Gadgets Consumer Insights

Trend - Just a few years after AI-powered chefs debuted in numerous restaurant pilots, brands are now adapting this technology to the home kitchen. These cooking devices help ensure consistency in cooking while making the process more efficient due to their advanced AI.

Insight - Luxury consumers favor convenience and automation in the home as time-saving measures, rather than cost-saving ones. These consumers have extra money they are willing to spend to make their busy lives easier, leading to fully-equipped smart homes or appliances on timers. One area these strive for more automation in is the kitchen. Previously, these consumers would hire personal human chefs if they did not enjoy cooking themselves. Brands are filling this luxe gap through the use of AI.

Trend - Brands in the home appliance space are launching smart fridges with UV light-controlled crispers that mimic the sun cycle. These fridges extend the shelf life of fruits and vegetables and ensure the foods retain as many vitamins as possible. This technology saves consumers money and time.

Insight - As North American consumers become more interested in personal health and wellness, these consumers incorporate this lifestyle into their daily routines. This includes healthy eating, exercise, and other wellness products. However, as natural, organic foods often retail for more than the regular alternatives, these consumers aim to reduce costs and preserve their foods for longer. This created a space in the industry for smart storage appliances that extend the life of foods.

Trend - Brands are creating ultrasonic purifiers that extend the shelf life of fruits and vegetables. These purifiers use ultrasonic waves to kill bacteria that grow on food during spoilage significantly more effectively than washing with water, saving customers money and reducing food waste.

Insight - With food prices rising at sharp rates due to inflation and other economic factors, the average consumer can not afford to have food spoil before it is eaten. These customers want food to be readily available for cooking, meaning they do not want to freeze food to extend its life. As a result, these customers turn to technological solutions that can preserve foods for longer without requiring extra prep time or work when the food is needed.

Trend - Companies are introducing fishing traps that are ropeless and located with acoustic signals. These traps have self-inflating balloons to allow them to surface when called, and can be used more than ten times. This results in fewer fish and whales caught in unnecessary ropes.

Insight - Commercial fishing is essential to maintaining an affordable supply of seafood for customers. However, this fishing is often destructive to the aquatic environment due to single-use traps and materials being lost in the water. For customers who do not consider the sustainability of fishing, reducing costs and increasing supply is a real desire. This puts pressure on companies to deploy more efficient, more sustainable methods of fishing that reduce costs across the board.

Trend - Companies are adding artificial intelligence (AI)-backed features to traditional pillows. These pillows automatically track sleep patterns, as well as head position and temperature, then adjust themselves automatically for comfort. This improves the quality of sleep and reduces snoring.

Insight - Consumers today face countless external stressors related to inflation, the run-off effects of the pandemic, and more. One of the most common ways that stress manifests itself is insomnia. These customers seek out products that improve sleep quality, such as white noise machines and blackout curtains. However, with the recent increase in AI popularity, brands are looking to improve traditional sleep products with AI sensing and automatically-calibrated comfort.

Trend - E-bike brands have begun incorporating automatic predictive shifting in bikes. These shifting systems function similarly to an automatic car, removing the need for the rider to change gears manually when accelerating or decelerating manually. This reduces the barrier to entry for e-bikes.

Insight - Consumers that are drawn to electric bicycles prioritize convenience, ease of use, and utility. These bikes offer greater performance than traditional bikes, being more capable of handling difficult terrain while being less physically demanding. The largest barriers to entry for e-bikes are high prices and overbearing features. Customers desire familiar experiences that improve on the convenience of riding a bike, rather than products that convolute the riding experience.

Trend - Brands in the 3D-printing space are launching printers and materials that can create complex, durable glass structures. This offers more value to consumers in the space, as many regular printers can now create designer glass structures for jewelry or otherwise without specialty equipment.

Insight - Consumers in the 3D-printing space are drawn to tools and services that enable creativity and streamline the creation process. This includes printers that create higher-quality prints faster, as well as software that enables more precise designing of printed works. This desire extends beyond software and hardware to material works as well, as consumer pressures previously moved the industry toward wood filament printing for sustainability, showing a demand for more printable materials.

Trend - Brands are using transparent materials in kitchen appliances. These appliances have a clean, modern aesthetic and make food preparation easier as they allow users to monitor food while it cooks. These products use innovative transparent materials with comparable safety to regular appliances.

Insight - The interior design industry continues to evolve with new design trends and materials, such as natural wood grain or modern glass dining ware. Some of these trends are to the detriment of function, while others enhance it. Customers are increasingly drawn to the latter, favoring products that enhance the convenience of the home, particularly in the kitchen. While most new functions focused on smart features, there also arose a space for new functional materials in the home.

Trend - Brands in the consumer electronics space are using hall sensor technology in controllers and input devices. Hall sensors use a magnetic field rather than a physical analog connection, which means the parts do not physically deteriorate over time, and are more precise.

Insight - Repair costs and additional service fees often dissuade home electronics consumers, as these devices often require professional work and cannot be repaired at home. For this reason, fans of home electronics, such as video games and smart home devices, are gravitating towards products made with durability, repairability, and accuracy in mind. Brands are responding to this pressure by crafting products with long-lasting components without adding too much to the upfront costs.

Trend - Brands are creating health-tracking wearables with specific focus on hydration monitoring and hydration reminders. These track the body's hydration levels through attached sensors. This is useful for hotter climates as global temperatures rise, helping people maintain safe hydration levels.

Insight - Consumers are growing increasingly wary of climate change as recent years have shown borderline unlivable temperatures in some areas of the world. This, when combined with heatwaves where authorities urge citizens to drink lots of water and remain in air-conditioned areas, led customers to place more importance on their hydration levels. This directly caused demand for smart wearables to shift from sleep and heartrate tracking to also detailed hydration tracking.