Delphi 2017 –Ten Years Ahead

Based on a survey among 45 scholars and professionals, this internationally conducted Delphi Study develops future scenarios regarding living conditions, value systems and consumer cultures. Delphi 2017 is a two-stage qualitative expert survey covering developments that are relevant to consumption in the following key areas life (focus on Germany):

• Health and nutrition
• Education and employment
• Family and gender relations
• Mobility and urbanism
• Youth and ageing
• Media and communication
• Leisure and consumption

Besides Germany, the analysis includes future values and consumption behaviour in Great Britain, France, Spain, Italy, Russia and the USA.

The interpretation of each expertise’s result considers continuous normative changes, from which we derived challenges and approaches for a marketing of the future.

The qualitative, two-step Delphi method

An open, explorative interviewing style made sure that the interdisciplinary group of experts had any opportunity to comment on given topics and questions as well as to bring up and develop their own relevant issues. A set of thesis statements reflecting the current state of the art was to initiate the experts’ written essays and served as a base for the interviews. All experts were to discuss and challenge the given theses and explicate their own scenarios.

The GIM Delphi team then reviewed the results of the first round regarding both specific topics (such as work, nutrition, youth) and overall issues (e.g. societal change, development of values) and made the compilation of statements and prognoses available to the experts again for a second round of reviewing and commenting. In the course of the second round, the GIM Delphi team modified, complemented and weighed all elements of future prospects, and came up with a condensed perspective of all relevant orientations up to 2017 that will shape and influence people’s lives in the years to come.