Four Consumer Signals Shared by Leading Foresight Experts

What?  Technology exhaustion turns offline into a new social status

We’re seeing a quiet reversal. People are choosing slower, more tactile ways to spend time, such as embroidery and birding.

As technology has become both ubiquitous and mind-numbingly exhausting, phones and hardware have plateaued as status symbols. The attention economy has made online life endlessly sticky, and people are “doom scrolling” themselves into “digital dementia.” In 2024, “brain rot” was Oxford’s word of the year.

Gradually, social signaling is shifting. Being offline – disconnected, grounded, present – is now a form of luxury. Slower, more physical pursuits are regaining cultural weight. They offer tactility, depth, and a scarcity that digital life can’t replicate.

So what? Brands can be judged by how they protect attention and enable presence.

Status is moving from having the newest thing to having boundaries and control. Soon, brands may be judged by how they protect attention, reduce overload, and enable presence.

This points to rising demand (and willingness to pay) for offerings that feel physical, curated, limited, and genuinely personal. Strategically, this marks a shift from “being everything for everybody” to “being more for fewer.”

Now what?  Brands may win by creating high-quality, less-is-more experiences.

Imagine a future where hardware and AI-enabled capabilities have become cheap and replicable. Differentiation shifts from what technology can do to the experience of using it.

Brands win by offering high-quality, “less is more” experiences: curated formats, memberships, limited runs, smaller high-trust communities, and fewer, more selectively designed touchpoints.

Resist the temptation to add more noise, content, and stimulation. Brands that practice disciplined curation and true presence will be rewarded accordingly.

Question for leaders:

Where in our product portfolio could we offer a slower, offline, or less-is-more experience, and who would pay for it?

What?  Gen Z consumers are normalizing “friendly fraud.”

Approximately 42% of Gen Zers admit to disputing legitimate charges or engaging in deceptive refund behavior, such as falsely claiming non-delivery or exploiting return policies.

Many Gen Z consumers do not see these actions as unethical. Instead, they view them as justified responses to financial stress and a sense that large institutions are unfair or exploitative.

Tips and “hacks” shared on social media amplify the normalization, framing the behavior from a criminal act to a form of consumer empowerment or survival strategy.

So what?  Overly strict responses may be counterintuitive

The decline of trust in institutions is now showing up as new consumer behaviors, particularly among younger generations. If nearly half of Gen Zers see “friendly fraud” as acceptable, traditional assumptions about honesty and loyalty no longer hold.

This isn’t just about revenue loss. It’s also a cultural and economic signal indicating a broader shift in moral frameworks. Companies risk alienating young consumers with punitive responses or losing revenue and facing system abuse if they ignore the issue. Brands will need a more nuanced approach that blends risk management with relationship building.

Now what?  Loyalty programs that reward verified honest behavior may be a solution solution

In the next few years, “friendly fraud” will likely become more sophisticated and harder to detect, with AI and online communities making it easier to exploit systems. While investing in fraud detection is essential, it won’t be enough. Businesses will likely need to rethink their policies, pricing, and customer experience to address perceptions of fairness as they engage with a generation skeptical of institutions.

On the flip side, companies that proactively address this trust gap can differentiate themselves. This may mean experimenting with “trust-first” models that give long-term customers greater flexibility and fewer verification hurdles, increasing transparency around products and sourcing, designing systems that reward honesty, or rethinking fraud prevention as a customer relationship strategy.

Companies that rely solely on tighter enforcement risk fueling even greater cycles of distrust and circumvention, but brands that implement relationship-building tactics can make trust a differentiator.

Question for leaders:
Are we policing our way into a trust crisis? Or could smarter relationship-building earn us honesty and loyalty in the next generation?

What? The rise of “artificial bootlickers”

There has been a lot of recent scientific work looking into the implications of LLM chatbots that are extremely “people-pleasing” by default. The research specifically focused on people who use chatbots for support with personal problems like breakups, family challenges, and other relationship issues.

