The 2021 Update on The Future of Consumer Business

The contemporary consumer as of 2021 transcends the physical-virtual divide. Goods and services are acquired on the move, at random, on a whim - often on willful and happy impulse. Transactions are not just cashless. They are now cardless, through online credit card payments that are seamless and effortless, or at the tap of a mobile device. In the case of a company I am sure you would have heard of, Amazon, the consumer already walks in, picks up an item and walks out - and the payment is automatically made, as will be the case with all physical retail outlets in the developed world by the time any child born up to 2021 reaches legal adulthood:

What is the Future?

The future, is the convergence of all the technologies, that as of the end of 2018, were considered or labeled as "emerging", in the service of the "Transcendent Consumer".

Why the "Transcendent Consumer"?

I have coined the term "Transcendent Consumer", to describe the consumer that is contemporary to 2021, and will be contemporary for the indefinite period of the future ahead from 2021, because such a consumer, is not limited by time or space:

1. The Platform Economy, is global and truly borderless. There is no limit to where a product can reach and go. There is no limit to where a consumer can find a product, and purchase a product from. The limit, is only on the seller's or the distributor's part.
2. The Consumer, with seamless mobile connectivity, no longer needs to dedicate a scheduled time or a periodic routine, to go out to seek a product or a list of products. Opening hours or business hours no longer exist for the purposes of shopping and purchasing. The consumer does not have to plan shopping or a purchase. When something comes up, or does a thought, while watching television or a YouTube video, moving on a bus or a train, and the consumer opens a website or an application while on the move, on any of a range of possible devices at one's disposal, swipes, clicks, and the purchased items are delivered to the consumer's doorstep within days - whether basic groceries or ultra-high end luxury goods.

Off course, the consumer pays. The reality of the payment process however, is increasingly becoming an exclusively business domain, where to the consumer, the process of paying, no longer exists, and it does not matter. The consumer only needs to know the price, and be aware that the amount has been deducted from his or her bank account accurately, while unbothered about the process of how that happens.

The Human Experience is Transitioning to X Reality

Just 3 years ago, the idea of X Reality was often being dismissed by some of the most distinguished scholars and technopreneurs as something outright bizzare - like riding a winged unicorn to work, and stopping by for breakfast with a Yeti along the way. Then, Facebook announced its version of the Virtual World known as Horizon, Microsoft Mesh has become a reality and Mixed Reality is no longer just for teenage gamers.

The Metaverse as of 2021 is a concept yet in the embryonic stages admittedly, and it is yet still a playground for a huge populace of people of the sorts that one just needs to be very careful about. Then again, lots of articles of technology today, are playgrounds for persons with intentions a little less noble, and a little more nefarious.

Long before the internet became as useful as it is today for both consumption and for business, along with learning, entertainment and respectable socializing, it was largely a bastion for the sexual predators and pornographers in its early days (and to an extent still is).

The eventual future of what is now known as the Metaverse, or what I just simply refer to by its initial descriptor, the Virtual World, is that it will fuse with the actual physical offline reality, the two becoming so entangled, that separation will be unimaginable. The average ordinary human being will simultaneously exist in both the actual physical reality and the Virtual World, for the purposes of acquiring education, shopping, purchasing, consumption, occupational work or business, healthcare, social life, sports and everything else that people just tend to do or need.

The Metaverse will be the form taken by all social media or networks or social platforms, in the future, that equivalent to present day platforms such as Facebook, LinkedIn, YouTube, etc.

The Metaverse will not just immersive. It will be all pervasive and permeating. And we will be immersed in it constantly throughout our time awake, for more productive and constructive purposes, than otherwise. And it will be effortless digitally because of how our interface with technology is evolving.

We are reaching the threshold, where we will no longer interface with technology. The AI enablement of technology is reaching that point, beyond which all technology, including all its articles that we will continue to use in our daily lives, will interface with us, for their subservience to us. And the relationship will be dynamic, autonomous and automatic. And the programmatic qualities will be such, that we will not only not mind it, we will enjoy it, and even take it for granted.

When every article of technology, with autonomous agency, communicates and coordinates with every other, to support and enhance our experience of being human, transcending the divide between the actual and the virtual, that will be X Reality. There are a few people, mostly extraordinarily wealthy with prerogatives over certain pre-diffusion stage technologies, who are already living such lives today, at the time of this article, and it is no secret.

For a consumer business to remain relevant ahead, past the decade ahead from now, is to be relevant to the X Reality era, where it is engaging the market or the consumer, in the X Reality environment, utilizing the possibilities that X Reality will offer. My advice, is to keep an eye on 6G, and all things social and technological that it will have potential and propensity to support.

