Home Consumer Insights

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 - While many consumers are familiar with traditional forms of sanitation, such as alcohol-based cleaning products, the pandemic caused more people to get familiar with contactless, electrostatic sprayers for disinfection. These are advanced tools that create barriers against harmful bacteria

Insight - The pandemic caused more importance than ever to be placed on sanitation. From hand sanitizer to medical masks, consumers are now more familiar than ever with critical sanitization practices. With lockdowns creating the perception that the home is a clean, safe sanctuary, many customers have researched new ways to maintain home cleanliness without investing too much time or money. Brands are responding to this by repurposing industrial sanitization technologies for the home.

Trend - Gaming furniture and peripheral brands are launching gaming-focused chairs with built-in surround sound speaker systems. These chairs are immersive and comfortable, offering directional audio without the discomfort of a headset, enabling longer, more enjoyable gaming sessions.

Insight - Modern gamers continually seek devices that improve their performance, comfort, or experience. These players seek whatever products offer a competitive edge without breaking the bank. This involves purchasing multipurpose devices, such as multiplatform peripherals or heavily adjustable chairs for ergonomics. Brands have responded to this pressure by launching furniture with smart features. These appease the consumer's desire for increased performance, cost-saving, and personal comfort.

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 are creating retro-style kitchen appliances equipped with modern technology. These appliances offer nostalgic designs, bringing a natural, simpler feel to a modern kitchen. These products do not compromise on function or convenience, as they feature modern smart technologies.

Insight - Nostalgia is an evergreen trend when considering customer motivations. When a modern product boasts the right balance between function and nostalgia, the target customer is more likely to purchase the product due to the inherent emotional connection. While many industries embrace nostalgia, such as the entertainment industry offering remakes of past content, others look at nostalgia as a gimmick. This places pressure on more industries to incorporate nostalgia into functional products.

Trend - Brands are launching attachments for showerheads that incorporate aromatherapy into the showering experience. These products enhance showers from just a grooming process to a necessary part of a daily self-care routine. These products are easy to install on existing shower systems.

Insight - Each person has a different shower routine, with some showering in the morning and some at night. For many people, the shower is a calming experience that helps them relax before or after a hard day. Additionally, many people spend more time in the shower than necessary, either listening to music or thinking. While the steam produced by a shower is effective at clearing sinuses and opening pores, the amount of time spent in showers shows that it is a viable space for more value-adds.

Trend - Indoor and outdoor appliance brands are introducing consumer-focused pizza ovens small enough to fit in a regular kitchen or deck. These are affordable, accessible pizza ovens that enable regular consumers to prepare restaurant-grade pizzas, opening the potential for new artisinal hobbies.

Insight - The pandemic caused customers around the world to engage in more at-home hobbies such as artisinal cooking or DIY crafts. Many of these customers tried numerous hobbies throughout the pandemic years and are now looking for more, while some are looking to take their existing ones further. This shows that new technology for the home kitchen is always desired, especially in a post-pandemic world, demonstrating the importance of simplified industrial-grade technology for the home.

Trend - Companies are launching virtual home shopping experiences to market products during the COVID-19 era. These gamified platforms are engaging with playful interactivity and comfort aesthetics that entertain consumers and also allow for the visualization of a product in one's space.

Insight - As government-imposed COVID-19 measures are highly restrictive to brick-and-mortar retail, individuals have turned to online shopping for their daily needs—whether that is because they want to play it safe or save themselves the hassle. Aware of the potentials of technology in virtual environments, many are looking for digital experiences that are immersive and this demand arises from a consumer need for entertaining distractions during a difficult time.

Trend - Brands are optimizing smart home products to better serve the needs of consumers who live in smaller spaces or those who frequently change abodes. The designs of these objects allow for ease of storage and use thanks to compactness and minimalism.

Insight - Many consumers who live in urban environments—especially Millenials and Gen Z—are conscious of space as they often find themselves occupying small apartments and/or shared living situations. As a result, individuals are prioritizing compactness and convenience when making decisions about interior design and technology for the home. Functional features such as these enable consumers to be more comfortable and even productive in a clutter-free space.