AI chatbots affirmed the position of the user far more often than humans – affirming harmful or deceitful actions 49% more of the time.

So what?  How brands communicate with consumers needs to change

This signal matters because consumers who are used to being validated by bots will expect the same from brands. As this expectation grows, organizational communication risks shifting toward people-pleasing sycophancy, with customer service and marketing communications losing their edge and authenticity. If all interactions become generic, people-pleasing responses without integrity, consumers may wonder whether brands actually care about them or want to help.

This also creates a challenge for gathering useful consumer insights: it becomes harder to understand real consumer needs and preferences. When consumers ask about products and services through AI chatbots rather than reading reviews from established media sources, trusted communities, or product review sites, brands may miss out on honest feedback.

Now what?  Cut through the AI noise with a real, authentic voice

Don’t let your brand become just another impersonal people-pleaser. Choose authenticity, even if it means disagreeing. Companies should support real agency for consumers, especially as people’s personal lives increasingly depend on chatbots.

If brands always offer affirmation, they risk worsening unhealthy dynamics, and real uniqueness is lost to people-pleasing. On the upside, for companies that develop alternatives, there’s an opportunity to grab the holy grail of marketing communications: authenticity. Delivering a real, authentic voice in chatbot interfaces can set your brand apart and deepen trust in an era of people-pleasing digital interaction.

Question for leaders:
As digital flattery becomes the norm, how can we make authenticity our marketing edge, and become a brand customers trust?

Signal Area: Economic, Social, Ecological

What? From ownership to a monthly fee – anything could be turned into a subscription

For many, buying a house is increasingly out of reach. Many also view ownership as a burden, where people increasingly buy freedom from hassle.

We’re seeing a convergence of different emerging signals from owning to subscription, bundling unrelated lifestyle services and physical products in various tiered packages. What used to be standard coliving, is moving upstream, bundling rent, cleaning, gym and utilities into one tiered fee, and hotel groups are taking the all-inclusive format beyond the holiday, while seven carmakers have trialled subscription programmes.

Up next, there’s a potential future where you could put your whole standard of living in one package. You pick a tier, and each tier is a complete lifestyle package: it may cover where you live, what you drive, the phone in your pocket, the gym, the doctor. One fee, nothing to own.

So what? Loyalty could shift from the product to the package

The emerging signals indicate that an appetite for outsourcing your lifestyle to a subscription is growing. Nobody has yet built a subscription to run your whole life – but it might be coming.

This shifts who owns the consumer relationship, with one company responsible for keeping all of it running. Consumer choice narrows, as one choice replaces hundreds. The bundle also concentrates exposure: one missed payment – or bankruptcy – could remove someone's whole standard of living.

How much people consume could go either way. A flat fee removes the cost of using one more thing – either triggering overconsumption or leading to more efficient use of resources.

Now what? Ask what your customers want to own – and what they want to subscribe to.

Test the assumption directly. Do customers in your category still say ownership matters to them, and does that differ by age? What unrelated products or services do they care about?

Monitor what your competitors are doing and if they bundle a second unrelated category into the same tier, such as a shared-housing company adding mobility. That is the point at which the bundle stops being a concept and turns into a comprehensive lifestyle offering.

The real strategic question is not whether subscription grows, but whether brands in your category will own the bundle, power it, or be reduced to interchangeable components inside it. What will your role be in a future bundle, and how can you influence it before it takes shape?

Question for leaders:
If our customers stopped buying our products and started subscribing to a lifestyle package, would we run our own package or part of someone else's?

Executive self-reflection questions

• Where in your customer journey are you clinging to “what worked before” instead of experimenting with what’s emerging?
  
• Which of these signals exposes the biggest blind spot or risk for your current brand or product strategy?
  
• Are your marketing, product, and innovation teams empowered to challenge consensus and test weak signals? Or only to scale what’s already mainstream?