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In 1997, researchers at the American Journal of Preventive Medicine, found that on a scale from 0 (least healthy) to 100 (most healthy), on average, fast-food chains including McDonalds, Dairy Queen, Taco Bell, KFC and Wendy’s, yielded a score of 45. Fourteen years later, researchers found that the use of the words “healthy” and low-fat” have increased 86 percent and 33 percent, respectively, but the average score among the fast-food chains only increased to 49. The average score for all foods available to Americans is 60.  http://www.fool.com/investing/general/2013/05/16/surprise-fast-food-is-still-bad-for-you.aspx

Separately, McDonald’s recently increased marketing and added items to its Dollar Menu while chains such as Taco Bell, Wendy’s and Arby’s are now also testing new value menus.

In the past few years, healthier fast-food chains have entered the marketplace, including Chop’t, Maoz, Freshii, Zoes Kitchen, Veggie Grill (winners of the “best new restaurant” category in the 2012 Los Angeles Times readers’ poll), Tender Greens and Lyfe Kitchen.

While McDonalds is now offering an “Under 400 Calorie” menu and egg-white breakfast sandwich, it may not be enough to retain customers that are increasingly focusing on a healthier lifestyle.

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Aging Global Population and Older Parents

• In 1980, median age of the world was 23.  According to the UN, by 2050 it will be 38.  In 1970, about half of the world’s population was younger than 20.  In 2011, that it was a little more than one-third of the population.  The number of people older than 65 increased from 5 percent to 9 percent between 1970 and 2011.
• Fertility has fallen below replacement rates in the majority of the 224 countries from which the UN collects data.
• China in 2010 had just 11.3 people over 65 for every 100 people in the working age population, less than half of Britain’s 25.1 and the U.S.’s 19.9.  The UN estimates that by 2045, China will be at 39, almost the same as Britain and above the 34.6 forecast for the U.S.
• American first time mothers have aged about 4 years since 1970 (25.4 from 21.4).  College educated women have a 1-in-3 chance of having first child at 30 or older.  The average age of American man when he becomes a father is between 27 and 28.

Potential implication: Countries will need to change immigration policies and aggressively pursue immigrants.

Potential implication: Resource demand will potentially plateau or decline

Economic effects on older Americans 

• Americans in their 50s and 60s have lost the most earnings power of any group, with household incomes 10 percent below what they made when the recovery began.
• Over the last year, the average duration of unemployment for older workers was 53 weeks, compared to 19 weeks for teens.
• Just one in six older workers who were laid off during the recession had found another job and half of that group had accepted pay cuts.  Fourteen percent said the new job paid less than half of previous job.
• More than one in every eight  people in late 50s is now on some form of disability.
• Prescriptions for patients 65 and older declined 3.1 percent in 2011.

Potential implication: Safety nets will be tested (and needed) more than ever before.

Potential implications:  Those that are older and out of work will cut back on everything.

Work longer

• Number of workers 75 and older has increased by 76.7 percent in the past 2 decades.  They were 7.6 percent of the workforce last year, up from 4.3 percent in 1990.
• 30 percent of Americans now plan to work until 80 or older, up 25 percent from A YEAR AGO in a survey of adults with incomes less than $100,000.
• Respondents in a recent survey said they will need a median of $300,000 in savings to support themselves in retirement, the average amount currently saved is only $25,000.  Fidelity claims that medical bills alone through retirement will cost $240,000 per couple in retirement.
• As of 2011, more than 36 percent of employees at state level and more than 35 percent at the local level were over age 50.

Potential Implication: Harder for Millennials to get into the work force and when they do, there will be a knowledge gap.

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The following are some recent facts and events that begin to illustrate the new reality of housing- that the majority of new construction will be multi-family, smaller and in cities.

