Values-based consumers, recessionary fears, and global sociopolitical uncertainty will make 2020 the year of adaptability
BEIJING, Oct. 31, 2019 /PRNewswire/ — Forrester’s 2020 predictions identify key market dynamics that will impact companies’ growth in the coming year.
2020 will be the year that moves leaders’ attention to adaptability: the ability to understand and anticipate market dynamics — and rapidly exploit opportunities, both big and small.
Factors including heightened values-based consumer activism; the lack of clarity around Brexit; automation, Artificial Intelligence (AI) and robotics moving deeper into the organization; and recessionary fears due to sociopolitical uncertainty will make 2020 a raucous year, forcing leaders to embrace adaptability.
In 2020, Forrester predicts that:
- Consumers will search for deeper meaning. Companies will pay careful attention to authenticity, both in the values they choose to express and how they express them.
- CMOs will rally around customer value. To establish a successful ecosystem, CMOs will thread the needle between employee experience, customer experience, brand purpose, creative, and technology, imbuing all these crucial areas with customer obsession.
- CIOs will focus on people. Smart CIOs will become a trusted advisor and partner to employee experience and HR teams to help with changing workforce dynamics, including working with new emerging technologies or interacting with robots.
- Immersive, adaptive IT will take hold. IT will follow the broader organizational future of matrixed, shape-shifting organizations that form and morph to changing priorities.
- CX will continue to bifurcate. Firms that have made the least headway will cut their programs in frustration. Meanwhile, companies that have started realizing the benefits of CX will double-down, simultaneously shoring up their fundamentals and innovating.
- Advanced firms will double their data strategy budget. 2020 will be a wake-up year for many, as the total cost of getting data wrong will become apparent.
- Data and AI will get weaponized. In 2020, ransomware incidents will grow as attackers learn that holding data hostage is a quick path to monetization.
- Group-targeted experiences will supplant personalization. Marketers will move away from laborious and often-unwanted personalization efforts. Instead, they’ll seek to authentically connect with customers through group-targeted experiences.
- Automation will reshape the workforce. Automation will change the composition of the job market and raise global economic issues of income distribution and wage stagnation.
- Regulation will make and break markets. Regulatory bodies will gain steam — impacting and shaping markets, in a very real way, in 2020.
- For VCs, profitability will become the new unicorn. In 2020, venture capitalists will increase their scrutiny of startups.
For a deeper dive, download Forrester’s 2020 predictions guide.
Forrester’s predictions 2020 guide is underpinned by data and research found here: forr.com/2020-predictions (client access required).