Lifestyles, trends and new opportunities of today's parents | Key4Communications |

How do parenting styles influence parents when buying baby products? How can we identify opportunities for our companies based on that? What product selection would be more convenient to attract new consumers? This article describes the lifestyles of today's parents and the trends and new opportunities that these ways of life create.

1. Active parenting: Claiming parenting as a unique experience

Very active parents reading everything related to the care of their children. They assess and take into account the various theories and methodologies on parenting, choosing in each moment and situation what they consider most appropriate. They often choose solutions related to attachment parenting (prolonged breastfeeding, babywearing, co-sleeping, ..).

Keys for product design for Active parents:

• Foster easy attachment: New products must allow to follow natural breeding trends, such as co-sleeping, porterage or breastfeeding.
• Natural in modernity: These parents want natural solutions but without suffering, what means products that enable being faithful to the traditional and natural concept of parenting without giving up the advantages of comfort.
• My experience, my need: Forget industrialization of motherhood and think of a unique experience. The simplest action can claim a necessity.

2. Fashion parenting: The influence of fashion in family's lifestyle

They are parents strongly influenced by fashions and trends, which seek not to lose the customs and lifestyle they had before having children. Following fashion trends is for them a status that must be shown and this behavior does not change when the child arrive, on the contrary, they extend their taste for novelty at all the baby's universe.

Keys for product design for Parents Fashion:

• Mini Me: Reflect adult's lifestyle in baby products, so that the mother or father can feel identified.
• Dad likes: The father figure is particularly relevant as a target for marketing strategies that emphasize his pleasures and hobbies extrapolated to his life with a child.
• Exclusivity: They value brands that offer exclusivity.
 
3. Techno-geek: Technology as a partner in parenting

They are parents who are fascinated by technology and innovation, and are very receptive to trying it with their children. Apps and products for last generation babies. They consider technology as a partner to make easier their work as parents and as a tool to monitor the baby's development.
 
Keys to design products for Techno-Geek Parents:

• Update to get the latest in innovation: They value the application of new developments in various sectors to the world of baby products.
• Innovate with Apps: Applications open a world of possibilities in the development of childcare products.
• Prevention and Wellness: Given the great concern for the welfare and safety of their children, Techno-Geek parents seek solutions in the latest technological innovations.

4. Rational parenting: A late, planned and structured parenting

They are parents who have postponed parenthood until they have achieved economic stability and made a career. They usually live in urban environments with small houses so they look for products with maximum functionality and versatility and that can evolve and adapt according to their changing needs.

Keys for product design for Rational Parents:

• Modular, adaptable and multifunctional/folding and transportable: With no space in their homes, they require the maximum product functionality, versatility.
• Adult and child world go together: Children and adults share the same space so their tastes tend to merge.
• Aging being parents: They are relatively young but they begin to take care of their health, going from a back pain due to stress to other pathologies.