New American Lifestyles

• There are two million  more adults ages 18-34 living under their parents roof last year than four years ago.
• 80 percent of units now have one bedroom. In the past, 60 percent had two bedrooms
• New units are as small as 500 square feet in Houston, even smaller in San Francisco and New York City.
• Married couples with children make up under one in four households today
• Between 2010 and 2011, 86.5 percent of small metro areas saw an increase in the number of people living in the city.
• Cities in the smallest metro areas (150,000-250,000 people) saw the largest increase in people within their boundaries.
• Cities in small metro areas grew in population by 0.89 percent outpacing suburb growth by 0.67 percent.
• Small metro cities are seeing more growth then big cities. 55 percent of cities in small metro areas grew at a faster rate than their suburban counterparts between 2010 and 2011. 51 percent of cities in large metro areas added population at a greater rate than their suburbs.
• The nation added more than 2 million households in the 12 months that ended March 31 about triple the average for the previous four years. Most of the gains came from baby boomers. – divorce?
• The number of people ages 25-29 who moved across state lines reached its highest level in 13 years

Multifamily housing

• Multifamily construction is two-thirds of the way back to prerecession peak.
• New apartment complexes are going up at fastest rate since July 2008
• In Houston, from January to September, construction permits for multifamily housing increased by more than 70 percent over the year earlier.

Single family housing

• Single fam construction is one-third back to peak
• Houston permits for single family increased 25 percent from Jan to Sept.

Economy and General Housing

• Net worth increase by $1.7 trillion in Q3
• Households got $301 billion bump in value of real estate assets
• Case-Schiller 20 home index has risen month over month for 6 months with four consecutive monthly year over year gains.
• Jobless rate of those ages 25-34 dropped from 9 percent at start of the year to 7.9 in November

• There have been 559,000 home seizures in 2012. The Fed Reserve Bank of NY had estimated as many as 1.8 million properties would be taken back this year.   Foreclosures are at a five year low.
• Foreclosures and short sales made up 24 percent of October sales. The same level as September but down 28 percent from a year earlier.
• There were 2.14 million existing homes for sale in October, down 1.4 percent from September. That translates to a 5.4 month supply at the current sales rate, the lowest level since February 2006.
• The number of residential properties for sale in the U.S. shrank to the lowest level in a decade. Prices have appreciated in the fastest pace since 2005.
• Median price of an existing home sold in October jumped 11 percent from a year earlier, steepest annual increase since November 2005.
• Almost a quarter of all US homeowners with a mortgage are underwater
• Fed reserve is buying $40 billion in mortgages every month which is keeping rates low.

General home building

• Pace of home building rose to its highest level in more than four years in October. U.S. builders increased their spending on construction projects in October by the largest amount in 5 months. Level of spending is still considered low.
• Builder confidence in the housing market rose for the 8th straight month in December to its highest point in more than six years. Sentiment reading of 47, means more builders have a negative outlook than a positive one

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Could such an offering eventually become the moneymaker the Postal Service needs to replace the fall off in first class mail over the past several years?

If anything, such an offering, should it eventually be broadly offered in many cities, would be another enabler of the changing nature of retail, toward smaller stores and online shopping and fast delivery. Americans have increasingly found such convenience desirable, especially when compared to gassing up the car and zigzagging among various big-box stores and malls.

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For one, the mailbox is answering the call for delivery of online purchases.

Amazon is now teaming up with Staples, Radio Shack, 7-Eleven and Albertsons for its Amazon Locker Service.  The physical retailers will install Amazon lockers in their stores, allowing customers to buy from Amazon and ship packages to the lockers and then pick them up later.

As we have noted in our New American Lifestyles context, individuals are increasingly moving to urban locations and these locker services, also offered by startups BufferBox and ShopRunner, may prove beneficial to those living in apartment buildings and urban environments.

For another example of the past offering a solution for modern problems, the general store is proving to be a valuable retail model in some cities.

Facing a mass exodus from urban to rural areas and a general population decline that was forcing retailers to close, residents of the German village of Barmen formed a corporation and funded the creation of a village center in 2006.  Today the 150 square meter store sells basic staples and also has an ATM machine, post office, travel center, a place to register a car or renew a driver’s license and has a doctor who comes once a week from a neighboring town.

Those who run the Barmen store have gotten so many inquiries from other towns that they have created a separate consulting firm and estimate that they have helped set up about 10 other stores, none of which are losing money.  They have another 25 stores in the works.

According to one of the Barmen consultants, the most important element of the village store is the café in the back.  While the store can’t compete with discounters on price, or with upscale supermarkets on variety, it can offer a community feel and an experience.

Simplicity (the limited inventory), Connectivity (the community of the town center) and Experience (the café) are three things that are making these general stores a success and are also three of the four items, along with Restraint, on our American Consumer Values Hierarchy.

