Consumer Futures: building a new consumer agenda through listening and engagement.

What does it mean to be a consumer in the 21st century? What is the nature and extent of consumer disadvantage? How can consumers' needs best be addressed by decision-makers in government and business?

With parliament creating a powerful new statutory National Consumer Council, our Consumer Futures project will build the intellectual framework, consumer insight and high level relationships that will enable it to succeed. Consumer Futures will be a major programme of research and engagement that will involve dialogue with business and consumer leaders, as well as extensive consumer research.

If you would like to play your part in shaping the new consumer agenda, click here to send us an email.

2020: A vision for consumer futures event, 19 June 2008

We invited key thinkers to attend this future forecasting workshop, held at the Imagination Gallery in W1. The purpose of the day was to explore the most significant trends that will affect consumers over the next ten years, and to identify the critical consumer rights and consumer representation challenges between now and 2020. The day unfolded in two stages:

• We began by considering the key trends that will affect consumers over the next ten years, and discussed how these may play out for different people within the population.
• We then used the outcomes from the earlier work tot ease out and analyse in depth the top five challenges for consumer rights champions over the next ten years, and how these can be met.

Watch this space for NCC’s report on the findings from the day, due in September 2008

Click here for the 16 consumer trends that were explored.

The research

The following clips highlight some of the main concerns that came from the deliberative forums during the Consumer Futures research.

Click here to view clip 1

Click here to view clip 2

Click here to view clip 3

Click here to view clip 4

Understanding disadvantage

In the summer of 2007, NCC held eight deliberative forums in urban, semi-rural and rural areas of high deprivation in England, to give disadvantaged consumers an opportunity to tell us about their lives and the problems they experience. Each forum involved 20 to 40 people, selected to represent the population of the area.

The forums highlighted significant consumer disadvantage affecting individuals and the areas in which they live. Evidence also pointed to people suffering disadvantage because the areas they live in are deprived of public and private investment. This creates a cycle of disadvantage within poorer communities.

Three booklets summarise the research.

To download Understanding disadvantage, which contains the overall findings, click here.

To download Time-poor, cash-poor, which looks at one of the key themes from the research - the resolution of consumer problems - click here.

To download Ignored, isolated, invisible, which looks at another key theme from the research - people's thoughts on being heard and represented - click here.

To download a background paper, which contains more detail on the research, click here.