Jan 17, 2021
Prediction of Industry Trends in 2021 using Big Data
Lucinda Lim — Data Scientist at Inmagine Group (lucinda.lim@123rf.com) and Brian Ho — Data Scientist at Inmagine Group (brian.ho@123rf.com)
The industry and market are changing rapidly, businesses have to adapt to stay competitive. Trends are a reliable source of information for businesses to adapt to the changes in the market. It will tell you the early warnings on what is right and wrong with your business. If you follow trends, you can foresee the future and generate better business ideas.
Based on traffic, download, search logs, and download images data from the stock photo industry, we predicted this year’s trending images, search terms, and colors for each industry. Then, we validate our findings with online trend articles written by experts. We will explain further how we derive these insights:
- Trending Images — We select images that have at least 50 downloads, and their overall download count increase in the year 2020 when compared to the year 2019. Based on images’ historical data, we forecast this year’s image download count (using Facebook Prophet). If there is a significant increase in downloads when comparing from the year 2020 to the year 2021 (using Welch’s t-test), then, the image is predicted to be trending. We yield a total of 2,000 trending images. Next, we categorize trending images into the industry and generate word clouds from image keywords. Word Cloud is an image composed of image keywords used in a particular industry, where the size of texts indicates its frequency or importance.
- Trending Search Term — We gather the top 10,000 search terms that lead to the highest downloads in the year 2020 (using Spark). For each search term, we predict its search count for the year 2021 (using Facebook Prophet). If a search term is predicted to increase significantly in the year 2020 (using Welch’s t-test), then, it is forecasted to be trending. The result shows a total of 6,000 trending search terms.
- Trending Colors — For trending images, we resize and convert their image format into RGB color space. From each image, we detect their RGB colors and map them to the nearest child and parent color. For example, ‘midnight blue’ is a child color, ‘blues’ is a parent color. Lastly, we accumulate the occurrence of parent and child color for each industry. The top 3 parent colors and their top 3 child colors are presented in the next sessions of this article.
The industries that we covered:
- Arts & Design
- Business & Marketing
- Manufacturing
- Education
- Energy & Environment & Agriculture
- Financial Services
- Food & Beverage
- Lifestyle
- Medical & Healthcare
- Real Estate
- Research & Development
- Sports
- Technology
- Transportation & Logistics
- Tourism
Arts & Design
Top 3 Image Colors: whites (white, alice blue, white smoke), greys (dark slate gray, gainsboro, dim gray), blues (steel blue, midnight blue, light steel blue)
Trends:
- 3D background & 3D podium — 3D background is suitable for showcasing products. It creates a hyper-realistic digital space for products to stand out from the crowd.
- Icons & Logos — Digital transformation leads to establishing an online presence via logos and developing technical applications using icons.
- Nature Design — Designs are revolving around trees, leaves, and flowers. Some nature background textures are wood, marble, stone, paper, splash ink, watercolor, and rainbow.
- Abstract Geometry — Geometry elements such as shapes, lines, angles expressed in a free-flowing way creates a modern and expressive look for the design.
- Gold Design — Gold is shiny, metallic, and can blend with many color combinations. It gives the design a luxurious and high-quality feel.
- Comic Background — Vintage comics are reviving with bright colors, simplified dot shading, heavy inking, and action lines. It is great for visual storytelling.
Business & Marketing
Top 3 Image Colors: greys (dark slate gray, gainsboro, dim gray), whites (white, alice blue, white smoke), blues (steel blue, midnight blue, light steel blue)
Trends:
- Omnichannel Retail — Omnichannel retail unifies customer experience across multiple channels, whether it is through the mobile, website, or in-store. This strategy drives more sales and traffic for retailers.
- Social Commerce — When viewers see an ad, commercial post, or video on their social media media, they can click on the product they are interested in. With this, retailers can easily convert viewers into buyers.
- Shop Streaming — Shop streaming is a combination of ‘e-commerce’ and ‘live-streaming’. It allows retailers to establish an online presence and interact with their customers.
- Influencer Marketing — The collaborations between brands and influencers to market a product or service improves brand recognition. Influencer marketing works as it relies on social and content marketing tools, where credibility and genuine authority are already established in the minds of consumers.
- Subscription Business — Subscription eCommerce business provides online shoppers a personalized, convenient, and low-cost method to purchase products or services regularly. Companies benefit from having predicted monthly revenue and creating loyal and repeat customers. This indirectly saves customer acquisition costs and makes cross-selling and upselling easier.
- Personalization — Companies can use collected data to personalize customers’ shopping experiences. Some methods include loyalty programs, gifts, or rewards which are custom-selected for customers based on their past purchases and the products they view.
- Click & Collect Business — Click & Collect business is where shoppers make purchases online and pick up their order in a physical store. With this model, businesses save delivery costs and shoppers are flexible to pick up their order whenever it suits them.
Manufacturing
Top 2 Image Colors: greys (dark slate gray, gainsboro, dim gray), blues (steel blue, midnight blue, light steel blue)
Trends:
- Internet Of Things (IoT) — IoT enables the capabilities of remote monitoring and predictive maintenance.
Education
Top 2 Image Colors: greys (dark slate gray, gainsboro, dim gray), whites (white, alice blue, white smoke)
Trends:
- E-learning — Because of school closure, e-learning is vital for delivering education electronically.
