Marketing Review St.Gallen 3 | 2020 "Customer Foresight"

The first iPhone appeared in 2007, which was still smiled at by competitors at the time, but has since made its triumphant advance into our living environments. Other technologies, which were touted as gamechangers, are hardly used. Segways – according to the vision of their inventor, they were to replace the car in the city center and radically change the future of cities – are nowadays mainly used as means of tourist transportation.

How will we live in the future? Will there be one or more new technologies that will radically change our everyday life?

Customer Foresight is a way to get a better overview of the “future”. Customer Foresight includes various methodological approaches that provide a better understanding of where markets are moving. To a certain extent, customer foresight allows us to better deal with the high volatility and uncertainty in today’s world.

However, all these approaches must also be considered with caution: In 1937, a major study predicted that half of the American population would be living in trailers in the next 15 to 20 years. The basis for this prediction seemed plausible: demand for caravans was greater than supply at the time, and experts assumed that this trend would continue.

Nevertheless, Customer Foresight seems to be more important than ever in the days of Covid-19. Even if you cannot predict the future through customer foresight, customer foresight allows you to prepare for different future scenarios.

This text is the editorial of the current issue of Marketing Review St. Gallen with the topic “Customer Foresight”. You can find the magazine in our Shop.