“Total Eclipse of the Cart"

Future Commerce Podcast: eCommerce, DTC and Retail Strategy

There are fewer places for kids to be kids, and there are more places for kids to parrot the behaviors and consumer preferences of the adults. This intergenerational response to culture is affecting commerce… and vice versa. Join Brian and Phillip on this special lunar edition of Future Commerce, which turns into something even more *eclipsing*.

How Media Shapes Our Buying Decisions

Key takeaways:

- Mimesis plays a significant role in shaping consumer trends, particularly among children who mimic their parents' brand preferences.

- Multigenerational marketing is becoming increasingly important as brands strive to appeal to both adults and children in the same market.

- Media has a direct impact on consumer behavior and brand preferences, as media cycles drive discourse and influence purchasing decisions.

- Predictable growth rather than exponential growth should be a primary focus for businesses seeking long-term success.

- The trend cycles are influenced by an inciting event, followed by discourse, backlash, and ultimately a potential counterpunch or shift in attention.

• {00:13:40} - “Part of the consumer education of a child has changed dramatically since the closure of Toys R Us. So I grew up in a world where there are a lot of independent toy stores or game shops, or there were franchised models of those. These were places where you could go that had very specific merchandising that was literally just for me as a kid, and it was the endless aisle.” - Phillip
• {00:19:13} - “You look at the Sephora Kids trend as an overarching reflection that there is a strong agreement between both older generations and younger generations about what is interesting, what's trending, what's cool, things that are exposed to different audiences, but native to those audiences in their media channels. So whether it's short form video or it's social share or messaging between friends, kids are parroting what their parents are doing…which I would say is a new form of monoculture.” - Phillip
• {00:25:54} - “One of the dangers of marketing to children is there is something that happens in this mimesis process where kids, when they become a certain age, want to reject the things that they did when they were children.” - Brian
• {00:35:39} - “The lesson to take away is that world-building has a huge effect on what we buy, and there are a lot of people out there who believe that all this stuff doesn't matter to commerce, but I think that's the whole charter of why we've made Future Commerce.” - Brian
• {00:36:26} - “There are a lot of ways that people and consumers expect brands to participate in the cultural discourse now, and we have to merchandise at the speed of culture. That is the job and in particular, eCommerce can move that fast. So it's expected that we do.” - Phillip
• {00:42:19} - “There's going to be some level of disgust that happens at some point in that mimetic cycle. And then you've built up production and you've pursued this strategy for so long and it's going to disappear overnight. And I think the job of businesses isn't necessarily to grow. The job of businesses is to be predictable {in that growth}.” - Brian
• {00:45:01} - “The same thing happens with viral product trends. There's an inciting incident that creates a discourse and then there's a backlash. What happens is for it to exit the trend cyclical nature, for us to exit that, there has to be a backlash to backlash.” - Phillip

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