Now showing items tagged personalisation

If there are two trends that consumers have come to prioritise in recent years they are personalisation and health. Among other things, the pandemic alerted us to the very real fragility of our bodies and boosted an already rising trend of health-consciousness. Meanwhile, as automation, AI and the accessibility of data points have surged in recent years, so has the capacity for businesses to personalise their products.

In a world of seemingly unlimited options, it has become necessary for nearly all successful businesses and brands to personalise products according to the customer. Personalisation is now widely recognised as a powerful tool for selling and engaging customers. However, there is a range of contexts in which this same strategy of personalisation can serve just as powerfully.

With abilities that seem to have come straight from the future, 3D printing is gaining traction across all industries. While 3D printing has been a fringe technology for decades, the numbers give some indication of how quickly it is moving towards the mainstream. Recent years have seen worldwide sales of desktop 3D printers triple with estimates that annual sales will exceed 100 million units by 2030. Siemens predicts that 3D printing will become 50% cheaper and up to 400% faster in the coming decade.[1]

The powers and potentials of 3D printers are hard to overstate. Here are 3 of these key powers, driving this technology’s march to the mainstream.

When seeking to understanding their customers over the years, brands and organizations have had little option but to rely on blunt instruments and generalized patterns. The valuable work of marketers, analysts and strategists centred on segmenting society into broad groups based on gender, ethnicity or geographic location. These groupings would then inform how products and messaging could be tailored for relevance. In the modern age of data analytics, however, it is not only possible to understand and target an audience of one but it is increasingly becoming the expectation.

From online shopping to online dating, the digital age has introduced people to a range of options that previous generations could only have dreamed of. For every option that is swiped left or scrolled past, there is an array of others waiting that may or may not be better suited to our personal preferences.

In the 20th Century world, personalisation was a luxury only some could afford. After Industrial processes took over and assembly lines made cheap mass production possible, the personalisation of a product was not in high demand, and when it was required, the price reflected its uniqueness.