JWTIntelligence has released its eighth annual forecast of key trends that will shape or significantly impact consumer mind-set and behaviour in the near future. In this year’s report, new technology continues to take centre stage, with major shifts tied to warp-speed developments in mobile, social and data technologies. Many of its trends reflect how businesses are driving, leveraging or counteracting technology’s omnipresence in our lives, and how consumers are responding to its pull.

It reports how everyday objects become smarter as technology gets embedded into everything from eyeglasses to socks to bikes, helping us to measure, navigate and augment the world, notes the agency.

At the same time, smartphones will become de facto fingerprints as they evolve into wallets, keys, health consultants and more — one's identity all in one place.

Also, thanks largely to advances in mobile technology, almost anything — from bus shelters to print magazines — has the ability to be transformed into a retail channel. As a result, shopping will shift from an activity that takes place in physical stores or online to a value exchange that can play out in multiple new and novel ways.

Its forecast also puts a spotlight on health, with two separate trends examining the rising awareness around the impact of stress and happiness on well-being and how businesses are addressing it.

The 10 Trends featured in this report include:  

● Play As a Competitive Advantage
● The Super Stress Era
● Intelligent Objects
● Predictive Personalisation
● The Mobile Fingerprint
● Sensory Explosion
● Everything Is Retail
● Peer Power
● Going Private in Public
● Health & Happiness: Hand in Hand

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The full report — in which it covers each trend in detail, highlighting what’s driving the shift, how it’s manifesting and what it means for brands — is available here.