extent, contributes to the failure of companies. A hairstylist who has no idea of trends in the hair industry risks losing customers and overtime business. Examining trends gives a beam and direction to where the company should go next.

What is Product Trend Analysis?

Predictions and ideas for these trends come from understanding customer’s behaviours and habits over time. An approach that works seamlessly in putting these trends to work is called Product Trend Analysis.

Read More on: Customer Acquisition and Retention Strategy

Statistical data over time can be analysed to generate useful information that can be used afterwards to make decisions. When customers’ information is collected over time, on the use of certain products, it is possible to analyse these results to get insights about the product’s future. 

Product trend analysis describes the extensive study of different customer data; usually, the past and current insights about the customer’s behaviours collected over time. These are the information used to have an idea of the next product that will break market charts. And since these analyses follow a systematic pattern, they are always accurate. 

Following these trends, it is fascinating to note the intentional steps businesses and brands take to study their customer’s behaviours and review what products piqued their interests more. A problem with production companies is that they manufacture products because they “feel they can,” not because they have studied the trend to know their customers’ needs. 

They fail to remember that these products must fill a need their customers have. This is the reason why some products have a shorter lifespan and others never kickoff. Performing market research and collecting customer experience data is a significant part of the product’s trends analysis. It helps understand how the market reacts and identifies the customers’ immediate needs and wants. This kind of data-driven trend analysis will let you know what a brand has to do to stay ahead of the competition.

SEE: Trending Products to sell

How to Identify Product Trends 

No matter how motivated you are to win over customers and meet your sales goals if you don’t know what to sell to them, it’s pointless. Making assumptions about what you think your customers will desire to buy is a risk not worth taking, so it’s safe to clearly point out the need to get acquainted with the trends. 

Unlike, the physical stores, there are many e-commerce products to buy online ranging from behemoths like Amazon to niche sellers like Etsy. Apparently, every seller is in a chase to better serve their customers. Some even take extra measures at increasing the usability and user experience of their online stores to improve convenience and serve their customers better. 

But how can you identify what products are trending?

At one time, everyone seemed to want a Blackberry phone, but if you try to jump on that now, it’d be pointless.

Let’s consider that you’re ready to dive into a business. You have acquired a physical store. You’ve identified a particular niche (Fashion, health, food, lifestyle, sports etc.). You own a functional website, social media pages, brand materials, and a handful of customers; who could be family and friends.

Here are some useful tactics that can be used to identify trending products to get your sales curve shooting up.

1. Listen to Your Customers

Your customers are solely the reason you are going into business, well that’s besides profit and getting rich. But since they’ll be the determiners to whether you get rich, you’ll have to place their interests as a priority. You could reach out to them in different ways. It could be through surveys, feedback forms, Social Listening, or physical conversation with them. To make your decisions, you have to consider their interests to stay on top of your competition and lead to better earnings.

SOLVED: How To Understand and Solve Your Customers’ Problems

2. Observe Your Competition

You must observe every entity of your market to keep up with the trend. A great place to watch is what your competitors are doing. Although it’s quite not advisable to compare oneself to competitors, it is wise to see what strategy works. It helps with the plan to innovate and create groundbreaking ideas that change the industry. This could be done simply by reviewing websites, to get a good picture of their market positioning to understand their reactions.

3. Be Consistent with the Current News and Trends

Considering what product types are relevant to the news trend is an excellent way of knowing what products will trend. Types of products and services change according to seasons and times and reflect our cultures. For example, the pandemic shot up the demand for products that ordinarily weren’t what some people will have in their homes. The society had to look for products that could guarantee their safety even while trying to stay alive.

You have to stay up to date with information about the current happenings in your industry.

4. Make the Most Use of Digital Tools to Track the Industry

Technology has made things more manageable with digital tools and software to help solve business problems. Various analytical tools are useful in giving a good idea of what to expect on products that will trend. These tools will help collect and analyse the customers’ data, and they are relatively easy to use. 

The use of search engines has gone beyond just looking for meanings of things and locating spots. Search engines are now used to know what people frequently search for and how popular their searches are. If the same keyword is queried by many people on Google’s search engine, the keyword begins to trend. These trends are easily tracked afterwards by Google’s trends tool. Other tools include digital analytics and Google keyword planner.

Here are some emerging product trends to look out for in 2021.

5. Follow Social Media Hashtags, Influencers and Trending Posts

Social media is taking the mainstream of the digital industry; there is no doubt about the flood of information. Reviewing social media posts to see what most appears will do the trick. One can get information about the most prominent trends from influencers and celebrities before they go mainstream.

There are basically too many networks to choose from. Identify the social network that works for you and review the “explore” or “trends” pages for products. An effective way to use social media to find current trends is through hashtags. This is a targeted way of identifying influencers’ accounts and communities to follow within your specified selling niche. 

6. Growing with Product Trends

It is important to note that not all product trends will find relevance in your brand. Since change is constant even in the marketplace, trends will come and go. Your shoppers might not be interested in particular products you sell. It will need creativity and a blend of precision to identify what products will appeal to your customers.