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Tracking Social Change: How Grocery Store Magazines Foretell Future Trends

Tracking Social Change: How Grocery Store Magazines Foretell Future Trends

The study of the future is most often about reading and predicting great shifts in culture, economics, or politics. The result of experts studying the tea leaves of their particular science or discipline is a report about the future or future trends.

Think tanks, university research centers, government agencies, and corporate research spends millions each year trying to anticipate how the American consumer will react or not act in regard to anything. This anything can be: war, lack of war, peace, extreme weather, water shortages, increased fuel costs, medical crisis, lack of work, home ownership, home loss, and retirement.

The modern American economy is based upon one simple fact. That fact is that 70% of our economy is based upon a strong and steady consumer society spending money.

As a futurist, I am a bottom feeder.

Unlike my colleagues in the big Washington DC or New York think tanks, I collect most of my raw data from the streets. I have trained myself over the years of studying how disruptive technology impacts our local and regional daily lives. With no large research budget or staff, I have to be aware of change from a personal 4 foot square where I am standing to the geo-political economic global events that frame movement to a new future.

One example was the impact of Red Box videos into our market. On a Monday, last summer, the area in front of our local Dollar General Store stocked only products from the store. The next day, a Tuesday, at the far end of the sidewalk in front of Dollar General, stood a new Red Box Video station. Its footprint was 2 ft. by 3 ft by 6 ft. It held almost 200 videos.

Overnight, the price of video rental went from $6.00 down to $1.25, the Red Box price. The marketplace bent to this new player.

So it was yesterday, as I traveled to my local grocery store in Clinton, Greg’s, to pick up some staples like milk and cheese. As I often do, in my wandering through the store, I stopped at the magazine rack.

In our little outpost of a town, this rack of magazines is the only outside world contact with printing and photographs. There is only one general chain bookstore standing within an eight county area. Magazines and paperbacks are sold at Wal-Mart, Walgreens, and CVS.

Instantly, my eyes focused upon one new bright magazine, “Innovation & Technology TODAY.” What I held in my hand was 134 pages of articles on new ideas and current disruptive technology. I applied my standard for buying magazines (there has to be at least 3 articles I will read). The three articles are: (1) digital publishing explodes (2) smart farming meets smart tech and (3) the world of 3D printing.

As I stood in front of the 6 ft. tall by 4 ft. wide rack of magazines, a little voice within my futurist mind cells, whispered “Where are the gun magazines?”

Right on!

Within a minute, I realized that I was standing at a small point of change that actually could be touched. All of the gun magazines had now been move from direct eye level of sight to knee level . In other words, they were now out of sight.

Cooking and survival magazines had replaced the gun magazines.

As I started to write down various magazines by their category, the owner of the store came over to check on me. Before he could say hi, I hit him with my small talk.

“Greg, your customer base is shifting. It looks like your normal red meat, gun toting, truck driving white male is being replaced by Generation Xers and Millenniums who want to try gourmet and healthy cooking. Younger shoppers are looking to install wood burning stoves, garden on a large scale and have personal water wells at the house, which is probably drawing energy from a wind mill or solar panels.”

He looked down at me and said gently. “OK. Did you know we have a special today on oranges?”

The following are the titles of the magazines I saw:

Cooking

1. Taste of the South
2. Delight glutton free
3. Clean Eating
4. Cook-make ahead dinners
5. Fine Cooking
6. Winter’s Best Dishes
7. Best Ever Slim dishes

Frontier Living

1. Mother Earth News
2. Capper’s Farmer
3. The Backwoodsman
4. The New Pioneer
5. American Frontiersman

Guns

1. Guns & Ammo
2. AR-15
3. Clock Autopistols
4. Guns & Weapons
5. Shooting Illustrated
6.Military Surplus
7. Hand guns

Something’s going on. Only time and research will tell what it is.


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