Why consumers in 2030?

The Which? Consumers in 2030 project is designed to spark debate about the changing needs of UK consumers in the 21st century. Building on our unique history as the UK’s consumer champion, Which? is seeking to identify the areas where consumers will face both detriment, and opportunities, in 2030.

Which? has a long history of using pioneering research methodologies to identify areas of consumer need and detriment before they hit the mainstream. In the 1960s, we used social trend analysis to identify the consumer issues likely to develop from the sexual revolution. We published a guide to contraceptives, and used groundbreaking ‘mystery shopper’ techniques to research an investigation into marriage bureaux.

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As the 20th century progressed, Which? responded to the increasing flexibility and personalisation of consumption by producing specialised publications on money, gardening, travel and technology. We have also been at the forefront of using new technologies to empower consumers. In 1996, we launched the Which? website, and by mid-2007, downloads of our free online guide to challenging unfair bank charges had topped 400,000. In 2012, the Which? Big Switch campaign harnessed the power of collective purchasing; a high-profile campaign that, by November 2012, had involved 300,000 consumers in the process of switching to a cheaper energy tariff.

Long-range projections of economic, social and environmental trends are regularly used by businesses and political institutions, but consumers themselves are frequently left out of the conversation. The ideas and scenarios in this publication are designed to bring about a new type of debate around a future that has people, rather than organisations or government, at its heart.

In order to do this, we conducted a detailed historical analysis of UK consumer trends from the mid-1950s to the present, and modelled these trends forwards to 2030. Working alongside Forum for the Future, we have used the raw economic model as the framework with which to develop a scenario detailing the home life of a family in 2030, ‘flexing’ the model to include the potential impact of behavioural shifts and uncertainties about the future.

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