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AMAZON PRESENTS
#SHOPTHEFUTURE
CHRISTMAS OF THE FUTURE
CONTENTS
01 FOREWORD02 MEET THE FUTURISTS03 FOOD & DRINK04 DECORATIONS 05 ENTERTAINMENT 06 GIFTING07 CONCLUSION
FOREWORDWelcome to the Christmas of the Future report commissioned by Amazon, where two leading independent futurists, Dr Morgaine Gaye and William Higham, uncover genuine near-future trends that are on the brink of transforming the way we experience Christmas.
It’s that time of year again, packed with timeless tradition and festive fun. The nation is preparing for the season of goodwill, from gifts for loved ones to decorations and entertainment, as well as festive food. While they haven’t quite managed to speak with Father Christmas, these futurists have numerous ideas regarding what the nation will enjoy during Christmases to come.
From projected light displays to 3D-printed nibbles and virtual reality hugs with loved ones across the world, the futurists have given us an insight into how the festive season as we know it will evolve. They also reveal that many of the things we all love about Christmas, including home-made decorations, family games and the sharing of gifts, are here to stay.
The Christmas of the Future will be different for everyone. The ‘kiddults’
who have grown up with social media are the parents of the future, focused on provenance, health and environment as well as caring about how they look, while today’s young teens, ‘Gen D’, will be keen on creating their own experiences. The 50-60 year olds of the future will be keen to hold on to a few fond festive traditions while embracing sustainability and taking themselves less seriously.
With so many different people to please, it’s a top priority to ensure that we’re ready to help them enjoy Christmas Future as much as Christmas Past and Christmas Present.
We hope you enjoy the Shop the Future store’s new Christmas selection at www.amazon.co.uk/shopthefuture, showcasing the innovative products you can purchase now, to embrace the future!
Alvaro Castillo, Head of UK Deals and Events, Amazon.co.uk
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William HighamWilliam Higham runs strategic consultancy Next Big Thing. His mission is to help brands by looking into the future and spotting the opportunities and pitfalls that come with the next big trend. His clients range from technology to media, music, retail and leisure businesses.
Higham wrote one of the first ever handbooks for trend strategists, The Next Big Thing: Forecasting Consumer Trends for Profit, and was one of the futurists behind the original Amazon Shop the Future report. He is a regular media commentator, chairs events for brands, media and industry bodies and judges several innovation awards.
Higham says, “Virtual snow and haptic hugs: the Christmas of the early 2030s will be recognisably festive, but will use emerging technologies to make the celebration more convenient and communal.”
MEET THE FUTURISTS
AUTHORKat HannafordThe report was written by writer and technology expert, Kat Hannaford, based on interviews and insights provided by William Higham and Dr Morgaine Gaye. Kat formerly edited a leading technology and gadgets news website.
Dr Morgaine GayeDr Morgaine Gaye looks at food and eating from a range of perspectives. She consults leading blue chip food companies, delivering trend briefings and New Product Development ideation, as well as lecturing on food trends and researching all elements of the eating experience.
Director of bellwether: Food Trends, the first food trend research compendium, she also has her own global range of functional food blends. She is a frequent media commentator, a guest university lecturer in the UK and Sweden and has published several research papers.
Gaye says, “In a time of creating our own rituals, the Christmas celebrations of the future will be very bespoke, and different from group to group and family to family.”
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1 http://www.brakesce.co.uk/pages/multimedia/db_document.document?id=4088
Festive food is an integral part of Christmas, and it’s about to get even more exciting. According to the futurists, festive food will embrace experimentation. We’re also broadening our horizons thanks to newsfeeds full of nibbles from far-flung places. As well as turkey, we’ll be welcoming to the table tasty traditions from other countries like Sweden’s Julbord, a Scandinavian festive buffet that literally means ‘Christmas table’, the Polish 12-dish Christmas lunch, or nibbles from festivals like Mexico’s Day of the Dead, such as Pan de Muerto or Tamales, or India’s Holi Festival, where sweet spiced milk and buttery flatbread are popular. “Anything that’s tasty and has a story will impress our guests - and will look good on social media,” says Higham.
