Earlier this month, LG unveiled its ThinQ refrigerator – a so-called “smart” fridge retailing at around £2000 which the company claims can act as a dietician.

Users simply enter their BMI, diet preferences and desired level of weight loss (the latter being optional), with the ThinQ then able assess the impact that various foods inside it might have and suggest options which will best match an individual’s personal targets (using voice recognition technology to distinguish various members of the household).

In addition, the ThinQ can alert owners when products are about to reach their expiry dates – displaying information on its in-built screen – and also allows users to see the contents of the fridge via their mobiles (thus removing the need for shopping lists).

Such a product chimes with a number of the trends we track here at nVision - touching everything from the Networked Society and Healthy Hedonism to The Quantified Self and the End of Inefficiency – and gives a glimpse of how much smarter are homes will become as the current decade evolves.

There were a few questions on Wednesday that we didn’t have time to answer at the end of the session.  We have put the remaining questions to our speakers and their responses are below:

“I am interested in getting your views on the changing role of the high street. With click and collect becoming increasingly more popular and pureplay retailers looking to partner with high street stores or open stores of their own, is the high street becoming more of an information source rather than just a place to purchase your goods?”

• Parcelforce

In the past, there was a fear that as e-commerce grew, the high-street may suffer as consumers moved to cheaper, convenient online competitors.  However, many of the examples of self-service I gave at the conference point to technological innovations that are enhancing the in-store shopping experience as well as the process of gathering information.  The mobile web is also increasing the information that consumers have at their fingertips no matter where they are – a variety of apps allow consumers to scan items in-store and get an immediate price comparison of that item from other high street stores as well as online.

Bricks-and-mortar and online share a symbiotic relationship and mobile technology is helping to blur the lines between the two. This gives rise to so-called “inline” shopping where technology meets the traditional retail experience.  On top of this, there are several specific reasons why we would argue that the high street will not become solely a base for research:

• There are limits to the customer service experience online: in-store offers a more complete experience than shopping online thanks to the opportunity for theatre.
• Localism has a major role to play: there is strong support for local issues/communities/high streets and an accompanying appetite for a more intimate, familiar retail experience.  Localism is going to provide sizeable opportunities in the medium-term.
• Technological innovation (particularly in the self-service arena) is set to continue enhancing the in-store experience allowing consumers to not only gather ever-more usual information prior to purchase, but also to streamline and improve the purchase process.

Of course, high streets (and the sector in general) still have some major challenges ahead.  Macro socio-economic problems such as regional and inner-city decline will battle with severely restricted disposable incomes.  Overall though, the benefits of shopping in-store (trial, enhanced service experience, immediate gratification etc) will ensure the UK high street is still able to fight for its place as a point of purchase and not just an information source.

- Katie Toll, Head of Research

What impact do you feel inadequate pension provision and saving is likely to have on the extent to which older consumers can get involved in helping out grown up children and grandchildren? Do you see older consumers’ disposable incomes and what they spend on themselves becoming terminally squeezed?

• Horticultural Trade Association

The new twist on the ‘sandwich generation’ whereby we see a new OAP generation (Old Age Providers) will be one that is short lived. As mentioned in the conclusions of my presentation, the OAP generation is the last of a ‘golden generation’ that will be able to provide for their whole family unit. The current OAP generation are in a unique position to help financially support the rest of their family but, as you suggest, inadequate pension provision together with a reduced level of asset accumulation (largely due to a decline in the housing market) will mean that future grandparent cohorts will not be in the same financial position.

It is likely then that the financial responsibility will be more evenly shared across the whole family along with extra support from extended networks/family ties and via new means such as social lending sites such as Zopa.

- Yasmine Baladi, Associate Director, Client Services

In terms of ethical/social considerations are there differences in terms of age and social grade?

• JD Williams

The proportion that agree with the statement “I am concerned about what I personally can do to help protect the environment” stands at  over 70% and remained firm throughout the recession.  There is a degree of variation across different socio-economic groups: green sentiment is particularly acute among women and becomes more of an issue among older segments.  Similarly, more affluent consumers are more likely to agree with the statement but despite that, agreement does not fall below 65% in any group.  When we look at behavioural measures we find fewer differences.  The War on Waste has seen consumers preventing financial waste as well as simultaneously meeting their green concerns and this is reflected in the fact that there is no difference across social grades for the propensity to recycle and reduce energy consumption.  Green has become less about paying a premium and more about minimising wasteful consumption, which has additional financial consequences and so is more attractive to a more diverse range of socio-economic groups.

