New Opportunities in new decade
The new decade that begins in 2010 promises a variety of demographic, economic, and technology shifts that will have significant impact on consumers and small businesses. First, there is bound to be greater social and mobile technologies that would transform communities and in effect influencing the ways people work and behave (The Intuit 2020 Report, nd). Increased globalization will lead to formation of varied communities and relationships across the world. As such social networks will fuel the participatory economy enabling the grassroots to become more influential to the government and the economy. Tracking and monitoring of both business and consumer activities will be hyped to unprecedented levels. Better still, internet and mobile technologies will create a new market transparency.
Similarly, there will be increased localism where people will re-establish stronger connections with family, friends and community bettering the local economy besides greater emphasis being laid to work-life balance. Furthermore, individual risk management will become popular as governments reduce social support systems. Therefore, the indications are that individuals are going to take charge of such personal things as own insurance and retirement decisions (The Intuit 2020 Report, nd).
Finally, it is certain that the balance of power will shift from the business to customers because of increased knowledge about products and services both domestically and globally. Therefore there will be increased consumer spending on goods and services thanks to economic growth in many developing countries along with the growth of mobile access to global markets. The apparent shift from “push” to “pull” marketing will a paradigm shift in the sense that companies won’t find their customers, rather the customers will find the companies. In this respect, there is greater opportunity for small businesses locally and internationally in the next decade starting in 2010.
Reference:
The Intuit 2020 Report. Twenty Trends that will Shape the Next Decade. Retrievedon April 8, 2012 from: http://http-download.intuit.com/http.intuit/CMO/intuit/futureofsmallbusiness/intuit_2020_report.pdf