American retailers, faced with a myriad of challenges, might want to look to Germany for some ideas.

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Yabbly  is a new community-based question and answer Website and app  which allows consumers to receive feedback on potential purchases from others who have recently been in the same situation.   A consumer can ask a question from the general community and Yabbly will then match the questioner with others who have recently made similar decisions.

This Website has the potential to be another tool in the quickly expanding consumer-shopping toolbox and as a result, brands will have to work even harder to get their message across.

http://www.fastcompany.com/3002609/buy-or-not-buy-yabbly-ask-someone-whos-been-there-bought

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That was President Ronald Reagan’s perspective on international diplomacy.  Increasingly, that is advice all individuals, all the time, need to apply.  On Amazon.com, for instance, roughly 80 percent of all reviews are four stars or higher, a positive perspective that defies human nature.  Yelp!, which knows that fake reviews undermine its entire business model, claims a proprietary fraud-detection system stops at least 20 percent of all reviews before they reach the public.  According to computer scientist Bing Liu, who studies online fraud, roughly 30 percent of all reviews across the Internet are fraudulent.  Yet, 70 percent of global consumers trust online consumer reviews, up from 55 percent just four years ago.  Review fraud is increasing, and trust in those reviews is also increasing.  Is this ignorance or indifference to accuracy?

The Reagan perspective needs to be used much more widely than just for consumer reviews on the Internet.  A recent study of biomedical journals discovered that use of manipulated data or fraudulent professional reviews has increased 10 fold since 1975 – and that study only counted frauds that were caught.  In September alone, several journals, including Experimental Parasitology and Pharmaceutical Biology discovered that nearly 30 papers had made their way to publication by using fake peer reviews.  The reviews, which are routinely solicited by the journal to assess the papers’ worthiness for publication, were fraudulent, most commonly being reviews by fake professionals created by the authors themselves.

The Internet has put an enormous amount of information at everyone’s fingertips, and now those wanting to use that incredible resource are having to deal with the effects of the intentional polluting of that information. Has deception and fraud become so commonplace that those trying to detect it constantly lag the deceivers?  What does that say about nearly all kinds of societal interactions, including those in retail, advertising, medicine, equities, religion, politics, education, marketing and on and on?  Is there any place individuals can place their trust?  Is there room for an independent, non-aligned business to validate information?

Hmmm, fact checking, the new black.

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With one quarter of 25-to-34 year olds living with their parents, multi-generation homes are becoming more practical for many families.  In the U.S. as a whole, the number of 25- to 34-year olds owning homes dropped 12 percent from 2005 to 2010. Fifteen percent in that age group can’t find work.

Some home builders are responding to the new marketplace.  Last year, Lennar Corp introduced a “Next Gen” model, calling it a “home within a home” – houses that feature a completely separate unit with its own kitchen, bathroom, bedroom and living area, and its own entrance, attached to the main house via a double door similar to adjoining hotel rooms. Said Lennar’s western U.S. president, “We can’t build them fast enough,” while noting that most buyers were primarily families with either grown children or elderly parents living in the attached unit.

While some houses are getting larger to better accommodate more family members, there is also a demand for smaller homes, and in some cases, much smaller.  In 2008, for the first time in at least 10 years, the average square footage of single-family homes under construction significantly shrank, from 2,629 square feet in the second quarter to 2,343 square feet in the fourth.

Those are mansions, however, compared to the new properties popping up in cities like San Francisco, Boston, and New York City. The new “micro” apartments being built in these cities range between 225 and 350 square feet.  A 24-unit, four-story building in San Francisco’s South of Market (SoMa) neighborhood, will be comprised of 300-square foot apartments, which come fully furnished with compact features such as a dining-room table that folds out into a bed.

As we have recently written in the context of what we call the consumer’s new Values Hierarchy, individuals and families are looking for homes closer to work, shopping, entertainment and other forms of civil and social engagement.  They will also be looking for the kind of connectivity that multi-generational homes can provide.   The demand is there, can home builders fill it?

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A different study of the U.S. food supply has learned that 40 percent of American food goods are wasted after being brought home – that is, American homeowners let 40 percent of the foods they purchase spoil before they use them or get thrown away as excess.

As attitudes change about the utilization of resources, perhaps, homeowners, while cutting back on energy use, will also start consuming a better part of the 40 percent of the foods they waste.

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