The Convergence Bringing about X Reality

Firstly, with the rise of HMDs or Smartglasses, other wearable devices, Haptic Technology and Holographics, interface mediums are evolving. The whole internet is on the verge of becoming Artificially Intelligent. The connectivity and therefore uninterrupted, seamless, limitless secure access to the internet is evolving, along with the evolution of how the cloud works or functions or what and how much is able to happen in the cloud. The convergence of all of that, along with cyberphysical systems, involving robotics, that constantly communicate through the global web of clouds, is leading to a manifestation of a multidimensional, multi-sensory telexistence.

Machine Learning today advancing at a pace multiple times faster than was imagined prior to 2017, and it has put the possibility within reach, that the whole internet can operate with programmed agency, to smartly serve countless end-users. It is one of the primary reasons, if not the primary reason, why the 6G cellular network is already being worked on intensively all over the world, even before 5G has reached any semblance of maturity. And the different between the two generations will be massive. And that, is an understatement right there.

Life in X Reality

The future is one, where anything predictable, routine, measurable or repetitive, will be fully automated. Everything will by hyperconnected, where the internet will no longer be about human to human communication, but about connecting objects, systems and processes, enabling such hyperautomation; the Internet of Everything. No, that is not the same as the Internet of Things.

The Internet of Everything, is where your question answered as to: Why on earth do you need a Smart Toothbrush or a Smart Diaper. It is to facilitate an endless constant flow of data from all around us, between all the objects around us, and everywhere else, to render the Human Life Experience along three lines:

• Omniscience - Ask the internet something, when you want to know something, and it will instantly tell you, because the whole planet and everything on it is hyperconnected and functioning as a single massive brain - The Global Brain
• Omnipresence - You can be remotely present through all sorts of self-projection or communication methods, surrogate devices or machines and what not, just about anywhere and everywhere you like, whether in virtual environments, or remotely in physical environments, simultaneously, at will
• Omnipotence - Whether through vision sensors, sound detectors or brain computer interface, if not something else, if you think of something scientifically feasible, technology will produce it or execute it for you, with your only bar being your own creativity in imagination or thought - no IT, computing or tech skills required

Implications for Consumer Business

The typical consumer business in the developed world 10-20 years from today will be one of the following:

1. Brick and Mortar, selling tangible non-virtual goods and services with an equal or surpassing Virtual Presence (not necessarily a virtual business model)
2. Entirely Virtual, with no Physical Customer Facing Presence, selling tangible non-virtual goods and services
3. Brick and Mortar cum Virtual (simultaneously dual model), selling both non-virtual and virtual products, whether goods or services
4. Entirely Virtual, with entirely Virtual Products and Services, no offline product for consumers

The term "Digital Twin" will extend to consumer products like devices, accessories, apparel, sporting goods, etc, for the consumer to experience in virtual spaces, before purchasing to acquire physical twin versions, or, to modify or customize the final physical product acquired.

Digital Product Twins will also be a part and parcel of the purchase arrangement, where in the actual world, a consumer uses the physical version, while owning and experiencing the use of the same product in the virtual realm, as the lifestyle transcends that barrier between both.

The Customer Relationship

Increasingly, business will be about providing consumers intangible, non-actual experiences, attached to goods and services, whether those goods and services are virtual or not, before the sale, during the sale and long after the sale. And this will not be in terms of perceptions, but in terms of lifestyle experience that extends far beyond. And off course, you must assume, multi-sensory experiences, and possibly extending to senses that are artificially possible in an engineered reality, but not in the actual reality - when Brain Computer (or Brain Cloud) Interface meets Immersive Mixed Reality encompassing Haptic technology.

Every marketing, sales, customer relations/service effort and the actual product unit, will be mass customized down to each individual customer. Basically, every consumer company becomes Rolls-Royce Motors in the new tech reality powered by pervasive Artificial Intelligence.

Wonders become possible, when AI enabled software picks up your customer's preferences, instantly relays them to autonomous production assets, that automatically adapt and autonomously assemble the customized and personalized product for each consumer, and smart delivery drones smartly deliver them to the customer's doorstep in the most time efficient manner.

And all of the above means? What, you haven't figured it out yet? Your marketing, and your product, from Research & Development to Production and Delivery, result from collaboration with the consumer on the street. On a daily basis. How else do you successfully sell or market to a consumer who transcends time and space, thus, having virtually limitless options?

Fun times ahead!

About Harish "The Singapore Futurist" Shah

Harish Shah?is Singapore's first local born Professional?Futurist?and a Management Strategy Consultant. He runs?Stratserv Consultancy. His areas of consulting and?Keynote?Topics include EmTech, Industry 4.0, HR, Digital Transformation, Product Development, X Reality,?Marketing,?Strategic Foresight,?Systems Thinking?and?Organisational Future Proofing. In an?Open Letter?in 2019, Harish has called on his fellow Futurists around the world to raise the emphasize upon the need for Environmental Salvation, in the course of their work. He is also currently working on a series of essays which will culminate into a free eBook titled?Life in Techtopia.