Conscious Consumers:

Megatrends 2010:
The Rise of Conscious Capitalism

Megatrends 2010: Excerpt from Chapter 5:

The Biggest Market You Never Heard Of

By 2000, the market for values-driven commerce, from organic food and eco-tourism to Earth-friendly appliances and alternative medicine, had reached $230 billion, according to a report in The New York Times, and was growing by double digits every year. No wonder the Times called it, “The biggest market you have never heard of.”

Natural products, from food to personal care items, were a $36 billion market by 2002—up from $15 billion five years earlier, said Boston-based investment bank Adams, Harkness & Hill.

Conscious Consumers are often categorized as “LOHAS” (Lifestyles of Health and Sustainability) customers. By 2005, 63 million Americans—or 30 percent of the adult population—were part of the LOHAS market, says the Natural Marketing Institute, a market research firm specializing in the LOHAS customer.

The LOHAS market is comprised of five sectors: (1) Sustainable Economy (green buildings, renewable energy, socially responsible investing);(2) Healthy Living (natural and organic food, nutritional supplements and personal care); (3) Alternative Healthcare (wellness, complementary and alternative care [e.g., homeopathy]); (4) Personal Development (mind, body, spirit products and services from CDs to seminars) and (5) Ecological Lifestyles (ecological or recycled products, ecotourism and travel).

But here is the key point:

Ninety percent of LOHAS customers prefer to buy from companies that share or reflect their values, says LOHAS Journal, a publication for conscious businesses and consumers.

Not surprisingly, there’s plenty of overlap between the LOHAS consumer and the Cultural Creatives, and the key to both is values. Cultural Creatives coauthor Paul Ray, who worked for decades in market research and applied social research, says he spent two years trying to figure out how to predict consumer behavior. The answer isn’t demographics, income or psychographics, Ray concluded, but values—and lifestyle.

A Bit of a Paradox

Values-driven Consumers remain a mystery to mainstream business—and it is little wonder why. Some Conscious Consumers are comfortable, even rich, in disposable income (although Paul Ray describes Cultural Creatives as of “average” income). Still they all disdain consumerism and want no part of the mass market—whether discount, designer or anything in between.

But when these quirky customers find what they want, they go wild. They’ll cheerfully wait months and pay a $3,000 premium for a Honda Civic

hybrid, then drive 50 miles out of their way to the nearest Whole Foods for the absolute best organic $7.98 a pound baby spinach this side of Kansas City.

What’s the secret behind their purchase decisions? You gotta know their values. Mainstream companies are gradually catching on—showing up at LOHAS conventions like the one in Broomfield, Colorado, in June 2003.

That’s where Sheri Shapiro, assistant marketing manager for the Ford Escape hybrid SUV (which hit the market in 2004), discovered “the values and attributes of the LOHAS customers matched our own research.” Time Warner, Sony and General Electric joined Ford at the 2004 LOHAS get-together in Marina del Ray, California.

How does a company reach Conscious Consumers? By understanding the importance of positive uplifting values, of course, but also by living those values in business.

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