Trend spotting and service innovation

Purpose – Improving the commercial success rate of innovations requires alternative approaches based on social science methodologies for identifying subtle, emerging changes in consumer needs and behaviors. The purpose of this paper is to address this call by proposing trend spotting to guide innovation researchers and service managers towards innovations that are more in accordance with emerging consumer needs. Design/methodology/approach – The authors develop, describe, and employ a methodology for trend spotting to derive eight consumer trends that will have a strong influence on their choices. To provide further insights into these trends, the authors label and describe three customer segments as a function of life-cycle. The goal is to provide a framework for identifying innovations that are of higher value consumers. Findings – The authors identified eight consumer trends, i.e. Always on the go, Always logged-in, Quality information faster, Nowism, Look at me now, Privacy, Sustainable living, and return on time (RoT), present across the three life-stage segments, i.e. Young free and single, Chaos in my life, and Got my life back. Practical implications – For illustration purpose, the authors elaborate on the trend RoT and employ their findings and framework to illustrate how the airline industry may derive ideas for valuable innovations. Originality/value – To the best of the authors’ knowledge, this is the first time trend spotting has been employed in the field of service marketing and service innovations.