January 2007

Megatrends and its effects

There are only some days after New Year, when we all made the famous game of reading in the coffee grounds or other ways of fortune telling. We all would like to lift a little bit the heavy curtain in order to have a short look into our future of the coming year. This is really not so difficult, if you recognize the big megatrends of our times in the right way and analyse the results for you personally or your economic decisions. It is like a MIKADO play, where the sticks are falling criss-cross and influence each other depending of their position or lying single on the ground.

One of the most important trends is the continuous „globalization“. Actually globalization is ancient habit, because already the dealing with exotic herbs or silk from India and China on the silk street and later the very intensive relations of British, Spanish, Portuguese, French and German trade companies with Asian partners, firstly on the country roads and later by sea, were the starting of the globalization. But this of course had no influence on our economies and our jobs. Only since mass products, made in Asia, produced with low labour costs, pushed on the European markets, for example textiles, radios, television sets and cameras, this had enormous influence on our markets, including the labour market. But nevertheless there are some companies in Europe, who still offer these products and show us, that it is possible by clever using of niches, that they can survive.

But also European countries like Germany and others are champions in export. And this may result of the fact, that we can produce machines, cars and other products in high quality, precision and even prices, which cannot be produced in other Far East countries. As much the European suppliers are following their foreign customers with the production into their countries, globalization gives important input, which is the industrialisation of underdeveloped countries, which we can study in China and now in India. Globalization by itself is nothing bad at all, if it is used in a positive way.

But now back to our megatrends, from which we want to develop our future behaviour. First of all there is our „society“ with an age pyramid, which is no more normal. Therefore the commerce, trade and the industry have to take care about the growing number of old people and have to follow their wishes and demands, for example regarding clothes, consumer products, shoes, furniture, etc.

Another megatrend are „medicine“ and „health care“, „education“, „cultural matters“ and the „markets“ in general, especially if they are more or less saturated like with washing machines, dishwashers, vacuum cleaners and others. Except replacements or for new families there will be only a small market. But there are other megatrends like „mobile phones“, which have really a fan society, which has a continuous „me too - feeling“. Typical product was the iPod and will be the iPhone from Apple. Therefore it is very important, that one have a new innovation and can bring it very fast to the market. Another megatrend is the increasing „individuality“ of our society, for example tailor-made suits, shoes, specially styled cars or houses are typical products of the individualism of our society, just in contrary to the mass societies of China. But even in these countries we can recognize these trends, because you can see no more luxurious cars like in Shanghai, Beijing or other East coast cities in China (Rolls Royce, Mercedes).

Another megatrend is „leisure time“, „entertainment“ and „sport“. For example the planning of the holidays already at the begin of a year or the purchase of a new play station and DVD’s and others as soon as they are available on the market or exercising like skiing, jogging, nordic walking and similar, show us the trends, on which we and the industry have to prepare and for which we should offer suitable products on the markets.

Of course, there are many more megatrends and above examples are not complete. But they show, that we have a very good chance, not only to survive in wealth, but have a prosperous industry and society, even because of globalization and the loss of complete industries and high unemployment in all EU countries. The excellent year 2006 plugged up our courage. We have only to see the actual megatrends, we have to analyse them and we have to make the right decisions, with which products we can go to market. Of course, and that is one of the most important matters, we need more and new innovations in technical and medical fields like MP3 players and others.

Best regards
W. Endrich