Trends are the general course that a group of individuals have a tendency to think about or feel about something. Trends can occur regarding fashion and style, social events, politics, or a direction that a certain condition or attitude is taking. Trends tend to be where the majority of buyers for a certain market will congregate. There can be minor trends, intermediate trends and major trends especially in financial markets.
Why Pay Attention to Trends?
Any size business from the one-person home entrepreneurial seller, the corner mom and pop, Fortune 500 companies and multi-billion dollar international corporations can benefit from paying attention to current trends. Trends are critical to the success of any company because knowing what trends are popular and have value in the industry results in being able to produce the goods and services that consumers will want or need to have based on trends. Recognizing an upcoming popular trend before your competition will give your company the edge it needs to pull ahead in sales revenue and in name-recognition, which will spur on even more sales now and in the future. Paying attention to current and upcoming trends together with knowing what to do with that knowledge is what puts and keeps a company on the customer radar. The more time you spend paying attention to trends the better you will be at spotting the popular ones.
Those who profit from financial markets study the general direction or trend that a financial market or commodity is taking in order to be in a position to reap financial gains from placing proper moves in the market. When an individual understands the reaction the financial markets will have on certain trends smarter decisions can be made in order to reap the biggest profit for self or clients.
If trends are so important to those in business, financial sectors, politics, and in the fashion world how does one go about finding the next important or hot trend in order to profit from it?
How to Find Trends?
It is not only a good idea to be able to spot or recognize an up and coming trend it is also important to confirm it’s importance too.
There are many websites and software programs that claim to be able to spot financial trends especially in the world of commodity trading and stocks and bonds on Wall Street. Financial Trends Analysis is something that big companies pay big buckets to have performed for them by competent individuals or companies. The financial markets are filled with ups and downs being able to successfully pick the trends can make the difference between losing your shirt or ending up a multi-millionaire.
So called political experts crowd the airwaves making political predictions about what trends will occur in politics. Companies spend millions of dollars trying to determine what international political trends will occur in order to avoid catastrophe or perhaps to profit from a governmental event.
In the world of fashion young and old anxiously anticipate trends. The trends in style, color and fabrics are predicted by “Fashion Trend Forecasters”, picked up by designers and shown in fashion magazines so you and I know what to wear next season. Fashion Trend Forecasters attend fashion shows, pour through fashion magazines ad make regular visits to the fashion centers of the world relying heavily on built-in fashion radar in order to successfully predict what the fashion buyers will want to wear next season to work, for leisure and to formal events. Smart fashion designers listen to more than one Fashion Trend Forecaster in order to determine if a predicted trend can be considered to be reliable.
There is no exact blueprint when it comes to spotting a technology or business trend. Smart entrepreneurs and business executives learn how to keep a finger on the pulse of their particular industry usually over years of trial and error and lots of practice. They can also simply hire someone with a good track record for recognizing industry trends. There are also such things as trend tools such as the “Job Trends tool” used to track trends in information technology according to an article about How to Spot Technology Trends printed in April of 2009 by Small Business Trends.
Sources:
Blair E. Forecasting Fashion Trends npr http://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=1432978
