Innovate to elevate: Driving Tech & Durables spending in 2025

For Tech & Durables companies looking to make the most of their innovation investments, it’s essential to look at the current market environment and how it’s influencing consumers’ daily motivations.

Amid mixed economic conditions, Tech & Durables (T&D) companies can expect only a weak consumer pull for many of the latest and most expensive items, except when there are visible and valuable innovations that directly meet consumers’ daily needs.

In the first half of 2024, for example, 35% of TVs sold were older models launched at least two years earlier—an increase of 6 percentage points compared with the first half of 2019.

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“Really driving sales often requires dramatic product innovations, such as the leap from CRT to flat-screen TVs, or basic phones to smartphones—and these jumps only happen occasionally. Looking ahead, however, Artificial Intelligence, robotics, and other developments could trigger a wave of change that’s more tangible to consumers.It’s important that innovation is not only relevant but comprehensible. In the coming year, we expect significant innovation—and, thus, the potential for escalating sales—in products, retail touchpoints, business models, personalized promotions, and the use of Artificial Intelligence. The question we must ask is, ‘What do we need to produce to keep consumers buying?’ We must understand what real innovation means to them.”

—Michael McLaughlin, President of International Retail, NIQ