- Immersion Learning — Learning has become more interactive with Virtual Reality (VR) and Augmented Reality (AR). VR gives a constructed reality, AR provides an enhanced view of a real image.
Energy & Environment & Agriculture
Top 2 Image Colors: greys (dark slate gray, gainsboro, dim gray), whites (white, alice blue, white smoke)
Trends:
- Circular Economy — A circular economy is an economic system that aims at eliminating waste and the continuous use of resources. Recycling and renewable energy are elements that contribute towards a circular economy.
- Smart Farming — Smart Farming allows farmers to collect data using sensors. Analyzed data is then used to notify farmers about the prediction of crop health, diseases, and weather risks.
Financial Services
Top 3 Image Colors: greys (dark slate gray, gainsboro, dim gray), blues (steel blue, midnight blue, light steel blue), whites (white, alice blue, white smoke)
Trends:
- Digital-only Banks — Digital-only banks are banks that provide virtual banking services such as Peer-to-Peer payment, international remittance, and contactless MasterCard with free transaction fees. It eliminates the need to physically visit a bank.
- Financial Analytics — Financial institutions can leverage data and analytics to provide personalized content and insights to customers.
- Robotic Process Automation (RPA) — RPA utilizes software robots or digital workers to automate back-end office processes like security checks, credit cards, and mortgage processing. It increases efficiency thus allowing humans to focus on major areas like customer service.
Food & Beverage
Top 2 Image Colors: greys (dark slate gray, gainsboro, dim gray), whites (white, alice blue, white smoke)
Trends:
- Plant-based food — The increasing interest in natural and organic foods and the meat shortage due to the pandemic outbreak has contributed towards the trend of plant-based food like meatless “meats”.
- Fresh Fruits and Vegetables — Consumers are boosting their immunity by the intake of fresh fruits and vegetables.
- Frozen Foods — To avoid multiple grocery trips, buyers are stocking up food by purchasing frozen products.
Lifestyle
Top 3 Image Colors: greys (dark slate gray, gainsboro, dim gray), whites (white, alice blue, white smoke), blues (steel blue, midnight blue, light steel blue)
Trends:
- Remote Working & Video Conferencing — With technology and digitalization, people are transitioning to working remotely and conducting meetings via video conferencing.
- Online Entertainment — Trends of online entertainment include video streaming, online casino, eSports, and podcast.
- Diversity Inclusion — Diversity and Inclusion is about socially accepted individuals with different backgrounds and cultures such as gender, race, and ethnicity.
- Violence against women — Economic strains and school closures left women and girls more vulnerable to exploitation, abuse, forced marriage, and harassment.
Medical & Healthcare
Top 2 Image Colors: greys (dark slate gray, gainsboro, dim gray), blues (steel blue, midnight blue, light steel blue)
Trends:
- Telemedicine & Telehealth — Some offerings include doctor-patient video chats and contactless medication delivery services.
Real Estate
Top 2 Image Colors: greys (dark slate gray, gainsboro, dim gray), whites (white, alice blue, white smoke)
Trends:
- Online real-estate services — People can buy and sell property online, even home transactions are using electronic signatures and remote online notarization.
Research & Development
Top 3 Image Colors: greys (dark slate gray, gainsboro, dim gray), blues (steel blue, midnight blue, light steel blue), whites (white, alice blue, white smoke)
Trends:
- Drug Development — Researchers have shifted to conduct remote clinical trials by collecting data remotely and performing consultations online. Some areas of advancement include Covid-19 testing kits and vaccine development.
Sports
Top 2 Image Colors: greys (dark slate gray, gainsboro, dim gray), whites (white, alice blue, white smoke)
Trends:
- Outdoor fitness — Outdoor fitness, for example, running, hiking and biking, is less dangerous for people than working out in an indoor gym.
- Digital Fitness — Digital Fitness is convenient for people to workout at home digitally at a lower cost.
Technology
Top 3 Image Colors: greys (dark slate gray, gainsboro, dim gray), blues (steel blue, midnight blue, light steel blue)
Trends:
- 5G & Internet of Things (IoT) — 5G is a mobile internet connection that offers much faster data download and upload speed. It is crucial for autonomous mobility and smart cities.
- Artificial intelligence (AI) — AI refers to the simulation of human intelligence in machines. Some examples are image and speech recognition.
- Software-as-a-Service (SaaS) — SaaS is a software distribution model that provides lots of agility and cost-effectiveness for organizations.
- Cybersecurity — As the number of data breaches and the cost of cybercrime has rapidly increased, cybersecurity is constantly evolving.
Transportation & Logistics
Top 2 Image Colors: greys (dark slate gray, gainsboro, dim gray), blues (steel blue, midnight blue, light steel blue)
Trends:
- Autonomous Vehicles — An autonomous vehicle can sense its surroundings and move safely with little or no human intervention.
- Drone delivery — Drone is useful for contactless address delivery.
Tourism
Top 3 Image Colors: greys (dark slate gray, gainsboro, dim gray), blues (steel blue, midnight blue, light steel blue), greens (teal)
Trends:
- Caravan holiday — A caravan is a vehicle equipped for living in and used for holidays. It allows people to travel safely while maintaining social distance.
- Outdoor Nature — Mountains, islands, and beaches are several wide-open outdoor spaces travelers are craving for.
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