We’ll also find innovative Christmas food closer to home. The development of hydroponic technology means you’ll be able to grow the vegetables to go with your Christmas dinner in your own kitchen – no matter how small. Higham also predicts that 3D printers will be the perfect tool to create a feast that’s as pleasing to the eye as it is to your taste buds, imagining Christmas tree-shaped turkey-flavoured soya pieces or Noddy Holder-shaped biscuits taking pride of place at the dinner table, while Dr Gaye envisages stunning edible artworks printed in 3D for dessert. In short, the ultimate social media-worthy Christmas. Our pets will be no exception, with their own gourmet meals and 3D-printed treats such as mouse-shaped catnip and bone-shaped meat.
FOOD & DRINK
CHRISTMAS DRINKINGChristmas drinking traditions are becoming even more experimental, with Cellar Trends research suggesting 73% of 18-30 year old drinkers are more likely to enjoy cocktails at home on special occasions1. Dr Gaye predicts we’ll spend more time practising our home bartending skills and playing around with cocktail pairings and flavours to create the perfect mix of festive food and drink. “As food and alcohol collide, we’ll be eating our cocktails and drinking our food,” she says, predicting creative food and drink combinations like wine ice cream or bourbon peanut butter. Cheers!
Joe & Seph’s Gin and Tonic Caramel Sauce, Available today on Amazon.co.uk from the Shop the Future store
Garland Micro Grow Light GardenAvailable today on Amazon.co.uk from the Shop the Future store
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DECORATIONSInstead of storing Christmas decorations from one year to the next, both futurists predict a turn to virtual decorations. LED ‘wallpaper’ will let you project virtual Christmas trees and 3D festive scenes onto your walls, says William Higham. And it won’t just be indoors. “We’ll create even more impressive giant animated front-of-house decorations, using photos, gifs or video,” says Higham. It will wow both the neighbours and strangers via social media.
One of the benefits of these new decorations is that they can be replaced without worrying about waste or storage requirements, says Dr Morgaine Gaye - something the festive consumer of the future will find handy as they try to save space and keep their homes less cluttered. She says, “Holographic images, which we can change with a simple voice command, will enable homes to have a fully decorated tree without having to physically bring anything into the house.”
In addition, we’ll still want to make our own decorations using scissors and ribbons, says Gaye, but 3D printers are heralding a new age of personalised decorations. Higham agrees, “As more of us start discovering 3D printers, we’ll be able to print our own decorations which we can melt down in January, store easily and then recreate next Christmas. 3D printed baubles can be any shape, size or colour, and personalised with names, emojis or slogans as we wish.”
Future festive seasons may see us growing our own real Christmas trees - with hydroponics - even allowing those without outdoor space to grow their own wreath, garlands and mini tree in their front room.
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Robo 3D R2 Smart 3D Printer with WiFiAvailable today on Amazon.co.uk from the Shop the Future store
Moving on from tatty, tangled tinsel extracted from the loft, the Christmas of the Future will be adorned with 3D-printed baubles, holographic scenes and home-grown trees and wreaths. Thanks to technology, people will be able to personalise their whole home for the festive season, saving space, time and money in the process.
Christmas is a time for shared celebration, but with family and friends often living further afield these days, technology will come to our rescue. It could enable us to share a ‘haptic hug’ powered by high-tech clothing which recreates the sense of touch using vibrations or motions. Or by projecting holographic versions of our nearest and dearest into our living rooms – mimicking
ENTERTAINMENT
2 https://www.npdgroup.co.uk/wps/portal/npd/uk/news/press-releases/2016-set-to-be-a-record-breaking-year-for-the-british-toy-market/
the real thing even if they’re thousands of miles away. “Experiencing simple things like a hug from a relative overseas will be possible wearing haptic clothing,” says Higham. “Not only this, but holographic images could conjure up anyone we want to celebrate with, whether it’s a vision of Santa Claus or our own distant loved ones. Taking up no space and using voice recognition software, these images will be instant, interactive and fun!”
And while technology will help bring loved ones closer together, some traditions will never change. Board games are set
to make a comeback, with games and puzzles becoming the fastest growing toy category in Britain in 2016, according to NPD2.
And it’s all about experience, says Gaye, with most of the entertainment set to be kinesthetic communication – relating to movement and touch – rather than sight-based. From scent to ‘biofeedback’, touch and chemical responses, family games will be all about playing by experience, she predicts. Should make for an interesting game of charades...
