How does Mintel Trends work?

Mintel Trends tracks consumer mindsets and behaviors on a number of levels. Every week, our editorial team publishes over 100 observations, which chronicle provocative studies, innovations and news stories in the global consumer landscape. Observations also act as the building blocks of trends – broader shifts in consumer behavior which impact multiple industries and demographics. All of our observations are tagged to a Mintel Trend. They help us tell the story of that trend as it unfolds over time, or, help us identify new trends as they emerge.

But we use other Mintel research platforms to track trends too. Every Mintel report references a Mintel Trend. Brainstormed together by Mintel Reports analysts and Mintel Trends analysts, we explore how our trends are impacting the ground-level marketplace. They exist on Mintel Trends as Applications.

All of our content is tagged to trend labels. These are the values and motivators (e.g. convenience, safety) which underlie the things we observe. These tags allow us to search across labels and identify connections between seemingly disparate occurrences in consumer culture.

Our trendscape tool uses the trend labels to generate a visual mapping of these connections.

How do I know which trends to focus on? And how do I understand how a trend is impacting the industries or demographics that matter most to me?

Each of these has its own homepage which showcases our latest Trend Observations for each industry, demographic or trend driver, and identifies the trends that are having the most impact.

That means you can get smart about a space, identify the key trends affecting it, and understand what it means for your business, in a snap.

Meanwhile, our homepage identifies the top trends impacting consumer culture overall – the big issues that we believe all of our clients would do well to keep an eye on.

Finally, each trend has a buzz (how many examples of the trend we are spotting) and a lifecycle ranking (whether it’s emerging, mainstreaming, established or declining). While we consider high buzz trends to be the most critical for our clients to watch, it’s often the low-buzz trends (especially the emerging ones) that can help you get ahead of your competitors!

How do I determine whether a trend has become more or less important, or otherwise evolved, over time?

The Mintel Trends editorial team constantly review of our trends to gauge how each has evolved. We’ll consider how many Observations and Application pieces have been tagged to a trend, whether we’ve seen the trend expand into new industries, demographics or themes, and whether bigger issues in the world (politics, economics, technological innovation) have pushed certain trends to greater prominence.

How do I keep track of how trends are playing out?

Our Week in Trends newsletter highlights a selection of some of the most thought provoking innovations we’ve spotted from around the world to get your creative juices flowing, whilst our quarterly webinars look at new areas of momentum.

Meanwhile, our observations – which are published on a daily basis – provide an ongoing, up-to-date 'narrative' of all our trends as they evolve.

Finally, an email alert is available for each Trend that enables users to be alerted to new content that is linked to the trend.

China

This is marketing intelligence published by Mintel. The consumer research exclusively commissioned by Mintel was conducted by a Chinese licensed market survey agent (see Research Methodology China for more information).