We hold to our conviction that the trend is for consumers, macro-economic storms or no, to be legitimately and often deeply troubled by evidence of worsening environmental despoliation. But we recognise that the expression of eco-concerns has become something of a social norm: an expression, in other words, in which we are all meant to engage. From our review of public survey techniques, we know that when certain questions relating to environmental worries are put to consumers online as opposed to face-to-face then the expressed level of concern can often be somewhat lower. This does not detract from our general view that climate change is, as a public anxiety, widespread, profound and (for all practical purposes) permanent.

- Pippa Goodman, Commercial Director

Chances are that you are one of the majority (70%) of the UK population who would agree with one of the Future Foundation’s longest-running proprietary survey questions: ‘I am personally concerned to do what I can to help the environment’. Environmental concern has shown a classic longterm trajectory of a value-led trend from counter-cultural minority – what could be more radical than rejecting the choice and freedom of the consumer society in 1960s America – to being the norm.  Nowadays in fact, it may be more instructive to think about why the other 30% or so don’t agree, since this group, in a neat flip, now represent the counter-cultural minority, although not one that we believe will grow. The failure of the scientific community to agree on what constitutes incontrovertible evidence and clear guidance on the best ways to act in order to avert global warming may be part of that story, but also represents the heart of the challenge to the majority who do want to act.

And while many of us may feel guilty about the size and extent of our carbon foot print as we, along with the rest of the concerned majority, continue to jet off abroad and enjoy the convenience of our cars, there is one area in which consumers have adopted a range of environmentally friendly behaviours with the gay abandon of the newly converted. We call this the War on Waste and it represents a powerful and significant factor that all brands and retailers are increasingly building into their products and services going forward.

War on Waste illustrates what happens when there is a happy coincidence between shorter-term pressures and longer term value shifts. In this case, the personal need to save money now works very effectively with the underlying desire to save the planet and is fundamentally changing our relation to the material goods that form the basis of our lives in an advanced consumer society.  The three ‘R’s mantra of the Simplicity movement in the US just ten years ago (as expounded in their mysteriously glossy magazine Real Simple) seemed  more like a quaint and unlikely aspiration for those with too much time on their hands. Now Reduce, Recycle and Reuse are increasingly describing the everyday behaviours of the British consumer swept along by the prevailing winds and the supportive intervention of government. Three quarters now recycle regularly. And when asked what they are doing to reduce waste two-thirds now claim to buy less and 60% say that they are repairing and maintaining things in order to make them last longer. You may remember the brief flare of a media story from 2009 in which Oxfam highlighted the negative effect this was having on the stock in their shops. Shortly afterwards, in (my view) a genius initiative they have teamed up with Marks and Spencer to offer M&S vouchers to people donating high quality clothes to their stores. Retail expert Mary Portas has shown that she believes re-use is here to stay with her Living and Giving shop in no less a consumer temple than the Westfield Shopping Centre.

It would be dangerous to overstate the case, after all only 27% say they are buying fewer clothes now, and a similar proportion claim to be wasting less food. But these are healthy minorities, set to grow due in part once again, to government support for behavioural change (pace Nudge).  Before COI ad budgets were cut, Defra had been spending heavily to promote the Love Food, Hate Waste campaign and cut down the 8.3 million tonne food mountain we have been chucking out each year, along with the common practice of providing food waste boxes. And when Tesco -whose pre-eminence as the nation’s favourite grocer is never in question – announced that they would be offering shoppers the chance to remove excess packaging and give it back at the till and invested in 3,500 units round the country, it is clear that they are reading the same signs and taking them very seriously indeed.  From Coors’ thinner glass bottles, to the growth of car clubs such as Streetcar, and the fact that 60% have transacted on E-bay, the War on Waste is definitely here to stay, and the smart brands are responding by looking at how they can cut waste from everything they do, to tune in to the consumer and to lead marketing into the enlightened uplands of built-in sustainability.