DESTEK V4 VR HeadsetAvailable today on Amazon.co.uk from the Shop the Future store
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GIFTINGSorry Scrooge, you’re not welcome in the Christmas of the Future. In years to come, giving will still be a major part of Christmas, but the way we go about gifting at this special time of year will be considerably different, the futurists predict.
Thanks to the development of Artificial Intelligence (AI) into more sophisticated Artificial General Intelligence (AGI), it will be easier than ever to decide what to buy for your nearest and dearest, with our online profiles collecting our likes, dislikes, favourites and must-haves to generate the perfect festive wishlist. “In future, we’ll use our shopping, viewing and social media behaviours to generate an instant Christmas list that we make available to friends and family, a seasonal version of a Wedding List,” says William Higham. You’ll still get your ‘present under the tree’ moment, he predicts, as customers who want to keep their gifts a surprise will be able to get their AI assistants to create their lists and pass them to friends and family without seeing it first.
The Christmas of the Future isn’t just about family. It’s about ‘framily’. Friends, relatives, neighbours, colleagues and pets, all in one close-knit group. And the bigger those ‘framilies’ become, the more people we’ll be buying gifts for, Higham predicts. “How about those neighbours who kindly took in parcels for us when we were out. We’ll want to get them a special ‘Thanks For Keeping It Safe’ gift. Or our AI Assistants: they may not be human but they’ve helped us out all year. Maybe we’ll get them a new case or more memory?”
When it comes to all those gifts, that’s a lot of wrapping paper. But that’s another thing that is set to change in the festive future. People are giving gift and experience vouchers more than ever, says Higham, with vouchers and gift cards seeing double digit growth over the past five years and estimated to be worth over £6bn per year (UK Gift Card & Voucher Association)3.
Our beloved pets will also be part of the action. Figures from TotallyMoney.com suggest that Brits spend over £7bn on their animals per year, a growth of 25% since 2010, and Christmas is no exception, as pet pampering becomes ever-more prevalent4. “As animal lovers increasingly spend more on speciality food for their pets, we can expect to see specific gourmet meals for dogs and cats,” says Gaye. “They will have their own advent calendar and their own screen so they can connect to other pets at the tap of a nose.” It’s a dog’s life!
4 http://www.petbusinessworld.co.uk/news/feed/how-much-are-brits-spending-on-pets-
3 http://www.ukgcva.co.uk/becomeamember.html
TD Design 4.3L Automatic Pet Feeder for Dogs & CatsAvailable today on Amazon.co.uk from the Shop the Future store
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CONCLUSIONIt’s clear from the futurists’ predictions that the Christmas of the Future will have all the traditions of Christmases past and present, but with technology adding a whole new dimension to the way we celebrate, from food and drink to entertainment, gifting and decorations.
Epic holographic displays and home-grown trees and wreaths will allow us to personalise our decorations like never before, creating stunning scenes and jaw-dropping displays throughout our homes to show off across social media.
Our festive feasts will be a globally-inspired mix of traditional turkey and experimental treats from Scandinavian buffets to 3D-printed Christmas-themed nibbles. We’ll even be able to grow some of our own vegetables right there in the kitchen thanks to developments in hydroponic technology. And that’s before we post pictures of our edible artworks printed for pudding or tuck into tipple-themed foodie treats.
As families grow - incorporating friends, colleagues and pets - technology will make it easier to celebrate the festivities together, providing haptic hugs and holographic family and friend appearances so everyone can join in. Buying gifts for those ‘framilies’ won’t be as tricky as you think, with wishlists automatically generated through our online profiles. And while technology will continue to evolve, the age-old excitement of opening presents won’t disappear thanks to virtual reality packaging. Everyone will be involved, even our pets, with their own advent calendars, gourmet Christmas lunch, and the chance to catch up with their pet pals online.
It’s clear there are exciting times ahead, and while nobody knows exactly what the Christmas of the Future will look like, one thing is clear. It’ll be just as magical as ever.
To find out more about these trends and the products of the future, visit Amazon’s Shop the Future store at www.amazon.co.uk/shopthefuture
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For further information, please contact: Amazon UK Press Office
Email: [email protected]: 0203 680 0888
