The ‘Millennial Mindset’ is a threat to traditional business models. Here’s how.

Disclosure: The author is the Open Innovation Lead, UK & Ireland / FinTech Innovation Lab London, Programme Director at Accenture.

Photo credit: Pixabay.

There’s a new consumer in town, and they are forcing a revolutionary change in the way products and brands are designed and delivered.

Who are these new consumers? They are the smartphone enabled, social media empowered, continuously mobile and connected, and increasingly cash-rich but time-poor individuals. They are creative and demanding. They care about their environment and their impact on it. They vote with their feet or more accurately, with their clicks and swipes.

These are consumers with the “Millennial Mindset”. This mindset has infected not only young people but any digitally empowered consumer who uses a smart device, social media, and internet connection to discover, choose, share, review, buy and sell. Are you reading this article on the web on your PC or your phone? If yes, you have a Millennial Mindset.

We are all developing this Millennial Mindset, presenting serious challenges to traditional business models of large established brands in the consumer goods, retail and travel space.

Ecommerce is eschewing physical stores

The most obvious threat is from ecommerce, which has taken the world by storm, even as brick and mortar retailers re-engineer their store offerings and roll out their own digital channels. Amazon and Alibaba are just two of the most obvious examples, offering entire universes of products from fashion to electronics.

They continue to grow revenues at a dramatic pace while new entrants have appeared on the scene, eschewing physical storefronts to deliver unique products via their own web stores or through platforms like Singapore’s Carousell.

This has led to malls emptying out, not just in America but across Asia. Less footfall and purchases there have driven not just mom-and-pop shops out of business, but even major department stores like Macy’s which have to resort to reducing, or as they say, “optimising” their shop locations. Even banks have cut back on expensive branches and taken to web and mobile with aplomb.

Travel and food disruption

In travel, Airbnb already offers more than one million rooms, more than the largest hotel chains and without owning a single one of them. Online travel agencies have brought price transparency, sharpening travellers’ focus on prices and commoditising the air ticket.

Even something as tangible as food has been digitalised, where startups such as Honestbee, Redmart and Foodpanda are raring to bring to your doorstep fresh groceries or piping hot food, all for free or a token fee. Busy lifestyles, convenience and always-on connectivity drive the trend. Consumer businesses must step up to meet the Millennia-Mindset or risk losing out.

Startups transforming consumer businesses

The above-mentioned companies may have grown to become global giants or are on their way to becoming big, but they all began as startups. Hungry to bring new ways of consumption to everyone and capitalising on the rise of the Internet and mobile, their brand of entrepreneurship and disruptive thinking have transformed the business landscape.

These transformations have definitely caught the attention of top consumer business leaders, who are increasingly receptive towards bold, disruptive ideas for the industry. If you are a startup interested in pitching to big retailers and brands, here’s where you can start.