Marketing textbook, chapter 8

Matthias Horx, Germany's best-known trend researcher from the Zukunftsinstitut, will give a very lively presentation on the importance of the megatrends of security and quality. He uses numerous examples to illustrate the impact of these trends on the communication strategies of companies and their innovation activities.

Researching trends as a basis for marketing decisions also plays a major role in all other marketing instruments in addition to communication policy. Trend research is a particularly important basis for planning product innovations (see section 6.5.2).

Trends are generally categorised into metatrends, megatrends, socio-cultural trends and consumer, product and industry trends. There is also talk of techno and cultural trends. Metatrends are „... long-term trends, so-called super-trends, which describe the fundamentals. Metatrends indicate changes that are far-reaching and lead to economic and social restructuring. Metatrends describe the fundamental climate in which everything else operates and is organised“ (Seefelder, 2012). Individual epochs such as modernity or postmodernity are cited as examples of this. Metatrends tend to play a subordinate role for companies' communication strategies, which are generally geared towards the short and medium term. Megatrends, consumer and industry trends are particularly relevant, so that only these are considered in more detail below.

The term „megatrend“ comes from John Naisbitt, who 25 years ago presented a picture of the future at the turn of the millennium in his book of the same name, which he described on the basis of 10 far-reaching developments (see Naisbitt, 1982). Megatrends are characterised as long-term and overarching transformation processes that have a comprehensive impact: „Their scope extends to all regions of the world. They bring about multidimensional upheavals in all social subsystems - political, social and economic. Their specific characteristics differ from region to region.“ (Z-punkt, 2012). Depending on the author, megatrends have a half-life of 10 to 20 years and „... they are defined by four parameters: social change (e.g. ageing society), economic change (e.g. ethical consumption), c) cultural change (e.g. healthstyle), d) technological change (e.g. private publishing)“ (Bathens, 2008). According to Horx et al., the megatrend „... often has a global character and also overcomes temporary interruptions in its development“ (Horx et al., 2007, p. 31). In contrast, consumer trends only have a half-life of 2 to 5 years. They describe short to medium-term changes in consumer behaviour. Typical examples of consumer trends are convenience, wellness, cocooning and hybrid purchasing behaviour. Industry trends characterise the effects of social and consumer trends within certain industries. They can be used to derive opportunities and risks for companies in individual sectors, which arise from the changing motives, attitudes and expectations of consumers in different areas of consumption.

Overview of the Zukunftsinstitut's current megatrends:

• Gender Shift
• Health
• Globalisation
• Connectivity
• Individualisation
• Mobility
• Security
• New Work
• Neo-ecology
• Knowledge culture
• Silver Society
• Urbanisation

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Sources:

• Seefelder, 2012. Naisbitt, J.: Megatrends: Ten New Directions Transforming Our Lives, 1982. Z-punkt, 2012. Bathens, 2008.
• Horx, M.; Huber, J.; Steinle, A; Wenzel, E.: Zukunft machen: How to move from trends to business innovations. A practical guide, 2007, p. 31. 
• https://www.zukunftsinstitut.de/dossier/megatrends/ (as at 10 January 2026). 
• https://www.youtube.com/embed/YJjfdTUZAFc (as at 10 January 2026).